On Monday, The Supreme Court announced their ruling in the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (representing the video game industry).  I was ecstatic.  Despite how often I write about the horrid depictions and unnecessary violence against women in video games, I’ve never called for their censorship.

To give a little backstory and context of the Supreme Court case, the law in California was an unprecedented restriction on media.  Films are self-governed by the MPAA, not the law, and it works.  An employee at your local theater who sells a ticket to an R-rated film to an underaged kid, is not criminally liable.  While, the video game industry has an equivalent with the ESRB, the law that Leland Yee proposed would hold cashiers and retailers criminally liable for selling an M-Rated game to a minor.  Especially absurd, considering the FTC report released earlier this year, that rated the ESRB as the most successful self-governing body in the entertainment industry.  X-Play’s Adam Sessler does a great job of explaining the ramifications of this law being upheld in his most recent episodes of Sessler’s Soapbox, available here and here.

There seems to be frequent confusion in the interpretation of my posts – that by expressing frustration with misogyny in the video game industry, that I have a problem with violence in video games, or I think they should be subjected to censorship.  It’s certainly not the case.  I find people like Jack Thompson, and Carol Lieberman abhorrent.  Using video games as a scapegoat, and making up information as you go along has potential to be incredibly harmful.  Leland Yee, is similar to Thompson and Lieberman in his views on video games (he certainly has a history of falsifying statistics), and almost succeeded in setting a federal precedent for restricting the freedom of speech.

I view video games in the same way I view every other form of media – with a critical eye.  Writing about Victorias Secret’s stupid ad campaign doesn’t mean I think they shouldn’t be allowed to market their products, and writing about the incredibly sexist attitudes held by the video game industry doesn’t mean I think their games should be banned from sale.

In my first post on Feminist Fatale, I wrote that despite my disgust with imagery and depictions of women in media, I “believe in…having the right to publish.” It’s an opinion that extends to video games. I hope that by writing about video games, consumers will learn to demand better from the creators.  The writers, designers, and developers shouldn’t be forced to limit their creations by the government.

Anyone who keeps up with my “Rants of a Gamer Girl” series/column, or simply scrolled through the front page, may have noticed the “popularity” of one of my recent posts “Duke Nukem: Smack My Chick Up”

It’s garnered a bigger and more hateful response than anything I’ve written previously or since. There would be even more comments on the post if the threats of violence and classic anti-feminist name calling remarks hadn’t been deleted before they ever saw the light of day.

In fact, it garnered enough attention that Gearbox CEO, Randy Pitchford himself, stopped by the blog to respond. And despite the fact that I called his companys creation “misogynistic crap”, he managed to leave one of the most mature comments of them all.

Rather than respond to every comment individually (not to mention the waste of time it would be – I receive a new comment notification every day that spews the same bullshit) I decided to make a post. Something to sum up my feelings towards the response in a (sort of) brief summary.

So here goes:

Let’s start with the whole “I’m friends with a woman, therefore that makes me an expert on the matter/a feminist scholar/the decider on what constitutes misogyny”. Similar to the argument “I’m not racist, some of my best friends are black” a response such as this just makes you sound like you failed sociology 101. I challenge any commenter who claimed to know more than me about feminism and women’s studies to name a book title of Bell Hooks, quote Gloria Steinem, or even tell me who Kathleen Hanna is, without googling it.

Also – if your defense consists of calling me a: bitch, lesbian, cunt, whiny feminist, or tells me to shut the fuck up, congratulations, you just supported my argument, and failed at making your point by resorting to misogynistic name-calling.

If you think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, obviously you don’t read this blog very often. I’ve been a gamer for over twenty years, and occasionally write posts defending games. I’m not calling for censorship, never have, never plan on doing so. Gearbox Software has the right to make these games, and I have the right to call them on their bullshit. So, no…not like Jack Thompson.

And as for women having all the rights, getting free rides to college, and being treated so much better than men – women’s lives are so easy. Well, I could list hundreds of links here proving you wrong, or you could spend a whole 30 seconds of your time on google.

I almost won feminist gamer bingo.

So, feel free to continue to comment, even though not one of you has managed to make a compelling argument. In fact, thanks for the continued inspiration to write. You all make me realize how important my voice is in the echo chamber of gamers who’s philosophy tends to be something along the lines of “STFU BITCH”

With the game now on sale, and gamers uploading videos to YouTube, it turns out, I was right in my assertion that it was “misogynistic crap” all along.

