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the love/lust issue

fall 14 | no. 64

28

features
the madame butterfly effect
Tracing the history of a fetish.

columns

17

butts, beefcakes, and burt

by patricia pa r k

34 lets get digital

The prejudicesand the potentialof gaming

and erotic roleplaying.
by katherine cro s s

40 the questioning continuum

Forty years of Playgirl covers.

by ly d i a cra i g

20 falling in self-love

One comics artists self-help journey.

by yu m i sa ku gawa

22 its not me, its you

Seeking sexuality as a lifelong process.

The absent dialogue around

fat womens sexuality.

by joshunda sa n d e r s

by l i sa c . k n i s e ly

45 blowing the budget

Feminist porn start-ups are getting spanked when it

comes to finances.
by lynsey g

50 scandal-less

Why are female politicians immune to sex scandals?

by hinda ma n d e l l

58 lost in the amazon

Are digital booksellers suppressing self-published erotica?

by kate l ark i n g

66 cast aside

The recent tv rise of the black mistress.

by phoebe ro b i n so n

73 rock of ages

in every issue

3
4
5
26
61
69
76
80

letter from the hq

letters + comments
love it/shove it
the bitch list
book reviews
screen reviews
music reviews
adventures in feministory
by j es s f i n k

Ellen Williss daughter discusses her mothers latest

anthology and ongoing influence.
interview by a lyx a n d ra v es e y
cov e r a n d p h oto this page :
k r i st i n ro gers brown

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

Founders Lisa Jervis, Benjamin Shaykin, Andi Zeisler

Editorial/Creative Director Andi Zeisler andi@b-word.org
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contributors
Yumi Sakugawa (Falling in Self-Love,
page 20) is a comic-book artist and the author
of I Think I Am in Friend-Love with You and Your
Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the
Universe. She is a regular comic contributor to
The Rumpus and Wonderhowto.com, and her
short comic stories Mundane Fortunes for the Next Ten Billion Years
and Seed Bomb were selected as Notable Comics of 2012 and 2013
respectively by the Best American Comics series editors. A graduate
of the fine art program of University of California, Los Angeles, she
lives in southern California. Learn more at yumisakugawa.com.
Patricia Park (The Madame Butterfly
Effect, page 28) is a writer whose work has
appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian,
Slice Magazine, and others. She was a former
Fulbright scholar to South Korea and has
taught creative writing at Boston University.
Her debut novel Re Jane, a Korean-American retelling of Charlotte
Bronts Jane Eyre, will be published by Penguin/Viking in 2015.
She was born and raised in New York City, where she currently
lives. Follow her work at patriciapark.com.
Lynsey G (Blowing the Budget, page 45)
is a journalist, blogger, poet, and writer who
focuses on sex, feminism, and pornography.
Shes written for outlets as diverse as Juggs,
xoJane, McSweeneys Internet Tendency,
TOSKA, Menacing Hedge, and Luna Luna
Magazine, among others. Shes still on a high after winning a 2013
Feminist Porn Award for her short film Consent: Society and is now
at work blogging at her own website (lynseyg.com), finishing her
graphic novel Tracy Queen, and editing a poetry chapbook about
Audrey Munson.
Phoebe Robinson (Cast Aside, page 66)
is a stand-up comedian, writer, and performer
living in New York City. She has appeared on
Comedy Centrals Broad City, FXs Totally
Biased, and NBCs Last Comic Standing.
Behind the scenes, shes a writer for MTVs
Girl Code and the VH1 pilot Chateau Buteau. When not working
on television projects, she writes for Glamour.com and contributes
to the New York Times, VanityFair.com, xoJane, Bitch, and The Daily
Beast. If youre in NYC, you can catch her at 9:30 p.m. on the last
Tuesday of every month at UCB East hosting Blaria LIVE!, the show
that spawned from her popular, Huffington Postapproved blog
Blaria (a.k.a. Black Daria).
Perrin (illustrations, pages 58, 66, and 73)
is a designer, illustrator, mover, and shaker.
Her work has been recognized by the Society
of Illustrators, American Illustration, and
3X3 Magazine. She is originally from a small
harbor town on the northern coast of Long
Island. After earning her MFA in illustration
practice from the Maryland Institute College
of Art in 2013, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she now
practically lives in Lake Erie. She can often be found obsessively
making art and spending time with her beloved rabbit companion,
Blanche DuBun. See her portfolio at madebyperrin.com.
Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

