Yes Adam Levine, you ARE an animal.

tw - sexual assault and violence against women.

For context, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpgTC9MDx1o

(Sorry if it scared the shit out of you)

It’s been over a year since I wrote about Blurred Lines. Since then, it’s occurred to me that most pop songs are fucked up and a lot of them implicitly trivialise sexual assault, and you can’t write an essay on all of them and still get other shit done. 

Despite my hiatus, I’m going to make a special exception for ‘Animals’ by Maroon 5. ‘Animals’ is really, really bad. Yes, it has a pop beat, and Adam Levine’s garishly high voice still sings things that vaguely rhyme. But it’s certainly not a good enough tune to justify the messages it sends about women. And butchers. Butchers are treated pretty poorly too. Maybe let’s deal with the butchers first.

I’ve never seen the main character of a music video be a butcher before. Adam’s butcher is a psychopath who hangs around the meat by choice, wiping himself in carcass blood, and by nights sits in a study looking at nudes he took without consent of someone he’s never even spoken to.

I feel sad for butchers. I’m sure you’re not all actually like this, in fact I’m going to bank on the fact that you’re people who leave work at the normal hour and go home to a family instead of all the crazy shit Adam Levine the butcher does in his spare time.

Moving on from butchers, the greater problem with the video is probably the bit where it celebrates/normalizes sexual violence and obsessive behaviours against women. The argument we’re probably going to get from the other side here is ‘BUT WAIT, IT’S ART’.

Firstly, it’s not, because it has about the same amount of depth to it as Adam Levine’s other videos, hint, fuck all.

But secondly, even if we take this one at its best, art is most valuable when it's exploring a unique perspective, I reckon. I don't really think we need 'art' exploring the experience of the creepy, over-entitled, obsessive misogynist. I think that's probably not really a voice we need to hear from again right now, and Bret Easton Ellis did a far better job exploring that perspective than Maroon 5 likely ever could.

Furthermore, that voice gets enough air time all over the internet spreading nudes and slut shaming and sharing misogynistic memes all over Reddit and 4Chan. Misogynists own the internet; it’s way fucked. And whilst Adam Levine isn’t responsible for that, he’s propagating the same attitudes; he’s complicit.

Also… I don’t care if Adam’s ‘not like this in real life’. If millions of people are going to watch your video, you have an obligation to construct it in a way that doesn’t entrench horrendous standards of treatment of women and other marginalized groups. I’m sure there’s plenty of other mundane subject matter Levine could explore, considering his last songs have been about payphones and Mick Jagger. There’s nothing worse when artists try to be edgy for the first time in their life and end up using highly problematic tropes just to sell as many records as they can, before they’re washed up. Some things are more important than your profit margin, sir.

So what is so bad about it?

Well first of all, there are a lot of comparisons between women and meat. That’s discomforting, considering carcasses don’t have rights or agency and exist purely to please other people and be consumed. Women are often treated in the same way; as passive objects to be used up, sexually or otherwise, who only have value insofar as their flesh can please others. In fact, it brings to mind that lovely statement by Sheik al-Hilali regarding Sydney’s gang rapes in 2000: ‘If you take uncovered meat and place it outside on the street or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it… whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem’. Oh dear.

Beyond that worrying comparison, Adam Levine the Creep spends the whole video frothing over a woman who came into the butchery one time. He goes into her house while she is sleeping and takes photographs of her sleeping in varying states of undress.

A couple of general rules:

1)   Don’t break into women’s homes, that’s fucked

2)   Don’t take photos of people without consent

3)   Don’t take NUDES of people without consent

4)   Speaking to women is probably a better approach.

Just the fact that Levine plays the antagonist/protagonist means we're invested in his character, and that we’re supposed to feel bad for him when he gets rejected by this dream woman in the club. Um, how about no? She doesn’t like you? Probably because you smell like the blood you rubbed on yourself? Probably because she can sense you’re a psycho?! Also, she doesn't have to supply a reason. If she doesn't want to talk to you, fuck off.

But in this video clip, no doesn’t mean no, because the following scenes are, quite inexplicably, just insane sex scenes.  There are lots of shots of knives, cutting of meat, smearing of blood, and carcasses on hooks, and both people being coated in blood and rubbing the blood all over each other. That would be fine I guess if they sourced the blood from the butchery and no one else needed it, and both of them were keen for the smearing process, but there's really no indication that the nameless lady is keen, in fact quite the opposite.

20% of Australian women have experienced sexual violence in some form since the age of 15; 81% of domestic violence victims do not report it. 12% of women are sexually abused before the age of 15. One in three women will experience partner violence worldwide. In light of those statistics, the video’s evocations of violence and coercive implements, which are meant to provide a simple ‘aesthetic’ to the video, are pretty unnerving. One third of female murder victims are killed by a partner. It’s not an ‘edgy’ video clip; it’s not questioning or demonizing violence against women, it’s trying to sex it up. Plz no.

It is relatively normal in this world for men to get their way through the use and threat of violence, which is exactly what the video portrays. The risk of homicide against women by an intimate partner increases dramatically when sex is denied, when the woman moves away, and/or when the male partner is extremely jealous.

Saying no, withdrawing to her home safely, being gazed at by other men are all things the chick in this video should have has the freedom to do. Because Levine shows sex directly after his rejection, he encourages the view that if you keep trying, you can succeed. Unfortunately, this usually leads to unwanted and persistent harassment with the goal of gradually eroding the other party's consent. 

The taking of nudes is an avenue to controlling jealousy, as it contravenes the bodily autonomy of a woman and takes a vulnerable part of her away, that can subsequently be controlled, enjoyed and distributed by the offender. Levine is a big fan of taking photos of a woman he doesn’t even know without her consent. There are unnerving parallels to ‘revenge porn’ here (sexual images of former partners shared on the internet by disgruntled lovers). Levine normalizes the practice by saying, even if she rejects you, possess her in any way you can, because your pride is far more important than her consent or ownership over her body.

