Straight Outta Hollywood (spoilers if you have no idea what this movie is about)

My roommate and I went to see Straight Outta Compton over the weekend. It was good. Not the best, but good. It was what I expected for a movie about the guys who produced it. Obviously, missing was any violence against women even though there were several high profile incidents that occurred during the movie time frame. There was only one reference to the East Coast/West Coast rivalry, and as far as I’m concerned there is never enough Bone Thugs and Harmony. They are absent during the reconciliation between Ice Cube and Easy E, which is weird. The women are silent in the film except the wives, who are treated with respect and only are spoken ill about by the white manages. Of course, the women never speak to other women. Though, two are portrayed as quite intelligent and given slight credit for their partners getting out of the bad contracts. I also believe it to be fairly accurate with a few movie type lines thrown in to make it funny and flow better.

The movie owns police brutality and the exploitation of these guys. I remember leaving and my roommate going, it is hard to reconcile the men they are now with the naïve and idealistic children they were. But they were, they were kids without appropriate tools to navigate legal contracts. Dr. Dre holds on with Easy E for a long time wanting their manager not to be screwing them even when Ice Cube leaves, but once Dre has proof (ala Suge Knight---a very frightening man even on screen) he’s out. Easy E talks about loyalty when people try to help him see he’s getting screwed and remains willfully ignorant, and that is a home grown low-income value.  But it happens again and again where the established white media machine takes advantage of these young black men, who have no way of protecting themselves in any way except the ways they always have, and to quote one of the managers, you don’t kill people, we have lawyers. I think that is what is so scary about Suge Knight he is able to exist in both realities comfortably. One of the more interesting things about the film was the shock of the white managers whenever they screwed the NWA members and were met with the threat of violence. I think it speaks to the removal of these people making bank off NWA from the music itself. We see the disparities in education in one scene where Ice Cube is on a bus evidently being bus from one neighborhood to another, and I don’t know if you were supposed to feel jealousy or frustration with the affluence of the white students juxtaposed with the poverty of the black, but man did I. Two very different worlds. Police brutality is all over this movie and rightfully so. Each of the NWA members highlighted in the film have a moment of resistance highlighted on screen before writing “Fuck the Police.” All of which result in arrests or violent altercations.

Now back to the violence against women and white consumption. F. Gary Gray, the director, said the violence against women didn’t fit the narrative and the movies was already too long, but as others reminded him, we got other side stories. We saw Dre’s ex leave with their baby—there were allegations of violence in that relationship; we saw everyone meet their wives; we saw Ice Cube write Friday. But it is the first part of the response, the narrative. Dre is a sympathetic character; they all are. So to show Dre as an abuser, would have made it more difficult to feel for him. At least for the paying audience. Personally, I would have liked it better to show and develop real character flaws instead of the superficial ones. But by leaving out the violence against women and the violence from the East/West rivalry, we’re not seeing the whole picture. We’re seeing an easily consumable narrative that you don’t have to reconcile your feelings about a violent abuser who is in a way using this film to advocate for the demilitarization of the police. But now that we’ve landed in consumption. I just overheard a man I work with who has said “all lives matter” in my office, who thought the Baltimore demonstrations over Freddie Gray were out of line say the movie was great. This film is so easily digestible that people who cling to racist social structures liked it, which makes me wonder if there was an underlying message at all or if I was projecting one onto the film.

This film was made to make money, and while I have problems with capitalism, I get it. I get that we see the boys grow into men and with them the music industry transformed but for what purpose? Capitalism? Because Ice Cube’s dis-track “No Vaseline” references the embracing of white culture by the members of NWA and the casting call for this movie asked for light skinned women. And a man in my office who hold racist views love the movie. So was the point to pay homage to Easy E? Because that’s cool, but the video below is the shit. Or was the audience supposed to be pushed toward action? And even if the later wasn’t the intention, is there any other interpretation given the police violence we keep seeing day after day?

I don’t care.

Disclaimer, this is a very gender binary/heteronormative post. Not because rape is exclusive to those communities because obviously it isn't, but because the topic of conversation and examples used were heteronormative.