We mark the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision tomorrow, and celebrate how it affirmed that women should have power over their own bodies–but we are also alarmed at the rising tide of anti-abortion violence in the U.S.

Following the 2008 elections, and with little hope of a quick reversal of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion extremists announced they would “return to the streets.” Threats escalated against clinics and doctors in some 14 states, and on May 30, 2009, late-abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in Wichita, KS.

Shortly after the murder, the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue of Wichita launched its “Keep It Closed” campaign to prevent Dr. Leroy Carhart–who had travelled monthly from his home in Nebraska to work with Dr. Tiller–from reopening a clinic in Kansas or expanding his own clinic in Nebraska. Nonetheless, Carhart did expand his Nebraska practice, only to see Nebraska lawmakers enact onerous new abortion restrictions last April. As Carhart explained,

Under one law, even a woman who has been hospitalized and diagnosed suicidal or a young girl who has been raped, even raped by a close family member, would not be able to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A second law would put any questionable medical study that has ever been published above a doctor’s informed medical judgment and expertise. These laws will make it harder for patients to get an abortion when they really need them, when they are under the most desperate of circumstances and even when they are clearly medically, morally and religiously justified.

Saying that the legislation “merely strengthens my commitment to fight for women’s reproductive health and rights,” Carhart joined forces with an abortion clinic in Germantown, Md. to provide hard-to-get late abortions there. Operation Rescue countered by joining local Maryland anti-abortion leaders in announcing plans to drive him out of the state, organizing demonstrations against the clinic in December and this coming weekend. Leaflets with Carhart’s photo have been circulating as part of the protests.

Meanwhile, in Charlotte, N.C., Old-West-style WANTED posters of abortion doctors have been distributed, featuring photos of the physicians and their home and office addresses.

Publicizing images of abortion doctors is chilling. WANTED posters have been part of a deadly anti-abortion extremist strategy since the early 1990s. Dr. David Gunn’s picture appeared on a Florida unWANTED poster in early 1993, and in March of that year he was gunned down outside a Pensacola abortion clinic. Dr. Tiller himself was shot (but only wounded) that year–after he appeared on a  WANTED poster. Just days later, Dr. Wayne Patterson, another WANTED abortion provider who owned clinics in Pensacola and Alabama, was murdered on a Mobile, Ala., street.

In 1994, the killing continued: Dr. John Bayard Britton and a clinic escort were shot to death in Pensacola. Extremists had previously nailed a WANTED poster to the front door of Britton’s home.

As Ms. magazine has reported, anti-abortion extremists who shoot doctors are not “lone wolves.” They operate in a climate in which fellow extremists treat them as heroes and label the murder of abortion doctors “justifiable.” They are emboldened by an atmosphere in which clinics are vandalized, staff and patients harassed and threats too-often ignored by law enforcement.

Anti-abortion extremists are now threatening doctors and clinics in a large number of U.S. states beyond Kansas, Nebraska, Maryland and North Carolina–including New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Montana, Colorado, Virginia and Michigan. And in every place where abortion providers are threatened, Roe v. Wade is under attack–because the right to a legal abortion means little without safe access to the procedure.

We who support a woman’s right to an abortion can’t stand by idly when violence compromises that right. Here’s what we have to do:

–Mobilize within communities where doctors and clinics are threatened and work with local and state officials to establish safety buffer zones around clinics.

–Volunteer at clinics that need assistance.

–Work to ensure that anti-stalking laws and state and federal FACE laws against clinic violence are rigorously enforced.

–Make sure that the network of extremists who advise or act in concert with those who commit violence against abortion providers are prosecuted and brought to justice.

For more than 20 years, the Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.) has worked to stop anti-abortion extremist violence and provide crucial aid to besieged clinics. We can always use help in those efforts. But we also need everyone concerned with this issue to speak out, encourage better law enforcement and never waver in support of a woman’s right to the integrity and safety of her own body.

Photo by Matt H. Wade of James Earle Fraser’s statue “The Contemplation of Justice” at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., from Wikimedia Commons under license from Creative Commons 3.0.

