Raunch feminism

[imomus]

I love sex and eroticism. But I don't love the lewd choreography of raunch, and I particularly don't like the current Western ideology that raunch is a form of empowerment. Ariel Levy, in her interesting new book Female Chauvinist Pigs, calls this ideology "raunch feminism":

"Our popular culture," says the New York Times, paraphrasing Levy, "has embraced a model of female sexuality that comes straight from pornography and strip clubs, in which the woman's job is to excite and titillate — to perform for men. According to Levy, women have bought into this by altering their bodies surgically and cosmetically, and—more insidiously—by confusing sexual power with power, so that embracing this caricaturish form of sexuality becomes, in their minds, a perverse kind of feminism."

When I think about the reasons I reject both raunch and the idea that raunch is a form of feminism, I have to admit that they relate to class. Raunch as choreography emerges from working class strip bars, cheap Western porn tapes, sexist rap videos. It confuses sex with the sex industry, and sexiness with pimping and whoring. It also confuses all sex with dick sex: its main move is the thrust, and its main facial expression the rock-guitar-solo "gurn". There's a whole other thesis in which I accuse raunch of being the rockism of sexuality, and rail once more against the cabaret of empowerment unleashed on the world by the "Chicks with Dicks", Peaches and her ilk. And there's the "moronic irony" line, in which I accuse raunch feminism of being a performance inside quotation marks in which ambivalence about the choreography of raunch is acted out, underwritten by the insurance policy of "oh, we're just being ironic". Moronic irony lets the other side win by allowing us to ape its moves without reaping its profits (which, in the case of the porn industry, are considerable).

My main objection (apart from the visceral aesthetic objection) to raunch feminism is this. Feminism as a project has two sides: the dismantling of patriarchy, and the empowerment of women. Raunch feminism proposes that women can be "empowered" without dismantling patriarchy... in fact, by embracing "the male gaze" entirely.

In an interview with Salon, Ariel Levy says: "In this new formulation of raunch feminism, stripping is as valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education or supporting rape victims. Throwing a party where women grind against each other in their underwear while fully clothed men watch them is suddenly part of the same project as marching on Washington for reproductive rights."

If you want to see the ideology of raunch feminism—the idea that women can achieve empowerment without bothering to dismantle the male-centric values of patriarchy— in action, you just have to turn to an article in last week's Sunday Times. The article ran in the Style section which, from the URL, you'll notice the Sunday Times groups as a "women's interest" (presumably on the assumption that only men are reading the politics and economics sections of the paper). "Tokyo is still the most mind-melting city on the planet, but, as Jessica Brinton reports, its radical fashion, sexual bravura and cultural weirdness are finally beginning to liberate its women". And there we have it, the usual idiotic, cliched Western take on Japanese women. They are "behind" Western women, diminutive, cute, squeaky-voiced and "submissive" creatures who are only now beginning to catch up thanks to... well, thanks to raunch.

"Japan may be one of the most patriarchal, male-dominated countries in the world," says Brinton, "yet top of last year’s Japanese bestseller list was a novel by the young Japanese female writer Hitomi Kanehara, called Snakes and Earrings. The story was about a young girl obsessed with extreme body piercing, tattoos and violent S&M." The implication here is that being obsessed with self-injury is a radical blow against patriarchy rather than its internalisation, its utter penetration of a woman's mind and body.

Japan is conservative, says Brinton, "a country where females are still not allowed to ascend to the throne. The 1960s and its feminist revolution never happened there." Wow, so feminism was all about allowing every country to have its own Queen Elizabeth II! Who knew? Brinton continues with her catalogue of "feminist" developments in Japan: male hairdressers are now trained to flirt with their female customers! And there's something we might call 'equal-opportunity objectification' going on: "We all know about hostess bars, the men’s pleasure domes that hit the big time during the 1980s economic boom. Now there are host bars too, for Japan’s rich and independent-minded women."