Someone I consider a fairly good friend and I always have conversations about rape. His understanding is pretty nuanced, which is why I don’t mind plus I’m always game to talk about how the patriarchy fucks us. I do sometimes wonder if I’m like his rape source, but otherwise, I know he’s not coming from a bad place. And maybe this was a perfect storm which is why I got real frustrated with him.

I was on the train last night reading an article about the subject of our conversation, and two things occurred to me: 1. Do the work, and 2. I don’t care. All of this is of course about Rolling Stone and their story about Jackie. I mean we can unpack this; we can talk about ETHICS IN JOURNALISM, or how Jackie is getting defended in some circles while other “alleged victims” who were “discredited” were left to fend for themselves, or we could talk about the nuances of the impact rape has on the mind and behavior of people. Or we could talk about how this impacts rape culture.

This last one that’s where my friend is. He is concerned that stories like this will hurt the cause. Another Duke (which is interesting because a few authors I follow have been drawing parallels and distinctions between the Duke case and Jackie including no one running to the Duke victim’s defense with the underlying understanding is that you can’t rape/sexually assault a black sex worker) he said. But to me it can’t get much worse. There are judges saying 9 year olds led grown men on…in a court room…in the US, where 9 year olds can’t consent to sex. A man recently wrote an interesting article recently about how he doesn’t trust his wife with her feelings and experiences. So we’re supposed to expect people in authority or the masses to believe us? You know when someone comes to a party late and isn’t caught up yet on the gossip? That is what this conversation felt like.

I’m not picking on him. He has a tale of woe from a friend who was falsely accused of rape, and it was amazingly taken seriously by their school. I don’t know anyone who has been taken seriously the first go or at least not guilt tripped by the admin and police. I also don’t know many women who would say that their experience legitimizes a perspective. I mean you can only know what you know (but then you do the work), but here is when you grab a copy of Against Our Will or This Bridge Called my Back. This is when you read about how state sanctioned violence works, how rape isn’t just a tactic of war abroad, but how it was used about black women in the civil rights movement. Rape’s history as a property crime. Fully get a grasp on how rape culture works. This didn’t start with our generation we just named it. Because when my friend mentions his friend, I empathize. But then I think of the recent Kristof article that talked about a rape victim in terms of how the rape impacted everyone else, her father, mother, rapist, cousin once removed but never her. And I think of a friend I used to have who once linked sex and violence (not in the consensual way) together as though it was to be expected. As though her body, her life, belonged to this man who said he loved her, but beat and raped her anyway. You want to know the underlying premise of rape culture we rarely mention? Men feel like they have the right to the bodies and lives of women. This is a fundamental pillar of the patriarchy, but so often we’re trying to get the boys on our team we down play it.

So I’m sorry about your friend, but I don’t care. I don’t care about one guy. I don’t know why we have to prove our lived experiences to journalist and the masses while men just get a I believe you pass. I don’t believe in objectivity, and I don’t believe we can ever really know what happened at Duke or to Jackie or to the dozens of women I know who are survivors or to your friend. And perhaps what I found truly surprising about all of this, is my friend kept referring to his falsely accused friend, but never any survivors he knows. This is probably because Jackie was deemed a false allegation of rape and thus it is connected in his mind, but come one man, we can’t talk about rape and only talk about the one guy you know who didn’t do it. And because I can’t leave him out there on his own, maybe this is me. I mean maybe I’m too in the weeds, and he’s taking a macro approach. He’s thinking about the damage a high profile false rape accusation does, while I’m thinking about all rape cases where women are blamed from the start. But does to what? I couldn’t get my head around that. The damage this does to what? The movement? The movement would point you to the false rape statistics based on an FBI report, which actually never looked at rape but other crimes and extrapolated the data. Still pretty insignificant figures. To the men falsely accused? We’ve covered this I’m empathic, but I don’t care. To the victims that aren’t believed? Well they aren’t believed now (literally just about any book on rape). To our culture and society? A culture and society that blames victims already, that facilitates rape, that marginalizes entire populations of people as distrust worthy. I just realized I don’t care about this either because I’m thinking we need to straight up burn our culture down.  Journalism? But this is about ethics in journalism. I jest. I just don’t know what this damages.