The final offensive thing about the video is pretty stock standard but is shit nonetheless. Levine is hot damn obsessed with this chick after she orders some chicken fillets one time at his workplace. Unless he feels as though they have an unbelievable connection due to a shared love of chicken fillets, he’s basing his obsession purely on her face and body. She’s conventionally attractive – tall, thin and white. Nothing she says or does is important to him, it is only how she appears, how she would be in bed, and how good she would look in his photo lab.

For all intents and purposes, she is no better than the meat he slices up all day. She doesn’t talk, she doesn’t argue, she doesn’t work; her most active role is in a nightclub. She exists for the pleasure and obsession of others, and will passively attend to it when harassed enough to do so. The lyrics emphasise her passivity as just an object ripe for conquest: ‘Baby, I’m preying on you tonight; Hunt you down eat you alive’ – ‘Maybe you think you can hide’, ‘But you can’t stay away from me’.

It's pretty disrespectful and nightmarish to describe women as 'prey' which is trying to 'hide' that is going to be 'hunt down and eat[en] alive'. She's a person, not a deer. Show some respect.

Maroon 5, this thing you made is true scum. Pick up your game.

Russell Dropping Truth Bombs

The Case Against Matt Forney

This is a response to Matt Forney's article The Case Against Female Self-Esteem.

Full article http://mattforney.com/2013/09/16/the-case-against-female-self-esteem/

I've integrated guyz! I realise the formatting is totally fucked but whatever it's postmodern deal with it.

This is Matt Forney's writing

This is my writing.

I’m just gonna come out and say it: I love insecure women.

Whenever a girl I’m talking to brags about how she’s “confident” and “strong,” I can feel my dick deflating like a punctured tire. I’d still bang her, of course; a repellent personality doesn’t negate the fact that she has a slammin’ body. But a crucial part of the attraction is lost.

OK, a couple of problems to start off.

1.    His penis and its behavioural issues dictate the way all men and women should think, act and value themselves.

2.    There seems to be a lack of analysis about why he is not attracted to women who value themselves and their abilities. Because he has mother issues, or is sadistic in his joy at degrading others and watching others degrade themselves, or because he enjoys manipulating those conveniently weaker than him, he assumes strong women to be at fault. It isn’t Forney’s problem that he wants to be the domineering party in the relationship. It is other women who should change. In other words, instead of recognising he’s fucked and changing, he insists that others change to conform to accommodate the fact that he’s fucked.

3.    This leads us to the third and maybe most fatal assumption, that women exist to please him. Women do not exist to enjoy their lives, or appreciate themselves and their own abilities, or advance their careers and achievements. It’s not possible that women could enjoy being strong or confident more than the achievement of inflating this particular misogynist’s penis. Women exist to turn men on, and while that may not be their sole function, it is, in Forney’s eyes, the primary function.

The idea that women should have self-esteem or need it, beyond a low baseline to ensure they don’t commit suicide or become psycho stalkers, is one of the most disastrous social 

engineering experiments of the modern era. A woman with excessive confidence is like a man with a vagina. It’s an attribute that is at best superfluous and at worst prevents women from fulfilling their natural biological and social functions.

1.    There is no acknowledgement of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, women’s oppression was socially engineered by patriarchal power structures. Crazy talk, I must be a woman.

2.    A ‘man with a vagina’…it’s impressive how close he comes to realising he’s an assclown, and then just backs away at the last second. How bizarre,  the concept that women want to have the same opportunity to be have independent happiness, rather than superficial happiness contingent on the whims of a male partner.

3.    Lastly, and quite obviously, it’s problematic that he has claimed strength and confidence as innately masculine characteristics. By dichotomy women receive weakness and insecurity as innate to their being; this is the cornerstone of sexism, and it is clear from this that Forney is a lost cause at this point.

4.    I do love his philosophy of logic. It’s not true because of science. It’s true BECAUSE IT’S TRUE, NOW GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN BEFORE MY DICK DEFLATES. Vom.

In order for America to right itself, there needs to be a massive and concerted war on female self-esteem.

1.    If we're honest with ourselves... in order for America to 'right itself' it needs gender essentialist Republicans to grow the fuck up and let the government run.

2.    Oh, you’re an irrationally angry man who enjoy declaring war on the underprivileged for digging themselves out of oppression?  Points for originality.

From the moment they’re old enough to speak, girls in America are bombarded with propaganda that artificially boosts their self-esteem. They’re told that they’re shpecialand you-nique because they have an extra X chromosome. They’re told that they’re smart, that they can do anything, that they deserve respect merely for existing. They’re encouraged to derive self-worth not from their inherent feminine nature but from their college degree, their job or the other illusory trappings of achievement in a man’s world.

Combine this with the white-knighting tendencies of fathers and the sexual attention that attractive girls already get from puberty forward and you have a complete social meltdown in the making.

1.    I’m confused how social conditioning is a thing when women are told to be dangerously confident and to attempt to derive some kind of empirical self-worth, other than the billboards, fashion, and feminine trappings most commonly designed by men, but social conditioning is NOT a thing when it teaches them to be feminine.

2.    I like how instead of Forney insisting that girls and boys getting equal encouragement, he’s mostly arguing for support for female children to disappear. ‘Daddy, I want to be an astronaut!’ ‘Oh honey. Those suits are so unflattering. But one day, you CAN have the honour of inflating the dick of a misogynistic blogger who gets sexual gratification out of smelling your desperation.’

Here are my reasons why girls should be discouraged from being confident.