Inevitably, the Sunday Times gets around to the old prostitution-as-empowerment line: "The Japanese are the mad professors of consumer desire, and Shibuya girls — female teenagers who treat this place like their playground — are the most brand-savvy of all. They congregate inside the auditory bedlam of the Shibuya department store 109. Or outside McDonald’s, where they occasionally pick up older men for a few hundred yen (the extra cash goes towards the latest Chanel handbag). Aggressive, self-empowered and sexy, they dress as they want — from orange tans, razor-sharp stilettoes and microskirts, through Victoriana to extreme punk with pink nail varnish — shop as they want, and behave exactly as they want."

Woooh! Yeaaaaaah! How much for thirty minutes? Raunch feminism, you rock!

Comments

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Well, the Times is a Murdoch mouthpiece, what do you expect?

I agree that raunchy sex performances are not necessarily liberating - anyone can attest that lesbian sex acts fall very neatly within the male gaze, not least in that men seem to believe there exists an implicit invitation - but I don't know at what point, by your argument, the acts of sex and the ideas of sexuality and gender (not to mention beauty) are capable of being liberated from the patriarchy.

By the way, this is the best thing on LJ. Bar none.

[nickdoro.livejournal.com]

yes, feminism seems to be quite confused now. there appears to be a re-assertion of more traditional gender roles: lad mags, paris hilton, and a general "raunchiness" in pop culture. this is not how men or women should be. it all seems terribly immature.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't know at what point, by your argument, the acts of sex and the ideas of sexuality and gender (not to mention beauty) are capable of being liberated from the patriarchy.

Well, I think we have to start with the idea that men's way of running the world is not the ideal one, and that women might make a better job of it. That they might fight fewer wars, for instance.

[deerscare.livejournal.com]

hey i agree with you here... when "raunch feminism" gets political (ie. highly sexed political slogans during election times such as "lick bush in 2004" etc.) my friend apropos refers to it as "Vagina Feminism". ive been noticing it as a gradually increasing trend since riot grrl times (like when kathleen hannah was into writing SLUT across her stotmach - it was much more aggressive and less male-gaze oriented but still highly centered around "reclaiming" sexuality in a way that glossed over or completely ignored certain problems with sex/the sex industry).

anyway, though i consider myself a feminist i've had difficulty relating to any specific movements, especially 3rd wave and onward (mainly because of this kind of thing).

[snosage.livejournal.com]

i live (thankfully not much longer) with a female roommate who yells and screams on the phone every night, filled with rage. females are just as capable of holding grudges and can be just as vindictive and warring as any man can be.

hello sir. i shook your hand in westwood, los angeles a few years ago after a gig and dinner with a man named ned.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think a lot comes down to this word "empowerment". It's a word which, like "reform" or "liberalisation", has come to mean precisely the opposite of what it originally meant.

Does empowerment mean tapping into a power that already exists, or devising a new form of power? In other words, does it involve conforming to the way things are, or preparing a future in which different values come to power?

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Though Peaches is raunchy, it's not the safely and purely feminine sleaze of something like the suicide girls or Lil Kim. She strikes me as always having been much more about genderfucking than just plain fucking.

In her "Fuck the Pain Away" video, she's slowly overtaken by her own bodyhair, and she follows up on this by appearing on the cover of her second album wearing a black singlet and a shaggy beard. Though she still might be a sex object, she's certainly not the object of normative sexual desire.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Well, that's all well and good, but it doesn't exactly answer my question.

Then again, I might not have been asking the right question: at what point is gender defined outside the male gaze?