Look I want the boys on our team, and I hate this always seems to boil down to a men vs women thing. I just don’t think this one story is going to push anyone who didn’t already believe women lie off the fence. It will be the talking point, the story they point to when they are saying women lie, but if not this one then Duke, and if not Duke, then some other story. And I don’t see why this is the story that is getting people outraged, except that we live in a patriarchy that latches on to something that supports and promotes the narrative of white, male, heteronormative domination over society. We’re after all not talking about The Hunting Ground or any other “true” account of sexual violence. But never fear patriarchy proponents, this isn’t going anywhere. I’m sure the “liberal” media will keep trying to rake Rolling Stone over the coals. I’m sure the journalist will keep apologizing, no publicity is bad, right?

Excuse me my cynicism is showing. 

Well it has been a while…

I had a lovely vacation in a magical place called Cleveland, where everything is a shade of gray, but not in the sexy way. Then I came back and had a lot to do (none of which is done, self-high-five). Clearly, I’m living like a boss. Regardless, I was reading about this whole Cosby and Phylicia Rashad thing. I know she is now claiming she was misquoted, but essentially she said,

“Forget these women. What you’re seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it’s orchestrated. I don’t know why or who’s doing it, but it’s the legacy. And it’s a legacy that is so important to the culture…Someone is determined to keep Bill Cosby of TV. And it’s worked. All this contracts have been cancelled.”

So here’s the thing. No, that isn’t happening. Secondly, Rashad has a long history with the man, and like his immediate family is defending him because who can believe someone they know has raped more than 20 women (and counting). I honestly don’t have the most recent count. I get it; I do. You can’t possibly imagine someone you care about is capable of evil acts, well serial killers have moms. Just saying.

I give exactly zero fucks about Cosby’s legacy. You don’t get a legacy. I mean what is he known for really? Raping women, a TV show, and black respectability politics. What is the legacy we should all be running to protect here? Yeah, maybe some perspective.

Moreover, the most disturbing thing about Rashad’s statements isn’t about Cosby’s legacy, which she has a vested monetary interest in being a costar, but about the women. I can get Rashad protecting a friend and her own assets, but she has dismissed the lived experiences of survivors. That I can’t ignore. “Forget these women.” I just can’t even. What the hell lady? “Forget these women”? I’m pretty sure people have. I’m pretty sure that is why it took several decades for anyone to care. We have a lot of problems in society, but “[f]orget these women” isn’t one of them. “Forget these women” is going to be the new “what about those poor boys’ futures?” from CNN. Candy, you mean the rapists, right? Yes, their lives were possible ruined (though playing football again) while the victim should walk it off.

I put some thought into when we “[f]orget these women” for you (and none of these are mutually exclusive):

• Sanctity of life legislation (which was one of the first things our new Congress has taken up with Roe’s anniversary just a few weeks away)
• Welfare mothers
• Rape survivors
• Inmates
• Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
• Workplace pay gap/discrimination/sexual harassment
• Women in poverty (more likely to be women, most likely to be women of color to get real specific)
• Transwomen (who are victims of violence and suicide)
• Etc., etc., etc.

We do a lot of things, and forgetting the women is one of them. We have no trouble forgetting the women. So I give you CJ Craig, yelling about the murder of women. I like this clip because while it about a foreign county I think we should look at own won house. This would be considered Third Wave feminism where the West wanted to save brown women from brown men, which is very problematic. Though arguably part of the problem in this particular episode is us selling weapons to men who are going to use them against the women. But to watch it now, thinking about how we let a US soldier kill a Transwoman abroad or how we allow police in Cleveland to kill a mentally ill woman, well I’m wondering why we spent so much time trying to save other women when we have a lot at home getting screwed too. 

