A Stripper Reviews the Saints in Hitman: Absolution
So what did you think about the trailer overall?
I think it’s an excuse to show violence against women by making them the initiators of violence. It’s as if the makers of this video game are saying, “Hey, these women asked for it. It’s okay to kill them and beat them up because they’re the ‘dregs of society.’” It’s as if [the game is saying] they are subhuman and deserve to die. But that’s not who they are, it’s what they do for a living; stripping is a job, not an identity.
Someone is doing one of those chapter-chapter dissection of an Anita Blake book. Cool. No beef with that, these things are usually entertaining to read. Except–
Three: You are a bitch [Anita Blake]. And not the good, awesome, Sigorney Weaver kind of bitch, either. You are everything that people hate about women.
We call that internalized misogyny, friend, and I’m not talking about the internalized misogyny of Anita Blake the fictional character. She also complains that Anita dresses like a hooker and praises a different series for having its female protagonist be under some alpha asshole’s paternalistic protection and how that is awesome.
And then you have Bran, aka the Marrok, the Alpha of All Alphas in the United States. You do not fuck with Bran. Bran helped raise Mercy when Mercy’s mom realized she couldn’t handle having a coyote for a daughter. Adam is scary. Stefan is scarier. Mercy isn’t all that scary at all, but you don’t fuck with her because if you’re fucking with her, you’re fucking with Bran, and as I said, you don’t fuck with Bran.
Here is what I don’t get about ex-fans of the series: out of all the things to criticize about Anita Blake, they go after “she dresses like a hooker,” “she’s a Mary Sue” and “this is a fucked-up self-insert and let’s speculate about Laurell K Hamilton’s sex life” (yes, they’re coming this close to suggesting that she might have been raped). It is possible to say the writing is shit, Hamilton is racist, or that the books are chock-full of internalized misogyny… but no, “she dresses like a hooker” is what people decide is a valid concern. Really?
Caitlin Moran is shitty, as per usual, this time with a nice bit of “this is how easy you are to rape” rhetoric. Another Angry Woman righteously took her to task.
According to Moran, high heels function as some sort of rapist cowbell, advertising that there is a lone woman wandering abroad, ripe for the picking. I’ve never lain awake listening to the sound of heels and thinking about how easily I could rape that person, and I’m pretty sure vast swathes of the population share this nocturnal activity because we don’t believe the problem is what a woman wears.
Perhaps Caitlin Moran has been listening to some of the criticism levelled at her, though, by her attempt at a dimly intersectional analysis, over which the wail of a sad trombone sounds. Rape culture, unfortunately, will not be solved by Moran’s clever manifesto of All Women Shall Have Taxis. What if the taxi driver is a rapist? It’s not unheard of: recall, for example, the Black Cab Rapist who earned his moniker after raping women who had got into his taxi.
Dear Author is doing another round of hand-wringing over “mainstream respectability” for romance.
Because it’s not just about Romance as a genre. It’s also about (primarily) women writing about the inner lives of other women. It’s about validating books that take as their subject matter the emotional journey to love, even and especially when that love comes in a form that challenges the social status quo (e.g. m/m or f/f Romance). It’s about legitimating the domestic elements of fiction and appreciating the reality that for many people in the world, love was and is still a revolutionary concept (e.g.multiracial/multicultural Romance).
This is some manipulative rot. Imagine saying “SFF should be more respected mainstream because MINORITY AUTHORS WORK IN IT” when both you and I know that SFF is still dominated by straight white people. When you attempt to characterize a genre, any genre, as defined by minorities (when in actuality that genre is 98% majority and upholding the status quo) you are a lying shit and appropriating minorities to serve a majority concern because you want to pretend your favorite toy is a legitimate adult’s serious business. “I don’t read genre fiction because I enjoy stupid shit,” you crow. “Oh no, I read it because it’s progressive and full of minorities!” Please.
Oh, and what is that last line about how love is still a revolutionary concept for many people in the world followed by ”multiracial/multicultural”? Is that an “enlightened liberal” with a savior complex freak on? Can someone be so vapid as to believe anyone anywhere–and the phrasing suggests benighted thirdworlders–needs romance novels to teach them what’s love? (The targets she has in mind would probably be Indians and Middle Easterners, due to western perception of arranged marriage and Islam. There’s a specific racist dog whistle being blown.)