1. Most girls have done nothing to deserve self-esteem.

In the world of men, respect—and by extension self-esteem—is based on actually achieving something of worth or having some kind of skill or talent. Are you a bodybuilder or jacked? Men and women will respect you because the effort to mold your body like that requires an enormous amount of work and dedication. Being a talented musician, an experienced world traveler, a high-earning tradesman; these and more engender respect from your fellow man and self-esteem along with it. No one respects a fat video game-playing kid who lives in his parents’ basement, and why should they?

There’s absolutely no skill or work involved in pissing away your life eating Doritos and jacking off into a tube sock.

1.    Actually, what we do in society is we afford to respect to everyone automatically, unless they have done something legitimately horrible to lose it. This is why we respect people who are disabled, people who are ill, why we respect the rights of children and the homeless. Otherwise we would be what’s known as a bully, or in your case, an asshole.

Women claim they want equal rights as men, but they don’t want equal responsibilities. As such, they demand respect not based on their merit as people, but for merely continuing to breathe. Most girls’ so-called achievements, the ones they take pride in, are complete jokes. Wow, you have a master’s degree in puppetry? In a world where everyone and their mother has a college degree—and where college curriculums have been dumbed down to the point of inanity—being able to squeak through an institution of higher learning is no great achievement.

1.    The author has notably failed to earn a college degree.

If anything, having a college degree is a strike against a girl—unless it’s in something real like a STEM discipline—as it shows that she’s a conformist who thinks that credentials are a substitute for knowledge and experience.

1.    Or she just liked meeting male feminists on campus and having dynamite equal rights equal orgasms sex with them.

The same goes for having a job. The vast majority of girls work useless fluff jobs: government bureaucrats, human resources and various other makework positions that exist to give them the illusion of independence. The jobs that keep the country running—tradesmen, miners, farmers, policemen, the military—are still overwhelmingly dominated by men. If every girl was fired from her job tomorrow, elementary schools would have to shut down for a couple days, but otherwise life would go on as usual.

1.    Excellent observation Matt, education is unimportant. Excellent observation Matt, women are too lazy to be miners. Especially because those industries you’ve listed are so welcoming to women.

If every man lost his job tomorrow, the country would collapse.

Feminists can screech as loud as they want, but they will never change this fundamental reality; men accord respect based on merit, and if girls want to play in our world, they’ll have to obey our rules. Otherwise, they know where the kitchen is.

1.    The fact that you blame women for not entering male dominated professions but then want the fact that men control access to ‘their world’ to work for your case and expect it not to be a total contradiction KILL YOURSELF.

2.    Women and the kitchen. Ooh, burn.

I have more respect for the starving artist couple busking down the street from my house than I do for all the career-driven, Strong, Independent Women™ in the world. Being able to sing and play guitar well is no small achievement, and the buskers are actually providing a useful service to the world.

1.    Lesson to be learned: there are no female buskers.

2. Insecurity is integral to femininity.

I was thinking about a couple of my past relationships when I had this epiphany; the girls I’ve loved the most were the ones who were the most insecure, the most emotionally vulnerable. When I first went on a date with the only girl I would have ever married, her hands were trembling in nervousness. She later admitted that she was openly intimidated by me and the idea that I found her attractive. She had been an ugly duckling in high school, forty pounds overweight and used to being ignored and mocked; I had met her shortly after she’d lost the weight, when she still viewed the world through a fat girl’s eyes.

·         That’s sweet. What I can tell you as an objective bystander is that you like this woman because she makes you feel better about yourself. What I dispute about this is that you take that, and you assume that the purpose of making you feel better about yourself should be the purpose of all women, and any benefits they may gain from independence are of a lesser importance.

•      I have no idea where your insatiable emotional insecurities come from; I don’t know why you assume women to be the sole answer to them. However, I do know that they have no right to determine what kind of environment the nation’s female children should be raised in.

Insecurity is the natural state of woman. How could it be anything else? Given their lack of physical strength, a woman on her own should be frightened as hell without men to protect her. If society were to collapse, all the Strong, Independent Women™ who read Jezebeland xoJane would last about five minutes before they either found a man to cling onto or got raped and killed. In the bellum omnium contra omnes that is mankind’s default existence, a woman who is alone is a woman who is already dead.

·         My favourite part about this is, ‘People today should act the same way as if we were in prehistoric times of utter necessitated barbarism.’ Women would be raped and killed? So would disabled people, children, the old, the sick, and physically weak men. Shall we insist they also have low self-esteem?

·         I’m sorry, that’s stupid. Old disabled people aren’t going to inflate your dick.

One of the most commonly repeated tropes of feminists and manboobs goes something like this:

“You should be happy that women nowadays are independent, because it means that they’re with you because they WANT to be with you, not because they’re dependent on you.”

This is a fundamental violation of the relationship between men and women. Part of our identity as men based in women needing us, if not necessarily in a material sense, then in an emotional one, though material and emotional vulnerability often go hand in hand. That female insecurity is a crucial ingredient for unlocking our inner masculine instincts. If a 

girl needs me, feels that her life would end if she were to lose me, I’m doubly inspired to be there for her, to shield her from the cruelty of the world. Frankly, it’s pretty hot. If she just wants me, could take me or leave me, my gut response is one of apathy. “Yeah, whatever babe."

   It’s probably helpful to remember that you can actually need a person because they fulfil a part of you emotionally and you connect with them, not because you are physically vulnerable or need their money.

Confidence doesn’t give men erections; vulnerability does.

In order to love someone else, you need to be emotionally vulnerable, more so women than men (as girls are attracted to confident men).

REMEMBER GUYS, women are the irrational ones who find confident people attractive. As a dude, Forney has no idea why they would do that. Silly bitches.

If I’m not the center of a girl’s world, I’m not going to be in her world period.

