Month: May 2015

Fuck Professor Snape

April Daniels1 Comment

Professor Snape was an abusive creeper who made life hell on an innocent child because he couldn’t get over the fact that the kid’s mother had decided she wanted to be with a man who showed he could exhibit personal growth–a trait Snape never got a handle on. Out of anger at being jilted, he joined a racist terrorist organization and participated in ghastly crimes against innocent, defenseless people.

Professor Snape is the kind of guy who gets turned down by a nice Jewish girl so he joins the Aryan Nations. Then he has second thoughts and starts wearing a wire for the Feds, but that doesn’t change the fact that HE JOINED THE WIZARDING WORLD’S VERSION OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.

Fuck Professor “I’m still mad at people from high school even twenty years later so I’m gonna take it out on someone who wasn’t even born then and whose parents were murdered by my good buddies” Snape. I spit on his corpse.

Shut up about the Duggars already.

April Daniels2 Comments

Okay, as horrible as the Duggars are, I really think people should ask themselves what they would do if one of their kids started raping his siblings. Can you be absolutely sure that you would instantly know the right thing to do, and would have the courage to do it without hesitation, even if it meant condemning one child to start life as a felon, and four others to community ostracization when word of what happened to them got out? (Hey, here’s a thought: maybe being reluctant to subject your daughters to what the criminal justice system does to rape survivors is actually a good call. Or maybe not. Maybe these things don’t have easy answers when they’re up close and happening to people you love.)

While you’re thinking over your answer, do you think we could we maybe stop using the story of four young girls getting raped by their older brother as a way to become ever more comfortable on our very tall horse? Can we maybe conceive of a universe in which we acknowledge that the Duggars’ lifestyle is patriarchal and retrograde, but stop short of declaring that their adherence to fundamentalist Christianity as the sole source of this tragedy? There are liberal families out there that have had incestuous rape problems, too. How about we decide to hold back from making this family tragedy into the next front in our revived culture war?

What happened in that family was an abomination and a tragedy, and yes patriarchal purity culture is creepy as hell, and yes there is a lot of really squicky shit that happens in right wing Christian cults. But I don’t see these conversations happening. Or at least not with the same verve and gusto that I see people writing about how horrible the individual players in this tragedy are.

Hate those Duggars, show how virtuous you are! Don’t worry, you can leave your own unconscious rape-culture apologia intact! There’s no need to reexamine your own complicity in a system that punishes rape survivors and exalts their predators over and over in all walks of life in every city in the whole country. Yes, you can totally snark at people being upset at Game of Thrones while rejecting their concerns out of hands, because at least you’re not a Duggar! Yes, you can still reflexively approve of Christianity being enshrined as special in the public sphere, because at least your Christianity isn’t Quiverfull!

Whatever you do, make sure your critique isn’t systemic, is instead squarely focused on the actions of individuals operating in a realm of stress and anxiety the likes of which few can imagine, confronting the kind of crisis that most families can’t even bring themselves to admit exists much less prepare for before it happens. Because if you did that, why you might have to start asking other questions.

Questions like:

  • Why do we allow “purity culture” adherents to have TV shows that aren’t hugely critical of them?
  • What does it say about us that this show ran for ten seasons on TLC?
  • Why is the use of fertilization technology to get a woman pregnant 20ish times uncontroversial, but her daughters’ access to contraception is worthy of a debate?
  • Why can Michelle Duggar have no problem finding doctors who are willing to help her push her body past the breaking point with more pregnancies, while her neighbors might have serious problems finding someplace to have a safe abortion?
  • Why is it that a woman can push her body to the absolute breaking point, past all medical advice, to pump out a frankly unhealthy number of children on national TV, and nobody demanded an investigation into the family’s life to ensure that nobody is being coerced into doing something dangerous or unhealthy?
  • What does it say about us that these four young girls are likely being re-traumatized in the name of gratifying the public apatite for outrage, and now have to carry a stigma–yes, there is a stigma about being a rape survivor–around for the rest of their life?
  • Why hasn’t the Federal government seriously started enforcing women’s rights to control their own bodies with things like criminal investigations and strong new legislation?
  • Why are rape convictions so rare?
  • Would we accept similar apathy towards a man’s right to control his own body? (Hint, we do, but mainly if they’re brown and in prison.)
  • Why do we allow huge swaths of the country to be run by people who think that the people writing abortion legislation should mostly be men?
  • How come membership in a creepy cult like the Quiverfull movement isn’t automatic grounds for an investigation by Child Protective Services?
  • Is it because we let “mainstream” Christians get away with only slightly less outlandish behavior?
  • Do the women who are forced to live in these communities, either by circumstance or by birth, have less of a right to cultural resources that affirm and support their independence and self-determination?
  • If not, how come we allow these cults to persist?
  • Would we let an extremist group of Dianic Wiccans to do this to men?
  • If not, why not?
  • How come Josh Duggar’s mea culpa sounds just like so many half-assed apologies that come out of so many cases of sexual assault? How come he had a script to read from? A template to work from?
  • And why are these kind of apologies considered even remotely acceptable as a pass back into acceptable society?
  • Might it be because this has happened before, will happen again, and these periodic displays of public humiliation are more about releasing pressure against the system than it is about spurring real change?
  • WHY DO WE ACCEPT A CULTURE IN WHICH GIRLS ARE TREATED AS ONLY HALF A PERSON?

Wait, don’t answer. The Duggars are about to release another public statement for us to ridicule. That’s way more fun to do than answer questions that might implicate ourselves along with them.

Shut the fuck up about the Duggars already.

In Which I Am Cranky

April Daniels

I’ve got back problems. My back has gone beyond aching. It is acutely sore. It’s sore all the time.

I blame this on my mattress. I had a lemon cheapo foam mattress from IKEA that was killing me, so when I got my current job and could finally afford to invest in something beyond immediate survival, I got myself a new mattress.

Which was a huge mistake, as it turns out. I bought a TempurPedic–a total waste of money. Oh, it started out lovely. In the shop, it was nice and comfortable. But within a few weeks of getting it home, it was having the same sagging and divot problem my cheapo IKEA mattress had, although at ten times the price. So I swapped the TempurPedic for a latex mattress made by a local company.

Same.

Damn.

Thing.

So I went back to the mattress store, and I told them I wanted to swap, and they acted like it was a huge problem for me, a huge fiscal burden, like they were doing me an enormous, everlasting favor to agree to a second replacement. I got a hybrid mattress with some inner springs this time.

Oh hey, what do you know? This week it is also crapping out on me.

I know it’s not my body. I’ve been to the doctor, there was nothing wrong with me. If I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed, and my body weight on parts of the mattress that are less-used, suddenly the problem goes away. It’s the mattress, clear as day.

But given how much of a fit they threw last time I asked them to help me make sure that giving them a tenth of my yearly income wasn’t a hideous mistake, I don’t think they’ll let me swap again. At this point, I don’t want to swap again. I want my Goddessfucking money back.

Which isn’t going to happen? Why? Well, because of the First Rule of Acquisition, of course! “Once you have their money, you never give it back!”

I think I might try to contest the charges with my credit card company, on the basis of being sold a crappy mattress that only made my pain and problems worse. I don’t have very high hopes for this gambit, however.

The worst part is I had an alternative. There’s a local company that sells direct. Much cheaper. Being the foolish woman that I am, I thought that meant they wouldn’t  be as good.

But to be honest, they could hardly be worse.

I don’t want to just eat this loss, but I’m not sure if there is an alternative. I’m already in so much debt, I hate to take on more. But between this and some other bills that popped up in the last month, I think my progress on digging my way out of debt this year is about to get reset back to zero.

And that makes me cranky.