Happy New Year guys, everything is exactly the same.

There shouldn’t be an app for that…

Alright, so we don’t need an app to confirm consent. What we need is people to talk and listen to their partners. No one accidentally rapes someone because they were confused, and buyer’s remorse happens with a car not a person. Women don’t wake up in the morning going, “I really like this guy, don’t want him to think I’m a slut so I should claim he raped me.” NO ONE THINKS LIKE THAT. Ok, I know sometimes that happens. But we’ve conditioned the media and public to expect that women are always lying about rape or the guy didn’t know she meant she didn’t want to have sex when she said she didn’t want to have sex. Women and their mind games, amiright?

So there are a few articles out about the new app Good2Go, which is available on iTunes and Google Play for free. Truthfully, I’m not going to even both looking at this app. But it seems to be based on two flawed assumptions: 1. Accidental rape and 2. Sex regret is a thing. Let’s be clear, no one rapes someone by accident; they rape someone, realized they are going to get in trouble for it, and claim they didn’t know. If this was a problem, then I could walk into M’s house all the time and take shoes because she didn’t tell me I couldn’t. There is no logic there.

Regardless, some of the articles even highlight how this app could be used by rapist. See it doesn’t tell users if every record logged into Good2Go is kept private and tied to both users’ personal phone numbers—yeah you log in your phone number every time you use it. By the way, is a user says “no” or “just want to talk” aren’t logged at all. Anyone who obtains a subpoena could access those records, and Allman is quoted as saying “It wouldn’t be released except under legal circumstances. But it does create a data point that there was an occasion where one party asked the other for affirmative consent, that could be useful in the future…there are cases, of course, as we know, where the accused is an innocent party, so in that case, it could be beneficial to him.”

Umm, say what? So because bitches lie about rape this information can be subpoenaed to protect someone from  a rape charge if the partner consented once? Oh, the problems. See here is the thing, people can change their minds about having sex or maybe they just wanted to participate in one sex act. If a person forces their partner to participate in sex acts the partner didn’t want or agree to that is also rape. But hey, the rapist has her consenting to at some point so I guess we’re done here. For example, agreeing to vaginal sex doesn’t mean your partner wants to have anal sex with you.

Of course, if we really wanted to emphasize consent, then we would teach everyone about consent, and we’d start early. A friend of mine has a son in the pinching and hitting stage. She has tried everything. I told her what my sister did with my nephew to deal with this stage. Both of them made some very gendered comments about how boys are more rough (and presumably violent since that is what we were talking about, not my belief by the way, but if you’re going to make that argument this is the logical end) than girls. However, both women did emphasize that you can’t touch someone without their permission to their infant sons. My three year old nephew has mastered this concept. Your move gentlemen, and of course, you can receive Cheerios as a reward for good behavior.

Victim blaming because it is the American way

I didn’t watch the Ray Rice abuse video. I don’t need to see that. I can imagine what it looks like. I’ve probably seen similar. I do know a few things though: I know it wasn’t Janay Palmer Rice’s fault; it probably wasn’t the first time; and Rice deserves to be fired.

I spent a good portion of this weekend trying to remember the differences between Ohio and New Jersey law when it comes to assault. Ohio will press charges for you, but usually the “victim” is required to testify and the case it thrown out if the victim refuses. I see this as very paternalistic: bad guys go to trial, but the victims are re-victimized by the system and their power is taken away again. That isn’t always the case as my sister brought up, a friend was hospitalized by her partner in a bar with a dozen witnesses so when our friend refused to press charges Ohio did anyway on her behalf, and they had a dozen witnesses to call when my friend refused. The flipside is that the perpetrators never are held accountable for their actions.

Back to things I know. Women are more likely to be killed by a partner than anything else. Once a friend asked me why women date at all his argument was sound. He pretty much said, buy a vibrator it is safer and comes with a warranty and a BPA warning on the label. Men, he argued, don’t come with the same guarantee or the warnings. I was trying to think of a good example, but came up with too many. And so much of this conversation is about by Janay would marry Rice after he beat her.