letter from the hQ

couple of weeks before this issue went to press, I spotted

a copy of Psychology Today at the grocery store. In yellow
letters against a bright papaya background, I read the
cover line: Love and Lustcoincidentally, the theme of the very
issue we were scrambling to put to bed.
Usually I get upset (read: overreact and yelp as if in pain) if I have a
suspicion that well be scooped. But I wasnt even mad at Psychology
Today for pushing out a Love/Lust issue right before we did. It wasnt
just the slim, fit, hetero white couple on the cover letting me know
the magazine would be handling the topic in a very different way than
Bitch did. Its that everyone covers these two topics. Cosmopolitan
has long been infamous for churning out sex tips that blow his mind.
The weekly Modern Love personal essay in the New York Times
has become a widely (if often guiltily) read favorite. And gossip items
from the mainstream to the long-buried (hellooo, Warren G. Harding!)
attest to an endless fascination with whos wooing and doing what
with whom.
Magazines and newspapers, decades of pop songs, and centuries
of poetry, art, and writing have been devoted to the topics of love
and lustwhat defines them, how they differ, how they mix. So what
can Bitch bring to the table thats truly new? Well, plenty, as it
turns outBitch contributors wowed me with unique approaches
to what makes our blood pump and our hearts thump.
From the potential of erotic roleplaying in the gaming world (Lets
Get Digital, page 34), to the politics of dating while fat (Its Not
Me, Its You, page 22) to looking out for #1 (Falling in Self-Love,
page 20) well look at many facets of love and relationships. On the
lust front, well uncover the origins of Asian fetishism and what it
looks like today (The Madame Butterfly Effect, page 28); examine
how Amazon is cracking down on self-published erotica (Lost in the
Amazon, page 58); and discover why creators of feminist porn face
especially high hurdles when it comes to getting their businesses
off the ground (Blowing the Budget, page 45). All that plus living
without a label, tv mistresses, Playgirl magazine, and more.
Topics like love and lust will always be a wellspring for thought,
feminist and otherwise. I hope you enjoy the issuemaybe even
love itand I hope youll let me know what you think. Our letters
page is full of thoughtful feedback this issuebut to be quite honest,
its sometimes hard to fill it. I wanted to give extra encouragement
to sit down and send your feedback. As someone who loves sounding off online, I know its getting harder to find the time to write
out your feedback. But Im just letting you know, if you do write a
thoughtful note about something youve read here, theres a pretty
good chance it will be published.
This issue is also a special one because we have a new name on the
mastheadAmy Lam, whom were thrilled to welcome as our first
associate editor. Bitch is growing, thanks to readers and supporters
like you, and we cant wait to bring you more smart, braveand
dare we say lustworthy?content. Kjerstin Johnson

Look for our About the cover feature online:

bitchmedia.org/about-the-love-lust-cover

fa l l . 1 4

issue no.64

bitch | 3

letters

& COMMENTS

One things for certain: the world does not

need another [UFC President] Dana White
(who, until he recognized the money-making
potential in fighters like Ronda Rousey and
Miesha Tate, vowed that women would never
fight in the UFC). Another Shannon Knapp,
on the other hand (an Invicta for boxing),
that would really be something. Call the new
promotion Grandchamp. I, for one, will be
watching. Stephanie Cotton, via e-mail