:)))

[dixie-flatline.livejournal.com]

[deerscare.livejournal.com]

well i guess the thing is, depending on the individual it could mean either... maybe pragmatically it should be a bit of both. and feminism should be at least 50% a personal thing. if someone else gathers strength in their gender and sexuality through this "raunch feminism" model, then i can't really chide them or decide for them whether or not that strength is valid. i think the problem is that (patriarchal) society at large embraces this, and cannot differenciate between a woman who is acting as a passive part of the sex industry machine, and one who is doing this to reclaim and/or empower.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, she's taken raunch feminism to its logical conclusion, which is that women become men without dicks.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

That view of gender is a little too essentialist for my tastes, but then again, I know and admire quite a few men without dicks.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I particularly love this bit of the Sunday Times article:

outside McDonald’s... they occasionally pick up older men for a few hundred yen (the extra cash goes towards the latest Chanel handbag)

A few hundred yen? You mean, up to a thousand? As much as ten dollars? And a Chanel handbag costs... well, you're the Sunday Times, you tell me.

[primavera.livejournal.com]

That, in itself, is a sexist statement.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I said "they might fight fewer wars", not no wars. And if the weapon of choice is the telephone, well, that's fine with me!

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

According to a reader's review of her book, Levy (incredibly) seemed to overlook what is probably one of the principal causes of this trend: bad parenting.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

at what point is gender defined outside the male gaze?

Good point. But I go back to my point about the two feminist projects: deconstruction of patriarchy and empowerment. The male gaze needs to be re-made by women themselves in a way that actually gives women more power rather than less. Does acting out the lesbian and pole-dancing fantasies of the worse parts of the porn industry give women the right kind of power? Does it deconstruct patriarchy and insert into the space left the values of matriarchy? Are we approaching a world where "mother" is the ultimately powerful and desireable thing to be, or a world where "slut" is the ultimately powerful and desireable thing to be?

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always the Hegelian synthesis of "motherfucker".

...Kidding! Though "metrosexual" is etymologically equivalent to "motherfucking".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think that parenting can do much about media memes that will infect your child. Unless you live in a Shaker village, you'll tend to pay more attention to the media than your parents from the age of... ooh, 4?

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I do have to admit it is funny watching people not get Japanese money.

Surprisingly enough, you even see it in some Japanese television, with people taking bribes of as much as five bucks.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I love how there's a comment that says "That in itself is a sexist statement" which is floating after every comment we make in this thread! A true and timely reminder that, while we live under Patriarchy, every statement is a sexist statement.

[ghostinthephoto.livejournal.com]

I feel sick when I hear people call things like suicide girls feminism. Feminism can only be achieved when females become more powerful in intellectual fields and not just the arts but in the sciences as well, if you want to see feminism rise look to the schools not pop culture. Although you could very well dived the social structure into two clear classes the educated and the non educated. Feminism could grow very powerful in one and be void in the other. As well as the economic class divide. Like most social movements feminism may gain respect in some classes and be perverted in others.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What are you implying about the conflict-management strategies of anthropoid apes and Martians?

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Are we approaching a world where "mother" is the ultimately powerful and desireable thing to be, or a world where "slut" is the ultimately powerful and desireable thing to be?

I dunno if this is necessarily a very productive way of framing it, because there are plenty of women who aren't particularly enthused about being either, and some that are pretty happily both. The liberatory potential of lionizing motherhood or slut pride varies with cultral context, and I think we're beginning to see diminishing returns on both approaches.

Moronic Irony = Morony

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

I see that you failed to mention the exercise craze that swept Hollywood a few months back... Strippaerobics, or summat.

I don't think women these days know how to quantify their role in society, and it's not just Japan that has a problem. 'Should I have a baby, and When' seems to be a much more burning question than 'How can I do my part to dismantle the patriarchy'.

The Fashion Industry itself objectifies women, and the vast majority of women readily consume it and all it entails: outdated ideas about feminine perfection, body dismorphic issues, the lot. I see that a lot more women enjoy porn these days, as well. Do they like the part where the dude ejaculates all over the actress' face? I've never asked anyone.

The deification of 'women' such as Paris Hilton only proves that a lot of money and a thorough knowledge of fellatio is enough to make you a celebrity these days. That's JUST the lesson I want my daughters to learn.