I can already see the Jizzabellers angrily pounding away at their Macbooks: “You just can’t handle a Strong, Independent Woman™!” We men can handle you just fine; the problem is that we don’t want to. So-called confident women are as threatening as a pile of dog turds. Sure, you can scrape them off your boots when you get home, but it’s better to not step in dog shit to begin with.

 Damn Matt, I love it when you talk dirty.

...Seriously though, kill yourself.

3. Women don’t want to have high self-esteem.

This is the kicker; in their bones, girls know that their toxic, feminist you-go-grrl ideology is a lie. Why do you think the average urban slut machine is downing enough Prozac to poison the water supply?

      ‘Urban slut machine’ – this delicate turn of phrase expresses what some might call a distaste for females who are sexually active. I tentatively suggest that women should probably be able to do with their bodies what they wish without being termed ‘machine’?

Pharmacological assistance is the only way she can make it through her day without slitting her wrists, or alternately realizing that her life is a complete lie. Every day, women show through their actions that they despise their strong, independent lives.

They want nothing more than for a man to throw them over his knee, shatter the Berlin Wall around their hearts, and expose the lovestruck, bashful little girl within.

‘Little girl’? You want a little girl to inflate your dick? You want to 'throw' a little girl over your knee?

Just no.

Hell, I’m even starting to think that the feminist agita about “rape culture” is part of this as well. Pushing lies like the claim that one in three women will be raped during her lifetime and their constantly expanding the definition of rape are ways for feminists to indulge their desire for vulnerability in a way that doesn’t conflict with their view of themselves as “strong” and “empowered.”

  I have no joke to make here, only that any decent person reading this would be shocked at such a cavalier treatment of the worst thing one in three women will ever experience, ever have to try to recover from.

·   Judging from Forney’s comment section there are a lot of indecent people in the world.

At the end of the day, there are no Strong, Independent Women™. There are only shrews pleading for a taming. All the posturing, the pill-popping, the whining and demands for “equality”; they’re a cry for help. Girls don’t want the six-figure cubicle job, the shiny Brooklyn 2BR, the master’s degree, the sexual liberation, none of it. They want to becollectively led back to the kitchen, told to make a nice big tuna sandwich with extra mayo and lettuce, then swatted on the ass as we walk out the door.

Once again, we are told by a man to want what he wants us to want, which is to be servile, to be domesticated, and to enjoy sexual mistreatment. Forney does not know women well, but he knows his own needs well and he can hold pretensions about the former to serve the latter. Even if that means shaming rape victims, arbitrarily limiting females from birth, and denigrating the hard-fought achievements of women who have refused to be defined by their sex.

Never let a prick on the internet tell you what you should be.

YAY, KILLING MACHINES, YAY, NATIONALISM

This is a review of the international fleet review. #meta.

In no way am I against the people who have made a brave and difficult choice to join the army, navy, air force, or serve in any other way in the military. You guard us while we sleep, and for that, we can never be grateful enough.

There is a difference, however, in expressing that kind of gratitude, and expressing gratitude in extravagant displays of military glorification. Not only was the Fleet Review spectacularly costly, but it also simplified the realities of serving in and deploying the armed forces in conflict, and glorified weapons that should never be seen as anything other than a last resort.

It was amusing to see the strong support from the conservative government of the display, with Tony Abbott triumphantly rolling out his daughters for the umpteenth time, once again usually wearing white. (Any other colour makes them look impure, you see, like their persistently black-wearing mother). Precious gifts aside, one would think that a government elected on the basis of their ‘WE HAVE NO MONEY DEBT DEBT DEBT OMGZ[1]’ platform would be a little less impressed with millions of dollars literally going up in smoke, whether in the form of fireworks or exhaust.

There are no actual costings that I could find of the event, leading me to believe that the public purse was drained so hard they couldn’t afford paper to print the costings on.

The fact of the matter is, I’m not resenting either characterisations of how our funds are doing. I’m fine with the idea that we have enough cash to throw at moving lots of boats around to do things on a body of water, and clustering every single Sydney sider around the harbour so it’s like New Years Eve twice a year. Furthermore, the government can also act like we’re entering a fiscal apocalypse and we need to dig as much gas, uranium, coal and iron ore out of the ground and reject as many incoming welfare parasites on boats as possible.

The thing is, you can’t have both. Because then the message is that, we know, we know, the fleet review is expensive. But these fireworks and arbitrary displays of guns and blades and wings and engines are worth more than the lives of people living in Nauru or wherever we shove them nowadays. Machinery is more important!

And you know why it’s especially great to celebrate navy ships? Because they’ll be doing the great work of turning boats around and shunting them back into the cold ocean where they came from. It’s OK though, we don’t have to feel bad about that, because it’s a ‘sensitive military operation’ it won’t be printed in the newspaper anyway. And everything in the world will be right again – see no evil, eh?

Despite the fact that the cost has not come up at all in the last weekend, I don’t believe it to be the most insidious harm of the display. No one seems to really care that these machines are designed to kill people.

Why are we glorifying machines designed to kill people? Why are we celebrating the fact that we ever have to use them? We should be lamenting the tragedy of humanity that such things exist. I’ve listened to people of older generations discuss successful torpedo-ing of German and Japanese ships – why is that worth celebration? It is worthy of discussion, yes, but not the simplistic discussion we saw this weekend, consisting of ‘warships are good’, ‘nationalism good’, ‘machines doing cool things, good.’

By all means, express gratitude for what servicewomen and men do. It is not necessary for that gratitude to come in the form of a celebration of the military itself, as the military’s existence is a tragic but unavoidable reality. The mere fact that countries like ours retain power not through diplomacy, not through benevolence of international policy, but by flaunting our own killing machines and flaunting our relationship with American killing machines, which are far more expensive and impressive, is not a cause for celebration. It is a cause for mourning.