love for dr. lahiri

Pulling no punches
Many thanks for Sarah Browns article,
Against the Ropes, and the powerful accompanying photographs by Delilah Montoya
(no. 63). A quick story: A friend with whom
I watch a lot of football once told me that he
thought womens sports were generally pretty
boring. I disagreed, heatedly, while privately
admitting that I had no idea. Besides a few
Olympic events, Id never watched female
athletes compete. I made a point to start paying attention, and although watching men
box still makes me squeamish, Ive become
a big fan of female fighters. Why the difference? Is it the novelty? Maybe, in part. But
the idea that Theres no way for women to
express that kind of feeling out there in the
worldand that for this reason, their fights
are better, more dynamicis a refrain I hear
again and again from other fans and from
the athletes themselves. The unique hurdles
that female boxers facetiny paychecks, few
televised bouts, insufficient sponsporship
opportunitiesstretch for miles, and its
tough to know how best to right this wrong.
4|

bitch f e m i n i s t

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

I love The Mindy Projects Mindy Lahiri in all

her flawed glory. Mindy Kalings section in
Tough Love (no. 63) got me thinking about
how rare it is to see an openly acknowledged
second-generation American woman depicted
on tv. (The only other notable one coming to
mind is Margaret Chos character, Margaret
Kim, on All-American Girl.) Kalings Say
What? moment [having an aspirational id
listing her as blue-eyed and blond] resonated
with me in a deep way: When I was a child, my
Chinese immigrant mother told me and my
sister how she would try to make her wide, flat
nose look skinnier by pinching it and sucking
it in. Having a white nose was, quite literally,
an aspiration for her. So for me, Dr. Lahiri is
a refreshing satire on how internalized racism
moves through us. Yes, Id like to see characters and shows take it further in unpacking
how damaging these beliefs can be. But first
can we get some more complicated, strong,
smart women of color on screen? Because
Mindy Kaling cant be expected to do it alone.
Erica Bestpitch, via e-mail

in praise of chica lit

I probably havent held a high opinion of
chick lit (which I liked immediately better
when redubbed chica lit) mostly because
the language or style has rarely spoken
to me, and because I, too, suffer from the
academic hangover that relegates commercial fiction to a lower status of literature.
Im grateful to Bitch, Aya de Len, and Sofia
Quintero for sharing this interview [Mass
Market, no. 63] and making me consider
this genre more thoughtfully.
The characters and topics Quintero and
de Len discussedhealth care, sex work,

heists/thievery, and capers where women

of color win for all the right reasons and get
away with ithelped me recognize I was
not only unfairly dismissing a genre, but
missing out on plots and stories that Ive
been seeking.
I felt heartened to learn about not only
Quintero and de Lens writing but a list
of six additional authors I can explore. Ive
shared some of these titles and authors with
professor friends who teach, and after reading
a few I look forward to integrating excerpts of
them into my own curriculum so my students
can have the opportunity to discover for themselves the universal through the specific.
ncpefley, via bitchmedia.org

selling vivian maier

In the review of Finding Vivian Maier (screen
reviews, no. 63), I had been hoping that Bitch
would take a more critical look at the story
behind the story. Codirector John Maloof
discovered Maiers photography when the
contents of her storage locker were sold off
while she was incapacitated in hospital. With
this discovery came the beginnings of the
narrative Maloof needed to drum up interest
in whats become the Vivian Maier Industry.
Along with other collectors and curators, he
worked to put a story into placeone that
uses up a worrying amount of stereotypes
about single women and outsider artists
and treats her like a bug pinned to a board.
Since that storage-locker auction, both the
subject of Maier as a person as well as that
of the photography she produced have been
picked over and turned into commodities.
None of this is particularly new for female
artists, and as the prices of Maiers work
climb higher more questions need to be
asked about just what is being sold, how
it has been presented, and what level of
exploitation is going on. Alissa Chadburn
described the film as artfully packaged in
her review. Its what the package is hiding
that viewers need to think about.
Margaret Howie, via e-mail
We know you have opinionsshare them with us!
E-mail us at magazine@b-word.org or respond
at bitchmedia.org.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

