Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Dustin Williamson and Other Stuff


Lamehouse press says they've sold out of Dustin Williamson's Cab Ass'n, but I think you might get lucky if you stumbled into your local, poetry-friendly bookstore or go to AWP. It is a very good chapbook.

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Tonight is Mappy Hour, which is a super cool party for all the people involved in MAPP. I love MAPP.

MAPP is this Saturday, and Mumolo and Morgan's event is at L's Caffe on 24th St. between Bryant and Florida in San Francisco. You should come.
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I think people throw around labels a lot. Labels are almost always inaccurate, often quite dangerous, and usually offensive.

For example, I don't think that magazines like Playboy, which unfortunately perpetuate a body image that is unrealistic and perhaps detrimental to young women's psyches, are misogynist. I don't sense any antipathy from these magazines toward women, which is what misogyny means, a hatred of women. I also don't think that such magazines are sexist because they never profess or even suggest an inequality between the sexes. Objectification is something that happens all the time, and we can say that it is harmful, and we can avoid certain magazines or television shows for doing it, but calling them misogynist does little more than provoke eye-rolling, and that just isn't productive.

I think that calling a man who is comfortable with the way things are, with being attracted and/or preferring the stereotypical ideal of beauty, misogynist is akin to right-winger's calling powerful women feminazi man-haters. Just because you're comfortable with the way things are for you does not mean that you have to hate everyone else. There's no reason to

Is it possible to think that women and men are equal when you are comfortable with objectification?

6 comments:

savage pig barn said...

never professor even suggest

Jenny Drai said...

Out of curiosity, what do you think the female equivalent of objectifying men is compared to how women are objectified in magazines such as Playboy, etcetera?

Sky Jack Morgan said...

Women objectify men constantly. Men's magazines and women's magazines are very similar in content.

Also, the View. Barbara Walters is oppressing men by calling every star on her show "cute."

Men are told every day that, if you don't buy this article of clothing or look this way, no one will ever love you. Men just don't complain about it very often. That's probably because it's socially unacceptable for men to air their feelings of helplessness against social pressures. Men are supposed to be tough. If they aren't tough, women call them babies. If they are too tough, women call them insensitive.

Jenny Drai said...

I guess what I mean, though, is where are the men with fake tits? I think you gloss over the idea of surgically manufactured bodies too quickly in your original post. For example, I make fun of the whole Gerard Butler 300 thing on my blog, plus reference that IMDb message board (scary, I grant you), but I am pretty sure all of those guys in 300 just got buff by doing killer workouts, which falls within the realm of natural, not surgical augmentation. For me, this makes a huge difference as to whether an ideal held up is something actually available through normal means, or whether it requires actually undergoing an invasive (and costly and possibly replete with side effects) procedure.

savage pig barn said...

if men are tough, they can afford it. if men are not tough, they can also afford it.

the commerce of objectification is of what the objectifier can afford.

women aren't asked to be at the originating end of this equation.

Sky Jack Morgan said...

Men get all sorts of cosmetic crap done from forearm implants to electrolysis to botox. ummm, penis enlargements and reductions anyone? Viagra, Cialis, all sorts of shit men are supposed to do because women are obsessed with penis.

I watched the Gilmore girls this week with a house full of women, and they commented on the men from their hair to their triceps to their wardrobes to the way they spoke. It's laughable, really, because I've never heard men sit there and critique every woman that came on the screen like women do.

Women think that men are machines. They are treated and handled like machines. They think that men are mass produced while they are one-of-a-kind flowers or something. It's offensive. I think men have a much higher respect for women than women do for men. . . generally speaking of course.