It seemed ironic that just as America flaunted a slice of its spectacular fleet in our harbour, its government was shut down over a fiscal squabble. Part of the problem was perhaps the (conservative estimate) of one trillion dollars spent on the American military every year. And for what? To maintain power through fear, not benevolence or cooperation.

Such was the message sent on the weekend. The military may be a necessity, but seeing demonstrations of its fearsome power should give you chills, should be a spectacle, should disturb you, and knowing that it inspires the same fear in our enemies, you should derive great national pride from it.

In broaching these thoughts to my mother yesterday, she rebuffed me quite brutally. She spoke of the nostalgia felt by older generations who had lived through the war and depended so strongly on the navy for their survival.

In no way do I mean to cheapen that nostalgia. But while they relied on the navy, surely they would hope never to return to such a state of affairs, such international insecurity and violence, ever again? Surely they would see relying upon the military as a base last resort? Surely, having lived through the horrors of war, having suffered the losses of family members and friends who were killed by the same kinds of war machines we were celebrating on the weekend, they, more than anyone, would warn against this kind of glorification?

---

[1] Jokes aside debt is indeed bad.

WHY MILEY WHYYYYYY

For context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-bTWk3IHoU
Hide your children. Show them the Honi vagina cover if they need entertainment.

I’d like to start by thanking the VMAs for setting women back fifty, a hundred, a bajillion years, and shattering the tiny little piece of faith in humanity I was saving for the winter.

So three things I want to cover, because structure is important guyzzz. Firstly, what the fuck Miley? Secondly, what the fuck VMAs? Thirdly, what the fuck society?[1] And I guess somewhere in there I’ll talk about my favourite top bloke, bestie Sensitive New Age Guy SNAG Robin Thicke and his giant penis.

So to Miley. I’m not entirely sure how much of my rage/blame you really get. My anger with this little… shall we say, spectacular clusterfuck, can’t really be put on you. It can only really be put on the culture that inspired and influenced and pressured and shaped you to choreograph/participate in something this truly, truly awful. But I think maybe I can treat you as a little bit of grown up and say… you’re in the public eye. Girls have liked you since you were Hannah Montana, the most hilariously clean child star since…Hannah Montana. And you’ve made a lot of money from it. Is it plausible that maybe you owe something back to the people that gave you all that cashmonies and pouvoir? Like not telling girls that us ladies are just lovely little sex toy receptacles, consisting of tits, and ass, and...that would appear to be it.

And I’m not saying this means that as you grown up you have to be squeaky clean. As we know, that doesn’t work. I was super uncomfortable when Hilary Duff got pregnant, in my head it was like ‘Holy shit Lizzy got knocked up by Ethan Craft after ninth grade gym, that is messsssed’. And she’s the queen bee of asexual creepily forever young child stars. It seems you’re either Lizzy forever or you’re LiLo and there is a perpetual supply of cocaine residue dribbling from your nostril into your mouth.

By all means, Miley, have a sex life. By all means, be seen with various mancandy and whatnot and make your choices and wear what you like. But… just… seriously keep a lid on your crazy, because girls will scream with joy no matter what you do, whether it’s doing intra-venus drugs on a public street or lower your bent over, gyrating ass onto Robin Thicke’s crotch, with an outstretched, wiggling tongue, in front of millions of people. Even Rihanna judged you, and she bedazzles her nipples. Not that there's anything wrong with bedazzling your nipples. I'm sure it hurts to get the glitter off though. Logistics and that. 

I’m trying to walk a line here between being judgmental and being like, ‘good for you’. I think she’s been conditioned since she was a little baby Honeybooboochild but at the same time, I want to blame her a little bit. I don’t want to say she doesn’t have any agency, because that would be just as insulting (and perhaps more depressing) as saying she’s a worse role model than Darth Vader.

What’s kind of depressing here is that I’m having trouble figuring out what exactly is wrong with the bizarre portrait of female sexuality she’s tried to paint. First she came out in a leotard onto a stage filled with childhood toys which was….sexy? It was especially arousing when she tried to dance, but seemed to be having some combination of seizure and simultaneously manifesting an inner ear disorder. There was a lot of spontaneous pelvic thrusting, not quite in time with the music, but points for effort I guess. Then she ripped off the leotard, which apparently was too conservative and nanna-ish, to reveal a super sexy pair of skin coloured granny panties, to grind onto Robin Thicke, in front of his wife and her fiancé. Call me conservative but it just seemed like a recipe for like… mad awks?

I suppose… what I find degrading about it is… two things. First of all, that’s her job. To rub her ass on the crotch of a much older man she doesn’t know, in front of millions of people. Second of all… she seemed so into it. So truly, deeply into it. I guess… a feminist would be like, ‘If she’s into it, it’s her choice, and we shouldn’t judge her for it.’ And maybe I don’t judge her. I think it just looks scarily like really, really fucked up indoctrination to enjoy the attention, and to enjoy that accomplishment of being the most exposed sex object of all. Hurrah, I am queen of all the lands! My pelvic thrusting reigns supreme!

(The whole combination of tragic dancing, weak singing, harmful lyrics and mindless glowstick waving fandroids was truly sickening. These people vote. Well at least...they will once they exit puberty.)

Also I guess… the fact that a lady who lots of young girls and women look up to aligned herself with a song and video that condones rape and trivialises sexual brutality is also something I find to be empirically fucked. That’s why her being so into it is offensive. It says she enjoys being degraded, she doesn’t think consent matters, or she didn’t bother to think about the lyrics. Lyrics such as the beautiful ‘I’ll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two.’ By grinding said ass up against the noted #Thicke phallus while he sings such lyrics… well, I don’t think you could get any more complicit than that.