HipHopConnection.com has leaked a video teaser for the Kanye West hit song “Monster” and what we’ve seen is beyond disturbing. In just 30 seconds, viewers take in image after image of eroticized violence against women:

• Dead women, clad in lingerie, hang by chains around their necks
• West makes sexual moves toward dead or drugged women propped up in a bed
• A naked dead or drugged woman lays sprawled on a sofa

Rick Ross sits in view of a dead/drugged woman & a plate of raw meat

If that’s not enough, a behind-the-scenes clip of the video includes a semi-naked dead woman laying spread eagled on a table in front of Rick Ross as he eats a plate of raw meat. It is likely we can expect more brutal images in the full-length video.

The victims in this video are clearly women. Only women. And the men, Kanye West, Rick Ross, and Jay-Z are far from bothered by the female corpses. They seem to enjoy being surrounded by lifeless female bodies, apparent victims of a serial killing.

The official release date of the full-length video has not yet been announced. Let’s make it clear to Universal Music Group, the controlling company of West’s record label, Roc-A-Fella Records, and MTV that the music industry’s portrayals of women’s pain, suffering, abuse, objectification, and victimization as valid forms of entertainment are not acceptable.

Dead women hang by chains

We call on Universal Music Group and MTV to combat violence against women by refusing to support, promote, and/or give airtime to West’s “Monster” video.

We call on you to support our efforts in preventing the official release of this disturbing and hateful video. In conjunction with Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (Australia),  Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation, and Melinda Tankard Reist who brought this issue into the light, we have created a petition to block the video’s official release.

Please take a moment and sign the petition, which will be sent to Doug Morris, the CEO/Chairman of Universal Music Group  and Judy McGrath, the CEO of MTV.

And don’t forget to spread the word that our world has absolutely no room for this monstrous video.

Visit Care2 Petition Site to sign the petition.

Vogue Italia’s recent oil spill shoot and Rachel Zoe‘s “I Die” fashion spread join Lindsay Lohan’s set of “artistic” photos shot (no pun intended) with Tyler Shields earlier this year.

Like a lot of other people, I don’t find violence against women funny, glamorous, inspiring or particularly artistic unless  there’s a critical examination of violence spelled out in the artist’s statement.   As I stated in an earlier post:

Our media landscape is populated with endless streams of images and messages glorifying, eroticizing and diminishing the serious nature of violence against women, an issue that some have called a hidden pandemic and others have labeled an epidemic of global proportions.

As Gwen Sharp at Sociological Images asked in a  post when Lohan’s photos hit the internet:

Lohan and the photographer have angrily responded that the images are just art and people shouldn’t get so upset.  That, of course, isn’t the point. The bigger question is why photographers, artists, fashion editors, and others continue to find images of sexualized violence toward women compelling.

What is important to remember when photographs like these are released is that they are part of a spectrum. They do not stand alone as just one photograph or just one photo shoot. These images are part of a larger trend of images  that feature domination, aggression, violence against women, and “dead”  women (or as Jennifer Pozner dubs them, “beautiful corpses“). Through the use of body language, make-up and clothing victimization is implied and violence becomes commonplace. This gory stream of images, featuring mangled women with mouths agape and eyes glazed, is practically unremarkable in the pop culture landscape, especially in advertising. These 3 sets of  images follow close on the heels of my recent posts critically examining the rampant misogyny and striking resemblance between Marc Jacobs ad campaigns and images of actual crime scenes of murdered women.

]]> http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/08/designer-death-trigger-warning/feed/ 4 http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/08/domestic-violence-is-more-than-just-a-burning-house/ http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/08/domestic-violence-is-more-than-just-a-burning-house/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:16:44 +0000 Liz http://www.feministfatale.com/?p=2990 Trigger alert (thanks, Sarit).

“Love the Way You Lie” by Eminem featuring Rihanna is certainly not the first song to discuss domestic violence and intimate partner abuse. From the first recording of “Banks of the Ohio” – a 19th century “murder ballad” in which a man drowns his girlfriend after she refuses to marry him – in 1927 by Red Patterson’s Piedmont Log Rollers to Lesley Gore’s outright “You Don’t Own Me” released in 1964, the “Golden Oldies” are rife with lyrics discussing sexism, abuse (Both physical and emotional), and domestic violence. More recently, I recall from my own adolescence the music videos of Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboy’s Gone?,” Jewel’s “Foolish Games,” and – what might be seen as a precursor to “Love the Way You Lie” – Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home.” Released in the later 90s, these songs and their accompanying videos may be seen as the mainstream’s cooptation of the Riot Grrrls’ brand of music and feminism.