How To Make A Radically Subversive Feminist Tract

April Daniels

Apparently, all you need to do is film an extended chase scene where you treat women as people.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m tickled pink at the prospect of an action movie where women are allowed to  be humans who act, not prizes to be won or unattainable war goddesses, but really? This is where we’re at?

You make a flick where Charlize Theron can say of her role:

“We had a filmmaker that understood the truth of women is powerful enough and we don’t want to be put on pedestals or made to be unnaturally strong.”

And people are like slow down there, Judith Butler!

You make a flick where the director can say

the thing that people were chasing was to be not an object, but the five wives. I needed a warrior. But it couldn’t be a man taking five wives from another man. That’s an entirely different story. So everything grew out of that.

And all of the sudden it’s hold your horses Simone de Beauvoir!

The world cannot handle this much feminism! You’re going too far! Too fast!

Next you’ll be talking about socially constructed gender roles!

This Is Not The Supergirl We Asked For

April Daniels

Watch the trailer here. Try not to cringe too much.

My main problem with this Supergirl trailer is that they make her ephemeral, weightless. She’s got no emotional mass, just a silly little girl who above all must not be allowed to threaten male egos. She gets put down by that military dude and just sort of takes it, crumples up and starts to cry in her apartment. Are you fucking kidding me? She can arm-wrestle a jetliner out of the sky, but some military dude being mean to her makes her want to quit? That’s absurd. Ridiculous. Insulting. I could totally see a man treating her like that; I don’t at all see why she should let it get to her. Except of course she does, because a man needs to have power over her, at least once in this trailer. (Well, several times, actually.) Because that’s Hollywood. Because that’s what they think we mean when we say we want female superheroes. Because they can’t conceive of a sympathetic woman who also takes life on her own terms and accepts no bullshit.

The only woman in this trailer (well, short film, to be honest) who is allowed to have emotional power, drive, and confidence is her unbelievably bitchy boss who is clearly coded as a negative character. I’m not saying I want a grimdark Supergirl, but come on, can we have someone who can bench press a tank–and has known this about herself for years–maybe not be a neurotic insecure mess for no reason? Can we have her be confident, and embracing her attempt to live a “normal” life as just another challenge she knows she can overcome rather than a way to undercut her and make her look nonthreatening? What’s wrong with having a Supergirl who has a zest for life because she knows she can fly and fight and save people, who revels in her power and her ability to help people, and who chooses to live as close to normal as possible because it helps her relate to these funny little mortals with their frail little bodies who she loves so much?

BUT NOPE! Gotta have her be insecure coffee girl with mountains of hesitation. Gotta make her “relatable.” Not threatening. Not awe-inspiring. Yeah, sure, she’s basically a literal goddess compared to the people around her, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on her not being able to fly around corners quickly without wearing a cape! Ha ha! So cute and endearing! Let’s focus on her accepting a crappy job when she knows she can be so much more. Let’s focus on her unaccountable hesitation to experiment with her powers throughout her entire adolescence so that she only knows for sure that she can fly when she’s forced to do so. Let’s pretend that a girl who can get herself up into orbit just to enjoy the view would decide not to for no good reason, would decide to let her cousin handle all the heroics and test his powers, but not want to join him, the one other person on the planet who could really understand what life was like for her. Above all, let’s do everything in our power to ensure that the male viewers don’t feel inadequate or threatened by a power fantasy that they can’t explicitly relate to, because that, my friends, would be the worst thing ever.

This is not what we mean when we say we want female superheroes. Her interiority has been completely sacrificed on the alter of making her “relatable.” Her motivations are muddled, her characterization hamstrung. Would we accept this from Arrow, or Flash? Would we consider it an acceptable interpretation of Batman, or Superman? Even (to cross continuities) Peter Parker, the poster child of “superheroes with problems” isn’t hollowed out so thoroughly. A character who is predicated on POWER is not allowed to have any that isn’t safely contained and wrapped in a treacly candy shell of girls-are-so-neurotic bullshit.