Just in case it wasn’t clear (and it’s not, considering this piece of musical offal is still topping the charts), most women don’t enjoy their perineum/anuses getting ripped during sex.

That’s OK though. What we want doesn’t actually matter. Feel free to ignore.

---

[1] Got to the end and realised there was no structure. Just like everything I write. WHATEVSSS

ERMAHGERD VAHGERNERS!

I’m one of those dickheads who checks their phone in the theatre. While watching Law Revue last night someone linked me a picture of eighteen vaginas, and it filled my screen, bright enough to burn the retinas of the audience members two rows back. My first reaction was ‘Jesus Christ.’

I was about to click away to something less offensive and then…

The happy little feminist in my head was like, hold up bitch, what is offensive about a clitoris? What is offensive about a labia majora, leading inwards to a vagina? What is ‘offensive’ about the surrounding pubic hair? What is innately so disgusting about something a woman is born with, and grows to become an integral part of her life, through sex, through childbirth, purely just as the most intimate part of her body?

What’s offensive isn’t the body part (although physically, it was disarming to see, because one rarely gets such a direct view through the kaleidoscopic vaginacam). What’s offensive is, firstly, society obsesses and obsesses over what’s beneath a girl’s skirt and whose property it is. To finally see the female crown jewels is something fairly destructive to the hype.

But secondly, the vagina is secret women’s business, is it not? Us men go down on you as little as possible[1], enter it in the dark, and when you finally pop out that kid for us, we’ll stay in the waiting room, thank you very much!

If it isn’t ‘offensive’; if it isn’t harmful, or cause for uproar; if it isn’t a violation of people’s eyes, why did they have to put black bars over the labias in the first place?

First off, they didn’t do shit to cover the goods. They were opaque and thin, and did what society does anyway – show everything except the main attraction.

What’s ‘offensive’ is acting like the vagina is dangerous, or ugly, or innately unattractive, or something that should never be a part of public discourse. Because you (the invisible evil media man) made every vagina a part of public discourse. You can’t represent female sexuality in so many other offensive ways, in music videos and objectifying television shows and films, and then put a black bar to attempt to half-cover the reality. Well… I mean… clearly you can, because that’s exactly what you did. But you shouldn’t be able to, goddamnit!

The misogynistic comments that sprung up like wildfire in response to the cover were upsetting to say the least. Sometimes I’d like to put a nice big black piece of masking tape over certain people’s mouths rather than their vaginas. Men ranked the parts on the cover; critiqued what they called ‘excess’ pubic hair. Some of them just responded by saying ‘gross’.

So…not that they deserve the dignity of a response, but I’ve got three. One. If I ranked your dick last on some arbitrary criteria, without even knowing how it reacts, or who it’s attached to, and mocked it in front of you, would you like me? No. If that analogy was too confusing, all you need to know is that you’re an asshole who should speak less. If at all.

Two. Sorry if some of us don’t like having hot wax poured on our genitals and then ripped off so we can be nice and hairless like a prepubescent child for you, for three weeks, until we have to go and do it again. Maybe you should consider taming your Amazonian region. No? That’s gay? Oh, ok. Well enjoy your hand.

Thirdly, the vagina isn’t ‘gross’. It’s fucking beautiful, and if you find it so gross, enjoy celibacy. This is why it never made sense for calling someone a ‘pussy’ to imply weakness – pussies can expand and contract immensely; pussies can give birth. The walls are damn strong. LEGIT have you EVER considered the implications of a vagina being taut around both the average sized penis AND an arriving human? That science is cray. If there is any body part with the capacity to heal itself and recover from sexual assault, painful sex or childbirth, it is the royal vajayjay. So next time someone calls you a pussy, thank them.

And how do we ascribe strength? ‘Maaaaahtteee. You’ve got balls.’ Yes. You have balls. And if I knee you in them, you’ll be rolling around like a wounded chained-up Gollum[2].

But oh no! We weren’t just worried about the vagina, were we? We were worried about a clitoris peeking through here and there. ‘You’re allowed to show a vagina!’ laughs whatever evil old white man decided indecency laws. ‘It just has to be a single crease!’

...What the fuck? Who decided that and why? ‘You’re allowed to show a vagina, just on the condition that it could be mistake for your elbow bend or some other vague unidentifiable section of skin!’ Whoopdeedoo. You may as well say, ‘You’re allowed to show a vagina, on the condition it looks nothing like an actual vagina.’

I guess that’s our story, isn’t? ‘You’re allowed to show a woman, on the condition that she’s as generic, passive and non-idiosyncratic as a white A4 piece of paper.’ As long as she fits our arbitrary criteria determining what is perfect and everything else; what deserves to see the light of day and what doesn’t.

Well just as I’d like to see more women who aren’t 5’10”, blonde with an eating disorder[3], I’d like to see more hairy unconventional in your face deal with it I’m here I’m loud I’m proud straight up cunts. And you can’t stop me, because I have google.

It was was the fact that we could see the labia minora, too, the clitoral hood, the clitoris, the big happy family. The whole shebang. AKA, what female genitals actually look like.

So of all the nudie Honi covers, it was these little buttons that were causing a lot of the fuss. But the clitoris? Offensive? I don’t buy it.

What could possibly be offensive about such a joyous collection of nerve endings? One can only draw the conclusion that the people drawing black bars over clitorises haven’t been into contact with one lately.

Weeks ago, the Sydney Morning Herald printed photographs of charred bodies in a death pit in the depths of Syria. They had been burned alive. It wasn’t something I expected to come across over my bowl of cereal, I’ll be honest; the Herald usually fills out pictures of Megan Gale with stories about pet grooming competitions. I was a little bit taken aback, and lost my appetite.

But the thing is, I built myself a little bridge, and got the fuck over it.