I have a friend who won’t tell us about anything bad in her relationships until they are over because she doesn’t want to fail again. Or maybe she doesn’t want to prove someone right? Honestly, I can’t tell you. I can tell you that she once asked me what it was about her that brought this violent side out in the men she dated. Yeah, because the problem was something she did. That is what I think of every time someone says, well she should have left him or she is making excuses for him or the sport reporters suggesting she provoked him. I hear my friend in her early twenties after the third abusive boyfriend asking me if it is something she is doing or not doing. Obviously, the answer is no. There was nothing my friend could have done or not done to make it ok to hit her. So a big f-you to anyone suggesting women are too stupid, greedy, ok with the abuse, superficial, etc. and refuse to leave these situations. It doesn’t matter why she stayed. It matters that we as a society let people know violence against women isn’t ok, and there are consequences so when a woman like Janay feels ready to leave she knows she can.

Discussing rape, Tips for men: The George Washington Edition

Really, anytime you think, “Hey, I’m going to say this thing about rape,” just take a minute and think “Does this make me sound a) like a rapist or b) like an asshole?” If yes to either, resist the urge to speak, and if not still reconsider but you can proceed with caution.

I received my Master’s degree in Women’s Studies with a concentration on Labor and Welfare from The George Washington University a few years ago because I’m a boss. Kidding aside, I enjoyed my time at GW, even with the short comings, and there were many. Some were rooted in my program like the students never knew what was going on because our department was everything you’d expect a Women’s Studies department to be, i.e. hot mess. And then other things like the resistance to call rape what it is were more structural.

Well I wonder where that institutional narrative on rape culture came from? Oh yeah, the former President of the George Washington University, Dr. Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. Erin Gloria Ryan had a piece up for Jezebel, but I initial read about this from my former-prof’s Facebook page. Apparently, on Wednesday, The Diane Rehm Show had guests discussing the role of Greek life in on campus, but the conversation turned quickly to their role in rape culture. Don’t fret, they had a champion in the form of Dr. Trachtenberg who had a solution to campus rape: just tell women to drink less. And done, pack it up.

Dr. Trachtenberg defends frats because they are role models and not at all responsible for sexual assaults:

Dr. Trachtenberg: My experience is that students that are in fraternities have higher grades on average than unaffiliated students. Uh, they get involved in philanthropic activities of one sort or another providing great numbers of hours of service and fundraising on behalf of good causes. They have the opportunity to get leadership training provided by the fraternities. They get other kinds of training as well. Combatting sexual misconduct, values-based—

Rehm: And you don’t see them participating in sexual misconduct?

Dr. Trachtenberg: No no! I think it turns out that there are good and bad in fraternities and out of fraternities. What we’re focusing here on is a general situation. I think what we’re doing is creating a false correlation. For example, we point out that the women don’t drink, don’t have sorority parities which have alcohol. They don’t have to. They go to the parties at the fraternities. So it’s not as if the women aren’t drinking. They are, in fact.

Without making the victims responsible for what happens, one of the groups that have to be training not to drink in excess are women. They need to be in a position to punch the guys in the nose if they misbehave. And so part of the problem is you have men who take advantage of women who drink too much and there are women who drink too much. And we need to educate our daughters and out children in that regard.

Excuse me, what the fuck? I don’t understand how women are the “group” that needs to be “trained.” Maybe train men not to rape? Just me? Dr. Trachtenberg continues to be a condescending and patronizing jerk, so consistency is good. Trachtenberg like so many before him places the responsibility for policing behavior on women instead of the perpetrators of crime. This is the logic here: I have to make sure I’m not drunk so I can make sure my friend doesn’t rape me because he can’t be held accountable for his actions and see me as a person.

Let’s revise this for Dr. Trachtenberg: Without making the victims responsible for what happens, we need to teach people about enthusiastic consent so everyone knows they are responsible for their own actions. We need to take rape accusations seriously so rapists know they won’t get away with it on campus or off, and thoroughly investigate charges because so many rapes are committed by so few people.