Mark Gerrits (@MarkGerrits)
/ December 18, 2012The optimist in me likes to think that maybe that last bit is about interracial couples in western society, just worded very badly if that’s the case. I don’t know if that’s a common theme in romance novels though.
acrackedmoon
/ December 18, 2012It pinged me because of this bit specifically: “for many people in the world, love was and is still a revolutionary concept.” That’s usually the kind of phrasing used when a self-proclaimed liberal wants to talk about those poor benighted thirdworlders etc.
layogenic
/ December 20, 2012It reads to me pretty clearly as a lofty jab at arranged marriages and similar cultural mores.
acrackedmoon
/ December 20, 2012She backpedals hard, but the backpedaling is pretty incoherent. Not very good at hiding her savior complex.
layogenic
/ December 21, 2012ImeanI’mtotallynotappropriatingortellingpeoplehowtolivetheirlivesbut isn’t twu wuv beeaauutifuul? Haha, well, I’m maybe a little jaded when it comes to the idea of romance (other than the genre), but it definitely seems like, among other things, she’s not really examining the social programming that makes her look at that kind of love a certain way, either.
Matthew Montgomery (@mmmontycarlo)
/ December 18, 2012Maybe romance fiction (not Romance fiction, as the author puts it) wouldn’t be so ghettoized if there wasn’t such a naked profit grab dispersed on the very surface of the objects. I loathe paradigmatic romance genre in the same way I loathe paradigmatic fantasy fiction. It’s all the same watery detritus that clogs the rivers of artistic progress. Plus, there’s something extremely icky about all these white middle class women writing countless self-published stories about men falling in love with men. And it’s superlatively icky when only one of those two men are white.
The thrust of her defense is fairly persuasive, but the conclusion she reaches is woefully wrongheaded. Yes, art and fiction should be multifaceted in its representations of all experiences in order to familiarize or even problematize social order. But she points to a pointedly paradigmatic formulation of genre in order to make this effort. Standard fiction is not going to do the job, man! Plus, there’s already a successful imprint of female writing that’s doing some of the work: Virago Press. However, it’s decidedly not universal as the bulk of its authors are white ladies. Still… that’s something…?
R.M. Jones (@Rmjonesc13)
/ December 18, 2012Huh, that’s strange. None of the stuff I’m working on is romance and yet I have a f/f couple and a interracial couple (although sadly, I am not apparently as enlightened as the Romance Author for instead of a white woman with a Noble Savage Native American to express the WAYS LOVE CAN OVERCOME, it’s a mixed race woman with a Nerdy Native American. Obviously I’m doing it wrong). It’s almost like any genre can not be douches about how they portray love and romance, and even break the status quo! (And erm, reading over this makes me think it sounds like I’m asking for a cookie, but I’m blanking out on any books that I have read that have similar situations because I obviously need to start picking up novels again, so yeah. Disclaimer: This is not “look how awesome I am!” and more “Seriously, other people want a cookie for their genre for this? This is like, normal. Or should be. Because that’s actually how our world is? It has gay people and interracial couples who are normal? /shrugs)
Honestly I have started rolling my eyes about a lot of this Romance Genre hand wringing. Because except in incredibly rare situations, so much of it is exploitive, and does more to reestablish the status quo of the kyriarchy then anything else. I recently gave romance a chance, got some recommendations from the Smart Bitches Trashy Books site, and even with what I got there was so much wish fulfillment that I would just stare at the book at times and go “really?” And even though I requested non-rage inducing ones with stupid heroines, and perhaps some lack of misogeny and gender essentialism please? Heh, yeah, wasn’t gonna happen. The writing and flow was good, but dear lord the MESSAGES.
Of course, I also avoid most fantasy and… really, over the years I’ve just become less of a genre reader and more “Oh, I heard this specific book ACTUALLY HANDLED THINGS WELL! And is GREAT WRITING! Be still my heart!”
Chelsea Gaither
/ December 18, 2012Hi. I’m the owner of the blog in question. I am more than a little flummoxed that you took those quotes so far out of context.
Especially since what I am criticing with that book is, among many other things, Anita accepting responsibility for her rape. Mercy Thompson, the character of the other series, was brought in as a comparison because she did NOT allow herself to assume she was responsible.