love it
SHOVE IT
not exactly Gang affiliated

ollywood films are full-throttle

entertainment, replete with heroes,
villains, dance numbers, and dramatic
dialogues. With an all-star lineup including
superstar Madhuri Dixit-Nene and her longtime Bollywood rival Juhi Chawla, the new
film Gulaab Gang is no different. Released
in March 2014, it breaks the traditional Bollywood mold by not featuring a male lead,
instead casting two women in the roles of
both hero and villain.
Directed by first-time Bollywood director
Soumik Sen, the story is set in one of the poorest regions of the country, the Indian state of
Uttar Pradesh, and recounts the adventures of
a feminist, stick-wielding, vigilante groupthe
eponymous Gulaab Gang. The group, led by
Dixit-Nenes fearsome character, Rajjo, is a
merciless pack of women seeking retribution
in the face of political and personal injustice
faced by the poor and disenfranchised residents of their villages, often women. Rajjo and
her gang dont shy away from using intimidation and violence, wielding lathis (wooden
sticks) as they visit corrupt town leaders or
abusive husbands and oppressive families.
There are some marvelous moments in the
film. Chawlas chilling portrayal of Sumitra
Devi, a hardened and power-hungry politician
who has gaggles of corrupt men to do her
bidding, is quite delicious given that her claim
to fame heretofore was playing saccharine,
ditzy leading ladies obsessed with landing a
Prince Charming. The film meets an anemic
standard of feminism by casting women in
the lead roles, and including some incredible
Matrix-like sequences of pink sariclad women
felling burly men left and right. Despite these
fist-pump-worthy moments, the film falls prey
to a frustratingly common trope in Bollywood
by portraying one woman as the impediment
to anothers womans liberation.
The real controversy, however, is the films
relationship with the real-life Rajjoa woman
named Sampat Paland the real Gulabi

Sampat Pal took the filmmakers to Indias

high court, asserting that the film is an
unauthorized and negative portrayal.
Gang, on which the film is undoubtedly
based. Sampat Pal took the filmmakers to
Indias high court, asserting that the film is an
unauthorized and negative portrayal of her
and her group, and that it was made without
her consultation or permission. The court
placed a stay on the films release as it deliberated, only to overturn the stay, believing
Soumik Sens assertion that the story is fiction, Rajjos character is an amalgam of many
women leaders, and the film is not based on
any real person or group. The filmmakers
agreed to add a disclaimer to the opening
credits and released the film on schedule.
Yet one look at any of the many interviews and documentaries made about
Sampat Pal makes it clear that the filmmakers claim to fiction is disingenuous.
(Sen didnt even bother to change the
name of the group in the title.)
This is the greatest disappointment of
Gulaab Gang. Intended to be a film about

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

womens empowerment, it has, in effect,

ignored the call for accountability made by
the women who made it possiblean extraordinary group who deserve to be known on
their own terms. Founded in 2006, the group
now boasts tens of thousands of women
members. At a time when rescue narratives
about Asian women abound, these women
are working within and against a patriarchal
culture with rigid caste divisions, domestic
violence, child marriages, dowry demands,
and female illiteracy.
As for the Bollywood film, you dont have
to dismiss it entirelyit is undoubtedly
masala-laden and satisfying. But if you watch
anything, watch Nishtha Jains recentand
authorizeddocumentary Gulabi Gang
instead, sure to be just as (if not more)
satisfying, with the immeasurable bonus
of hearing Sampat Pals powerful voice
and real, incomparable story.
Eesha Pandit
fa l l . 1 4

issue no.64

bitch | 5

love it

SHOVE IT

uncle sam wants you

but not your hair

n March 31, 2014, the

U.S. Army updated
Regulation 670-1.
Included in these regulations
regarding tattoos, grooming,
and hairstyles were a ban on
dreadlocks, a ban on multiple
braids more than a quarter of
an inch in diameter, and requirements that cornrows be uniform
and no wider than a quarter of
an inchregulations which many
black women in the service are
calling discriminatory.