How, as a society, have we determined a collection of vaginas doing nothing other than existing to be more offensive than a collection of charred, murdered corpses?

One of the arguments that was bound to pop up, was what if a little girl sees it? What then? Wouldn’t her eyes melt and her brain explode?

If I had a daughter I would show her this intentionally and explain to her what it meant. ‘See Blue Ivy? The vagina is special, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not defined by what clothes you wear, or how much makeup you put on, or how you do your hair, or who you’re dating. It’s defined by how you feel about it and if you respect it. It doesn’t matter if you’re Miley Cyrus or Sandra Oh, we’re all on the same playing field. It will always be there for you and it will be an important part of your life, and will probably bring you a lot of happiness. There's nothing to be afraid of about your body parts. But as for the rest of being a woman, well get ready for some fucked up shit.’

Yep. Parenting 101 right there.

But at the end of the day, I can joke and say sassy things… but how sad, that my first reaction was one of horror, towards a body part I myself have and appreciate every day. How sad, that I had first wished the whole cover didn’t exist. How sad that although I developed my reaction through further thought, my first reaction stung of self-hatred.

And now? Well... the next time someone unlocks my phone and sees my wallpaper, they’re in for a rude awakening.

Note: Thank you to all those involved in the making of the cover. To the women, you are very brave and wonderful. To the makers…brilliant. Just brilliant.

---

[1] Apologies to the guys who actually give head and do it well. Props to you. If you could alert females to your whereabouts they’d be much obliged.

[2] If you’re looking for a decent substitute, my preference is ‘Mahhhhhtee get some ovaries.’

[3] Not that those kinds of ladies aren’t nice ladies.

'Blurred Lines'? The misogyny is pretty clear.

This is a response to this video: http://www.vevo.com/watch/robin-thicke/blurred-lines-unrated-version/USUV71300526

When I watched this video for the first time, at the behest of a friend in a crowded café, my jaw dropped. It stayed there for the full four minute and twenty seven second duration of what is not only a sexist travesty, but the strongest indicator of our devolving collective culture I have witnessed in a long, long time.

In this hideously misguided piece of garbage, the pretence of being a music video and not pornography is entirely dropped. But at least in porn the man usually gets naked at some point. Not so here. Here, from the very beginning, it is only women who are to degrade themselves, only women who are to be vulnerable, while the master patriarchs prance around fully clothed in powersuits.

If you haven’t seen this video, either go and educate yourself, or just read this description. I would suggest that you never let yourself fall victim to this level of filth, but the fact that it came to not only exist but become horribly popular means that we all have to form our own opinion on it. This essay is an attempt to make you form the right one.

Nothing actually happens in the clip, apart from models walking around and gyrating in nothing but skin coloured g-strings and (bizarrely) white runners, accompanied by both farm animals and the be-suited singers, who croon about the ‘blurred lines’ between rape and consensual sex.

…Society, seriously, just… why?

So many problems, where do I begin?

First of all, the nakedness. Not only is it offensive that the classic body type of ‘big tits and no arse’, still both unachievable and idealised, is the only one presented, I’m pretty horrified that women actually agreed to do this. I really wish that in the whole world, there wasn’t a single woman who had so little respect for herself as to loll about a set naked for probably multiple days with a bunch of seedy bros while they sing about how ‘she wants it’. No amount of money in the world could make me want to be involved with this kind of project.

Don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not blaming the models or saying that their ethical framework is somewhat skewed for taking money for this. It’s not their fault, because, especially looking like they do, they’ve been raised since birth, well maybe puberty, to value themselves solely by their aesthetic contributions to society. They probably took being hired as a great honour and compliment, rather than being infuriated by the subject matter, what little there is of it. I’m not blaming them, I’m just saying that every factor contributing to the video’s existence is highly problematic.

Third of all, the accompanying lyrics. Probably the true horror of this song is its popular following. I think this is due, not just the fact that the average listener doesn’t give a flying fuck what’s in the lyrics because it’s catchy, but also because the lyrics are quite difficult to decipher thanks to the breathy Prince-style of singing/fast-paced indecipherable rap used. Once you google though, it takes five seconds from a catchy song to go to some perverted rape anthem. My personal favourite lyrics include ‘you the hottest bitch in this place’, ‘smack that ass and pull your hair like that’ and ‘I know you want it’ (how do you know she wants it? Because she issued her verbal consent, or because she ‘hugged’ you or danced with you? Awkward for you, a hug usually indicates the friend zone, not that she is particularly attached to your penis, or wants to be.)

Fourth of all, the kind of listeners this song has. This song is so popular it hurts me. It’s everywhere. I was on a bus with a bunch of 15-17 year olds last week and it started playing. Fifteen year old boys are hearing lyrics like ‘I’ve got something to tear your ass in two’. How do people even… come up with something like that? How does it enter your head, leave your mouth, get committed to paper, and then get played on the radio a thousand times a day?

When you sing along to this or dance to it, the message surely enters your brain more powerfully than if you read it. You can reject what you read, but not so easily what you hear, especially when it is couched in some, admittedly, goddamn catchy funk. I would care so much less if this song had less of a following but it’s one of the most popular songs in the world right now. How on earth have we not grown past this? How on earth are we still accepting a tune without further analysis that maybe it is undermining all the work we’ve done for gender equality and respect over decades and decades?

I’m not a typical stickler for regulation but the collective impact of this kind of music is a lot more dangerous than people give it credit for. I have never wanted anything off the air so much as I want Blurred Lines to disappear.

This leads me to fifth of all, why the fuck I care so much. When someone says something offensive, you can call them on it. When a movie sucks, you undoubtedly have the big review debrief afterwards. When a newspaper article sucks, you stop reading in the middle and complain to whoever is next to you. When a really catchy song comes on with undertones of rape, you’re so much more likely to say, ‘Schmeh, it’s just a song’, gyrate to it for four minutes until it finishes, and then move on with your life, crucially without ever asking the question – ‘Was that seriously just qualifying rape…?’