In the first quote, I am criticizing Anita for retaliating against a cop trying to prosecute one of her rapists by accusing him of being a bigot and claiming he is only being a bigot because his wife is having an affair with the demographic she claims he hates. She defends her accusers and attacks her defenders using the lowest possible verbal blow. Yes, I called her a bitch. She literally said “so what woman in your life is sleeping with a vampire” when her cop friend told her that sleeping with someone who has a history of criminal activity, who stalked her through nine books, might not be smart. Maybe the word choice is a trigger, but as a woman, I see another woman pulling that crap I don’t want to use my nice words. It is inflicting deliberate emotional damage on someone who loves her platonically, and that is wrong by any standards.If it were a dude, I’d call him awful names too. You don’t get a pass on unwarrented emotional abuse. Even when you are a lady.
In the second quote, Im comparing the pack system of the Mercy Thompson universe to the Anitaverse. Mercy is not in the pack system, she tries actively to change it and make it easier to be a female were wolf, and being Bran’s foster daughter has made nasty things think twice about hurting her. If they decide to to it anyway, Mercy rescues herself long before Bran gets involved. There is a big difference between being protected by a man and being under a man’s thumb. In the former case, they’ll be worried, but you’ll go do it anyway, and they will tell you how much the thought of you dying scared them, because they love you. Men can also be protected by women, and Mercy does a lot of that.
Also, in what universe is it not okay for a man to go nuts protecting his daughter?
What ex fans of the series criticize is how stupid the writing has become. Anita dresses like a hooker when she goes on police business, wearing things so risque that she can’t get her gun out without flashing everybody on the force. This is not how any woman, including a hooker, would dress for any event that does not involve sex. This creates scenes where Anita gets her spike heels caught in the chest of her opponant and must let the whole room full of cops know she isn’t wearing underwear. That happened in the latest book. I criticise these things because her author thinks that to be an empowered woman you have to dress for easy access sex or verbally attack your long term friends when they tell you your boyfriend might be abusing you. That you have to deny your femininity and showcase your sex appeal to be worthy of a man’s respect. This is a series that trivializes rape into “well, if she orgasms she asked for it” with a main character who has a literally uncontrollable sex drive, so as to facilitate the many many non con scenes that populate the book. As in Anita must feed off of sex to survive. This is not empowering for women. It would be degrading if it were real, but because it is fiction, it is just plain stupid.
Also, Anita is the character who brings an under age teenager into her man harem in the later books. If you want to Stand up for a fictional character, you might want to pick one that isn’t a horrible person.
geeklicia
/ December 18, 2012Hi, I’m a sex worker. Please stop throwing around “hooker” and “dresses like a hooker” because there is no “dress code” for sex work. And hooker is an offensive term. So fuck off basically, is what I’m saying?
acrackedmoon
/ December 18, 2012It is a misogynistic insult. I’m not sure why you are so baffled that when you use misogynistic language, someone might call it that? “You’re everything people hate about women” doesn’t help, either. It’s not about nice or not-nice language, you know? Up there I called Caitlin Moran shitty and someone else a lying shit.
Quick! Which gendered slur can you direct at a man that has a history of anti-men oppression behind it? What institutionized sexism do men suffer? What are false equivalencies?
In a universe where an author chooses to write her fiction in such a way to reinforce patriarchy, perhaps. Infantilizing a woman as an object and possession (even to protect) is still sexism, and still infantilization. If it comes to that, as far as I know Patricia Briggs is terrible and the Mercy Thompson series overflowing with misogyny (plus cultural appropriation).
There are sex workers reading this blog, FYI. Scale back on that rhetoric and maybe drop the weird idea that there’s such a thing as “hooker wear” or whatever it is that you believe exists.
The thought that I’m some kind of Anita Blake defender is sheer comedy. I just don’t feel like calling female characters “bitch” (unless the character is literally a female dog, and I don’t mean a weresomeshit) or speculate about a female author’s personal life, the latter of which is a thing lkh_lashouts really, really loves to do and it’s pretty fucking gross.
emilytherabidreader
/ December 21, 2012Umm…even if you ignore the issue of “bitch”, there’s still the issue of the second half of the quoted bit (and yes, I read your whole article) – “You are everything that people hate about women.” It rather throws your argument that you’d say the same things about a guy out the window. I mean, if it was a male character, with the exact same behavior, you wouldn’t point out that his behavior is everything people hate about women. Or men.
