Tango Bango

Football and sexism.

Someone on Twitter made a comment to me, saying that they don’t understand why I find upskirt iPhone applications sexist or why I have a feminist gaming blog when I am a football fan and don’t find football sexist.

Not only is this comparing apples to oranges and it a total strawman argument, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that someone can’t point out sexism in one instance if they like something that someone else finds sexist.

I don’t view football as inherently sexist because it’s a sport.  If you’re referring to cheerleaders, I find some aspects of cheerleading to be sexist - such as their outfits.  However cheerleading is a sport.  It requires athleticism, it is dangerous, it is competitive.  Saying that the entire sport of cheerleading is sexist is belittling to the women who enjoy it.  It’s anti-feminism to judge and shame women for the activities they like to partake in.

There are parts of football that ARE sexist.  It isn’t a co-ed sport, so that is sexist.  There is all sorts of negative comments towards the men who play it to “stop acting like a girl” when they get hurt.  I will never deny there are elements of it that are disgusting and degrading towards women.  That doesn’t change the fact that the baseline mechanics of the sport itself aren’t sexist and ARE fun for me to watch.  I enjoy the sport and I put my blinders on to the cheerleaders (although I find them real fun to watch during halftime shows sometimes when they’re doing gymnastic moves).  The entire sport IS NOT sexist.  There are elements of it that are, just like elements of the game and movie industry.

However, there are sexist games - and I love the game industry and video games.  It’s my goal to make people aware of the sexism and stereotypes and work to change it.  In football, in my perfect world I would love for all the sexism to be gone.  The fact that it is there doesn’t change my love for the sport, just gives me something to critically think about.  I’m not a HUGE football fan.  I cheer for my hometeam and watch it on Sundays.  I’m a far bigger video game fanatic, and I’m quite vocal about the sexism in it.  I can’t champion all causes, that would be emotionally exhausting (nor do I have the time and energy).

I found there to be major overtones of racism in the movie Avatar, yet I loved the movie.  I listen to music and pop radio, despite hearing terrible song lyrics now and then that degrade women.  I buy iPhone apps and support Apple despite some apps being sexist in the app store.

My argument is that this is completely apples-to-oranges.  As a friend of mine said:

“I love the movie Superbad. It doesn’t make me a bad feminist who can’t talk about any movie’s sexism because some people feel it’s not cool to female characters.”

It’s exhausting being vocal about feminist causes.  You spend 90% of your time explaining yourself to other people.  There is even so much in-feminism shaming such as “You can’t be a feminist if you believe ____” or “You are a bad feminist because _____” that it is SO DRAINING at times.

Comedy, or lack thereof.

Tonight, I went to a bar.  U31 in North Park, an interesting joint.  There was an African-American on stage who in the hour we were there, told “jokes” about the following subjects:

1. Rape
2. Threesomes
3. Racism
4. Homophobia

Literally every joke, one after another, was pretty goddamn horrifying.  This is comedy?  Any time he referred to women, they were “bitches”.  Anytime he talked about white people, it was looking down on them.  He talked about his own homophobia, and about gay people over and over again in a not-positive sort of way.  He mentioned having a threesome with two girls - one he didn’t care about and just wanted to “impregnate” and the other who had “big ol’ titties and a big ass” that he wanted to date because she was actually hot.

It was a feminists nightmare.  Being that I’m recently identifying feminist, I am noticing this stuff everywhere I go over the last few months and have really had my eyes opened to the kind of terrible discrimination, objectification, and bigotry that goes on around us.  And this is comedy?!  Women in the audience were laughing their asses off, while this guy was saying the difference between a normal guy and a ‘rapist’ is that the rapist is PERSISTENT.  People LAUGHED at this.

What. the. fuck.  Luckily, we bailed after our first beer and moved to a new place where we could enjoy each other’s company without talking over homophobic misogynistic bullshit.

Why Women Have Sex?

This article downright pissed me off today.

“People just assumed the answer was obvious,” Meston says. “To feel good. Nobody has really talked about how women can use sex for all sorts of resources.” She rattles off a list and as she says it, I realise I knew it all along: “promotion, money, drugs, bartering, for revenge, to get back at a partner who has cheated on them. To make themselves feel good. To make their partners feel bad.” Women, she says, “can use sex at every stage of the relationship, from luring a man into the relationship, to try and keep a man so he is fulfilled and doesn’t stray. Duty. Using sex to get rid of him or to make him jealous.”

Women also mate to get the things they think they want – drugs, handbags, jobs, drugs. “The degree to which economics plays out in sexual motivations,” Buss says, “surprised me. Not just prostitution. Sex economics plays out even in regular relationships. Women have sex so that the guy would mow the lawn or take out the garbage. You exchange sex for dinner.” He quotes some students from the University of Michigan. It is an affluent university, but 9% of students said they had “initiated an attempt to trade sex for some tangible benefit”.

The entire point of this article is to show that women don’t have sex solely for romantic intimacy with the ones they love, but instead they USE sex for devious purposes.  I don’t know about you, but I found this pretty goddamn offensive.  Why do men USE sex?  Most people will tell you they have sex so they get sexual satisfaction.  Why can’t women just use it for satisfaction as well?

If I want the trash taken out, I’ll take the damn trash out.  I don’t need to coerce my partner to do it by having sex.

Believe it or not, women as a whole are not these malicious beings using their body parts for nefarious ways.  This article (and the book associated with it) is a piece of trash.