1:30 pm | 30 January 2003 | girls gone stupid

Gawd. Boys can be so sucky and lame. I'm working on this Mardi Gras celebration (thbbt) for school, and every MG-related website is fraught with toplessness. And just now, while IMing a friend, i was directed to another website which was also fraught with bare female chests. I am all for boobs--hell, i have a couple myself--but the jokey wink-nudge acceptance of that kind of objectification (even if the girl is exploiting herself out of ignorance) is nauseating, and kind of mystifying. When you get down to it, what is cool about having your name written on some stranger's breasts? It's not "celebrating women as people." It's clearly about power, and ownership, and control. Icky, ew.

I'm not going to bitch about this at length, because a) if you understand, i'm preachin' to the choir and b) if you don't get it, nothing i say is gonna change your mind. But it's disheartening to spend time and energy working against something, and then have friends be all, har har, let me perpetuate what you're battling. Glurg.

No matter what they say, I am suspicious of the motives of men. With very few exceptions, the dudes I meet are totally into porn, porn stars, strippers, stripping porn stars, boobs, and video games that feature the above items (under the fa�ade, mind you, of 'competitive volleyball'). I can laugh about it for a while, and I have really made strides in terms of 'dealing with' it, or whatever, but it still makes me feel sick.

I can freely admit that part of my distrust with strip-clubs-and-porn in general are my own feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and body-image-hatred. After a veritable buffet of negative formative experiences, I am a bouquet of nervous, self-loathing, and pessimistic. So, yes, probably 15% of me is saying Please don't go to the strip club and learn what it is that women are supposed to look like to be beautiful, because I don't look like that. Please don't come home from the strip club and wonder why my head is so round, or why my knees are strangely chunky, or why my waist is so wide and plank-like. Please don't learn to not want me. Yeah, woe-is-fuckin'-me. I'm gonna cry.

But it is an overall dislike of the snarky boys'-club atmosphere of such places that turns me off so much--and the sadness of the workers. You can say, "But we just go there for a laugh and a drink." Well, that's not why the dancers are there (I do acknowledge that in some places, mostly SF from what i've read, there are entire unions, clubs, and cabarets of happy, healthy, sane, and fulfilled strippers-by-choice--but that stands in dire contrast to the vast majority). They are there because you can make a lot of money taking your clothes off. They are there to fulfill weird adolescent fantasies, or to stroke the egos of the insecure, or to pander to those who would rather spend $50 on a lapdance than expend actual thought and feeling on a real live person. Everyone needs a quick fix sometimes--I'm no exception--but i'm sure as hell not going to get my kicks at the expense of someone else's dignity. And i think that, in a nutshell, might be the root of my problem. The man who loves strippers is the man who is afraid of, or doesn't respect, an actual woman-as-person, and who enjoys using money to feel as though he has power/control over a her--and, furthermore, does it in the arena of sex. Am i wrong to feel uncomfortable with that?

So, yeah. There you have it. Strippers make me sad. Porn is (mostly) confusing: if i were hungry, i wouldn't watch other people eat--i would go get a meal. Why doesn't that apply to (and i hate this word) being 'horny'? I don't think there's anything funny about "Show us your tits!" And the next random dude who touches my ass had better be wearing riot gear, because these are fists of fury. clm.

I am going to paste the comments for this entry here, since i don't like the comment service i was using:

From: Tape Wizard
"Porn is a strange thing to me as well. Part of me wants to be all, 'Yeah! Porn Porn PORN!' and I'm totally into watching it for the pure novelty of seeing boobs and penises and such. But really, the further you look into it and w/o getting totally feminist and shit, the only word for porn is STUPID. As one of my male coworkers says, 'Only losers look at porn. I prefer to get the real thing myself.' That's a man for you."

From: Claude
"That's another thing. I know people who would turn their noses violently upwards at, you know, a Mandy Moore movie, but who'll watch the stupidest shit if it involves sex. Which: dumb, and also gross. And i don't find any titillation in the idea that "woo, the postal deliveryman might want to fuck me on my mailbox." I wonder, too, if a lot of the clich�d 'fantasies' (airline stewardesses, nurses, etc) aren't planted in the subconscious by porn, thereby precluding any other interesting personal turn-ons that might have occurred naturally. I have always had an odd erotic attachment to the smell of old books, and i have yet to see any pornos addressing that."

From: Dannysquid
"Read your diary entry today and I must insist that you shouldn't blame yourself in ANY way for being revolted by porn. Stand up for yourself, sister!
When we made our Linda Lovelace documentary 90% of the pornographers I came into contact with were extremely creepy, exploitative misogynists. I challenge anyone to sit through DEEP THROAT having seen our interview with Linda's now-deceased manager and ex-husband, Chuck Traynor. Don't like throwning the word 'evil' around, but he's as close as I've personally come to it. When you've seen a man make a joke about the fact that he forced a woman to have sex with a dog, and observed the fact that Ms Lovelace is covered in bruises in Deep Throat, its very hard to find any titillation or kitsch value in the medium.
Having said that, I'm no Andrea Dworkin, and I think that pornography is always going to exist, is better overground than underground, and that some of the practicioners are non-exploitative professionals who enjoy what they're doing (Chuck Traynor is a fairly exceptional case). It doesn't need to be a form of violence against women. And, ah-hem, I obviously can't claim never to have used it myself.
But, as a bloke, I find it disturbing that every magazine rack I pass is filled with pictures of scantily-clad, sexually-available women (often children's tv presenters, for some bizarre reason). What I find disturbing is that I can't help looking and being titillated. And I feel degraded, so I can hardly imagine how the women must feel.
Don't let anyone make you feel like a prudish, man-hating feminist. I think you're a socially-aware, man-loving feminist. Which is cool." awww!