And additionally, regardless of the actual merits of the Mercy Thompson books, the way you present it takes away a lot of its ability to serve as any kind of contrast. I, personally, enjoy them and I think that some of the problems seen early on with the gender issue get better later in the series – but if your blurb was all I had to go on, I wouldn’t bother picking it up. You present her as basically hiding and using the threat of retribution from Bran to fight her battles instead of what I’ve always seen as her avoiding the use of that, to whatever degree of success she has, and playing on the coyote-trickster mythology a bit to stay just far enough inside the rules for people not to notice until the last minute that she’s not doing at ALL what they thought she was ‘supposed’ to. But if she spent the books using Bran’s reputation, I wouldn’t be at all interested. It’s why, as a matter of fact, I don’t like the Alpha&Omega books as much. As far as they further the plot in the larger world, beyond Mercy, they’re great, but Anna gets pretty annoying as the abused/submissive-ish woman.
I’m not usually very perceptive of gender bias (I got very lucky with my parents, who raised me to never even question that I was just as good as anyone else and could do whatever I wanted, so when I encounter any resistance I either don’t notice, am very confused, or just think it’s personal until someone points it out), but I think that, in at least this case, your word choices worked way against you.
Next Friday
/ December 18, 2012“Women writing for women”? Reducing women’s emotional journeys to finding love and embracing domesticity? That’s some service.
the twisted spinster
/ December 18, 2012Women serving the patriarchy by policing other women, making sure their sisters don’t “get out of line” by making sure they focus on making men the center of their lives.
layogenic
/ December 18, 2012I really wanted to find the hyperbole in this, and yet…
Next Friday
/ December 19, 2012I guess we won’t be invited to join this ‘wise women club’ any time soon.
magpiewhotypes
/ December 20, 2012hey you guys I’m not wearing shoes today, because a guy might hear the soles hit the pavement and know that there was a woman in existence near him and then he’d rape me and it would be MY FAULT for making noises outside my home.
ladies and gentlemen, CAITLAN MORAN
the twisted spinster
/ December 21, 2012Oh gosh yes, her bizarre idea that women should creep around silently on quiet shoes lest they alert men who will, of course, have to rape them. I just… she really didn’t think that one through, did she.
saajanpatel
/ December 21, 2012Tying into how romance fucks people over in real life, here’s a really disgusting article where a supposed rape counselor describes another woman as talking and walking like a “fuck”:
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/nice-guys-commit-rape-too/#2ZzjImetWwMFzccG.99
This whole phenomenon of pseudo-consent is revolting.
saajanpatel
/ December 21, 2012Here’s the quote:
” But if something walks like a fuck and talks like fuck, at what point are we supposed to understand that it’s not a fuck?”
magpiewhotypes
/ December 21, 2012What I don’t get in that case is that the author is writing about mixed signals, yet the rape case doesn’t really have anything to do with mixed signals–the woman wasn’t giving out any signals because she was asleep!
There’s some sort of message in there about using sex as a marketing tool and sexual ignorance but the overriding message is that if a woman talks about sex, she’s then given up any right to consent.
saajanpatel
/ December 21, 2012Yeah, a friend showed this to me and it really skeeved me out how the author goes out.
The whole “society made my nice guy friend a rapist” argument falls apart because the woman wasn’t conscious. And it seems really easy to excuse any date rapist via this bullshit.
gefnsdottir
/ December 28, 2012I just finished reading the first Anita Blake book.
People kept telling me “No no, the series is great, it’s just after book nine that it starts going downhill.”
And I finished it and was like “WTF is wrong with all these people?!” It’s not great, it’s not good, it’s complete and utter bullshit.
Seriously, look at this quote:
“He glided to me, just like I wanted him to. He put a hand on my shoulder. I screamed in his face as loud as I could. He hesitated for just a heartbeat. I shoved the knife blade between his ribs. It was sharp and thin, and I shoved it in hilt deep. His body stiffened, leaning into me. Eyes wide and surprised. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. He toppled to the floor, fingers grabbing at air.”
Seriously? UF isn’t known for it’s stellar writing, but this is just painful to read.