]]> http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/08/domestic-violence-is-more-than-just-a-burning-house/feed/ 6 http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/07/scottish-ad-campaign-tackles-rape-mythology-no-woman-asks-to-be-raped/ http://www.feministfatale.com/2010/07/scottish-ad-campaign-tackles-rape-mythology-no-woman-asks-to-be-raped/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:15:51 +0000 Melanie http://feministfatale.com/?p=2778

Thanks to Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) for tweeting the link to this Scottish ad campaign.

Per Rape Crisis Scotland:

With “Not Ever, Rape Crisis Scotland has launched Scotlands first ever TV campaign aimed at tackling women-blaming attitudes to rape. The advert was launched on Monday 28 June, and was broadcast for the first time that night during coverage of Brazil’s World Cup match. It will continue to be shown over the next 9 weeks on STV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

“Not Ever” addresses women-blaming attitudes towards rape such as claims that dressing provocatively, being drunk or flirting with men are contributory factors. Its hard-hitting approach is intended to make people stop in their tracks, and to shake out and challenge ingrained prejudices many people have towards women who have been raped.

To read more, visit their youtube, twitter and facebook pages.

Though Eclipse does pass the Bechdel Test (just barely) that’s definitely not enough to pass as a feminist film. As Ms.blogger Carmen Siering already pointed out both of Bella’s love interests show overt, undeniable signs of potentially abusive behavior. Despite the lack of physical abuse, the level of control that Edward exhibits over Bella’s decision making is in itself disconcerting. He prevents her from seeing Jacob by disabling her car, manipulates her into leaving the state during which time he hovers over her incessantly (something her mother points out with an almost interventionist tone), isolates her from her friends and family, and all the while she believes that everything he is doing is okay because it’s for her own safety and protection.

Eclipse contains yet another example of my issue with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as well. When Rosalie is telling Bella her story about becoming a vampire and expressing her discontent with Bella’s decision to become one we see Rosalie get attacked and gang raped (albeit – it was child’s play compared with what we saw in GWTDT). After which Rosalie becomes a vampire and kills all of the men who raped her. More empowerement by way of victimization……

Additionally, the overtones of chastity and sexual restraint are so loud Stephanie Meyer might as well have had a Mormon choir singing in the background. Meyer is a strict Mormon and the ways in which her beliefs have structered her character formations have been written about many times. In Eclipsewe see quite a lot more of this as this is the first full film when Bella and Edward a couple throughout.  On many (!) occassions they are seen kissing, making out, etc. and Edward is thrown into the role of Protector of the Bella’s “virtue” (another area he apparently has complete control over). After Bella accepts his proposal and they are having a very angsty teenage make-out session she tells him that she wants to have sex as a human before she becomes a vampire. With something that looks a lot like righteous anger he refuses and tells her that he has to protect he virtue and that he “just wants to be married first.”

No one is attacking the validity of choosing abstinence, but the overt religiosity of the author cannot be missed. Additionally, there is not one area of Bella’s life in which a man is not telling her what to do or when to do it or how to feel or when to leave/not leave her house. Bella is a hollow attempt at a feminsit character. She is the eptiomy of what Susan Douglas talks about in Enlightened Feminism: a female character that truly believes that she is empowered and in control and that she has no use for feminism or- even worse – that she is feminist. Meyer has spoken about how she believes that Bella is a feminist character – the Ms. blog thorougly addresses Meyer’s assertion.

I have heard arguments made about the resolution of the story being the culmination of Bella’s “empowerment”…..I guess we’ll just have to save that critique for the next two installments.

As promised, The Clothesline Project Final Video from Marley P on Vimeo, part 2 of a collaborative final project for Womens Studies 30: Women and Pop Culture.

Created by: Rachel O, Maley P, Allison R. Stephanie G and Carolyn B.

Transcript after the jump. Thanks to Carolyn B for her gift of words and to all members of a group that inspired a community.