The comments for both the mainstream video and the uncut video were similar. ‘Awesome song’. ‘Love it’. ‘So catchy’.

I expected outcry, not adulation. Not only has society disappointed me by producing this deeply, deeply disturbing material, but it has also enabled it, nay, applauded it, on a mass scale. ‘Tis a sad, sad day when a song with the lines, ‘I hate these blurred lines/I know you want it/I hate these lines/I know you want it’ is the favourite of many men and most disastrously, women.

Of course, I have not been the first to make these criticisms. Women who like gender equality and not being treated as erection-triggering objects, or as I call them, feminists, have echoed my ‘#fuckdapatriarchy’ sentiments. This has seen a laughably inadequate response from the creators.

"I don't want to be sleazy, I'm a gentleman, I've been in love with the same woman since I've been a teenager," he explained, referring to his actress wife Paula Patton. "I don't want to do anything inappropriate." Thicke then went on to clarify the meaning behind the lyrics, saying, "For me it's about blurring the lines between men and women and how much we're the same. And the other side which is the blurred lines between a good girl and a bad girl, and even very good girls all have little bad sides to them".

From E! Online. Great sources in this essay.

Sorry Mr Thicke, not good enough. Your monogamy isn’t even related to, let alone a justification for, the worst piece of misogynistic objectification I have ever seen. Please don’t put your wife in front of you like some kind of femi-shield. Furthermore, your understanding of the word ‘inappropriate’ is severely limited, you might want to try ‘offensive’ in future. And as for the last point about blurring gender lines? They seemed pretty damn set in stone, when women are painted as the naked, frivolous, voiceless, makeup covered moving statues in your video, and men are talking, walking, acting, gazing, clothed controllers. So you can try and paint yourself as a revolutionary gender post-structuralist. Throw as much spaghetti at the wall as you can. None of it is going to stick.

My favourite part was probably the ‘good girl and bad girl justification’. Yes, you are a true Foucauldian artist, Mr Thicke, who just happens to fall back on the virgin/whore dichotomy as soon as someone asks you why you like making songs legitimising sexual assault. You go Glenn Coco.

By the end of this whole viewing/listening experience the only thing I wanted to fuck was the patriarchy. Phrases like ‘Robin Thicke has a big dick’ really don’t endear me to your cause, but the fact that you have a naked woman (you paid) lying on you will lead young male viewers to think espousing their penis size will get them laid. And then they wonder why, when they go to a club and randomly grind up behind the first girl they see in a short skirt, she doesn’t want to go home with them.

Hey everybody! Girls like respect. Girls like equality. Girls like it when they get to talk. Girls like it when you know their name or something about them. Girls like it when they aren’t treated like voiceless, clotheless, brainless receptacles. Girls also like it WHEN THEY AREN’T PORTRAYED AS SUCH.

Please everyone, stop watching it, stop listening to it. If you are going to listen to it, please just download it illegally. Not only is it not worth a dime, those fuckers should be fined for profiting off the misery of victims of misogyny everywhere.

Angry feminist out.

P.S. Read the lyrics. They really do all the work for me.

"Blurred Lines"
(feat. T.I. & Pharrell Williams)

[Intro: Pharrell]
Everybody get up
Everybody get up
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey

[Verse 1: Robin Thicke]
If you can't hear what I'm trying to say
If you can't read from the same page
Maybe I'm going deaf,
Maybe I'm going blind
Maybe I'm out of my mind

[Pre-chorus: Robin Thicke]
OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you
But you're an animal, baby it's in your nature
Just let me liberate you
Hey, hey, hey
You don't need no papers
Hey, hey, hey
That man is not your maker

[Chorus: Robin Thicke]
And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me

[Verse 2: Robin Thicke]
What do they make dreams for
When you got them jeans on
What do we need steam for
You the hottest bitch in this place
I feel so lucky
Hey, hey, hey
You wanna hug me
Hey, hey, hey
What rhymes with hug me?
Hey, hey, hey

[Pre-chorus: Robin Thicke]
OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you
But you're an animal, baby it's in your nature
Just let me liberate you
Hey, hey, hey
You don't need no papers
Hey, hey, hey
That man is not your maker
Hey, hey, hey

[Chorus: Robin Thicke]
And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines
I know you want it
I hate them lines
I know you want it
I hate them lines
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me

[Verse 3: T.I.]
One thing I ask of you
Let me be the one you back that ass to
Yo, from Malibu, to Paribu
Yeah, had a bitch, but she ain't bad as you
So hit me up when you passing through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two
Swag on, even when you dress casual
I mean it's almost unbearable
Then, honey you're not there when I'm
With my foresight bitch you pay me by
Nothing like your last guy, he too square for you
He don't smack that ass and pull your hair like that
So I just watch and wait for you to salute
But you didn't pick
Not many women can refuse this pimpin'
I'm a nice guy, but don't get it if you get with me

[Bridge: Robin Thicke]
Shake the vibe, get down, get up
Do it like it hurt, like it hurt
What you don't like work?

[Pre-chorus: Robin Thicke]
Baby can you breathe? I got this from Jamaica
It always works for me Dakota to Decatur, uh huh
No more pretending
Hey, hey, hey
Cause now you winning
Hey, hey, hey
Here's our beginning

[Chorus: Robin Thicke]
I always wanted a good girl
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
You're a good girl
Can't let it get past me
You're far from plastic
Talk about getting blasted
I hate these blurred lines
I know you want it
I know you want it
I know you want it
But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me

[Outro: Pharrell]
Everybody get up
Everybody get up
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey

 ...sigh. Fuck dis shit.