A curse of silence is plaguing America. The staggering statistics on violence toward women are incongruous with the ‘reality’ perpetuated by our mass media. Rape and domestic violence are not fanciful abstractions that occur far, far away at a crime scene in Miami or in the fantasy landscape of a video game. Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. If you were to base your renderings of these events on the media’s coverage, you would most likely see a glamorized version of the truth, a play on one of the many damaging motifs that turn rape and abuse into a caricature, a ludicrous exaggeration of the abuser and abused. He would be a sociopathic stranger hiding in the bushes. She would be a naive, conventionally attractive women, whose sex appeal makes her ripe for pillaging. The scene would play out with the swagger of a videogame or slick action movie. Gratuitousness, gore, and victimization abound, creating at times a burlesque of sex and violence that is meant more to shock and titillate than to educate, empower and help the cause to eradicate abuse.

The truth of the matter is that battery is the number one cause of injury to women in the United States. It accounts for more injuries to women than stranger rapes, muggings and car accidents combined. When rape is involved, approximately 2/3 of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim, and 38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance of the victim. These are not strangers lurking in parking lots and hiding in our bushes. These are our fathers, boyfriends, family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances.

When looking to the mass media for answers, we were bombarded by a cavalcade of images that reinforced the glamorized union of sex and violence in our culture, without paying respect to the shocking truth of violence toward women in our society. The most poignant example of brutalization packaged as entertainment came from an episode of Tyra Banks’ reality show “America’s Next Top Model.” Tyra’s models had the daunting assignment of ‘playing dead’ for a high fashion photo spread of ‘sexy’ murder victims. Black and blue limbs were splayed across the screen, models lounging languidly in pools of blood were criticized for not looking “dead enough,” and all the while the photographer was beside himself with giddy glee.

This video left all of us aghast with shock and disgust. However, the trend of using sex, gore and violence to sell high end products is nothing new in the vapid world of high fashion. Designers like Jimmy Choo, Louis Vitton and Duncan Quinn are all guilty of it. These types of advertising campaigns have become so normative in our culture, that most consumers unconsciously drink them in without batting an eyelash. Perhaps what is even more disturbing is that one in three women that view these advertisements will be victims of abuse. And, unfortunately, their stories will not be fun and games like these images suggest.

The power of the Clothesline Project lies in its ability to free these stories from our backyards, to unite communities through shared experience and to enlighten those living in the dark. T shirts blazed on the line like an infernal scarlet letter symbolizing America’s neglect of an issue that touches so many of us. Passerby’s jaws dropped to the ground, and women and men who were compelled to take part in the project engaged in dialogue about the astonishing prevalence of violence amongst our peers at Santa Monica College. Survivors of abuse found both kinship and an empowering medium for their messages. There was a collective unraveling of the shroud that cloaks and oppresses our stories of abuse, giving a new face to violence- one that isn’t looming on our television screens, magazine pages and video games in stiletto heels, painted with cartoonish bruises and a flirtatious pout.

It is more important than ever to break the silence surrounding violence against women, and to shatter the stereotypes that propagate ignorance and perpetuate danger. Along with the Clothesline Project, organizations like the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, and VDAY: A global Movement to End Violence Against Women and Girls are raising consciousness and funds to end rape, incest, battery, genital mutilation and sexual slavery globally. These organizations and YOUR voice are the only tools we have to undo the noxious stereotypes propagated by the mass media. Since the movement to end violence against women solidified in 1993, sexual assault has fallen by almost 60%. In other words, if not for the historic gains we’ve made in the last decade, an additional 2,546,420 Americans would have become victims of sexual violence. That statistic serves as a battle cry for us to break the silence, share our stories and turn them into a vehicle for chan

In trying to pay homage to the classic westerns of yesteryear, where women were tied up on train tracks by a cartoon-y villain with a handlebar mustache, the game offers an achievement for tying up a woman and throwing her onto a set of train tracks.  Except there’s no hero to save the day and untie her before the train comes, the points
are only awarded if you stand and watch as you let her be run over.  It’s unfortunate that they made the achievement gender specific.  Why couldn’t it have been a man or just a person?  Rock Star Games does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to females in their video games – most in the Grand Theft Auto series are prostitutes, drug addicts, victims, and strippers.  While they were a little better in Red Dead Redemption – it’s a woman who saves the main character in the intro and women are shown talking about religion and politics in the opening credits sequence, they negated the little good they did by offering five measly gamer points for violently assaulting and killing a woman.

Youtube is already filling up with videos of gamers recording themselves getting the “Dastardly” achievement.