enlisted women in the army

were black. Despite our growing presence, the new rules
and regulations appear particularly harsh for those with
textured hair.
In fact, spaces where black
women are allowed to express
ourselves are swiftly being whittled from few to none, and not
just when it comes to serving
our country. Coworkers petting,
touching, and fondling black
hair in the workplace are tales

another question, but Im starting to wonder if we can ever

really achieve it.
Hair has long been a vehicle
for expectations of black bodies to adhere to white beauty
standards. Hair relaxer is currently a billion-dollar industry,
and a common go-to for black
women trying to look like our
reflections in the media. With
the exception of the recent rise
of black actresses with natural
hair (okay, actress, singular

it is perpetuated through daily

microaggressions that exist on
a much smaller scale and in the
private sphere of home, neighborhood, and workplace.
If youve ever seen a picture
of Angela Davis, you know that
black womens hair is a platform
for expression of self-love, empowerment, and prowess. Its
clear to us why our frosand
other expressions of feminist
ideologyare being suppressed.
When black women feel that

Hair has long been a vehicle for expectations of black bodies

to adhere to white beauty standards.
my friends and I routinely share.
Natural hair styled out, down, or
braided is often subject to more
than the second glance in the office. Dealing with conceptions of
natural hair as unprofessional
is common in black circlesthe
same verbiage used in the armys defense of the rules. What
professional actually means is

u.s. army

As if the constant mediainduced pressure and policing

of black womens bodies wasnt
enough, these military requirements have shown that our
agencyand our selfhoodare
both in jeopardy if one intends
to serve the nation. In 2011, the
Pew Research Center reported
that 31 percent of all newly

6|

bitch f e m i n i s t

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

looking at you, Lupita), relaxed

hair has always been the iconic
style of black women in the
spotlight, from Lena Horne to
Kerry Washington. The systemic policing of what black women
should or should not look like is
cyclical, and while current policing of black female bodies may
be writ large in the military,

straight hair is professional

and natural hair is an inherent
statement in need of silencing
we feel that our bodies cant
simply exist, but instead are
constantly on trial in the court
of public opinion.
While the new army regulations prompted petitions
calling for a revision of the
rules, updates have yet to be
made. Either way, for many
black women these rules have
existed for generationsjust
not on paper. We must actively
address underlying patriarchal
and racist issues that cast the
black female body as degenerate and suspect. Challenging
the ban on the U.S. Army hair
regulations is a step toward
reinstating our bodies as our
ownin the military, in the
media, and in daily life.
Mali D. Collins

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

love it

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decoding gender discrepancy

in two new tech shows

wo new shows on the tech industryAMCs Halt and Catch

Fire and HBOs Silicon Valleyare tapping into an industry
that has generally been ignored by popular culture. Halt
and Catch Fire is set in the early 1980s in Texass Silicon Prairie
and focuses on the fictional software company Cardiff Electric,
which is vying to get in on the personal-computer boom. Silicon
Valley centers on a group of male programmers in present-day
Palo Alto, California, who live and work together in a hacker hostel in hopes of using Pied Piper, their data-compression software
company, to collectively become the next Steve Jobs.
While the shows differ in era, genre, and quality (Halt and Catch
Fire could be AMCs new Mad Men, while Silicon Valley is slightly
more intelligent than The Big Bang Theory), one thing thats worth
examining is their approach to gender in tech. Although both
shows have only aired for a single season, the discrepancy in how
each depicts women programmers is stark.
Whereas Halt and Catch Fire features two prominent female
programmers, Silicon Valley features none. In fact, when the lack
of women in tech is discussed by the programmers of Silicon Valley, its only in the context of the Palo Alto dating pool.
Halt and Catch Fires female programmers are dynamic and
interesting. Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) is a computer prodigy handpicked out of her college lecture class of, not surprisingly,
mostly male students. In many ways Howe is the star of Halt and
Catch Fireshes Cardiff Electrics hope to stay in the race against
industry dominator IBM. Contrast Howe with computer engineer
Donna Clark (Kerry Bish), the mom who cant have it allshe
works and raises her children, while her husband, also a Cardiff
Electric employee, is largely absent.
By contrast, the only recurring female character on Silicon Valley
is Monica (Amanda Crew), an assistant to the venutre capitalist
funding Pied Piper. Viewers glimpse one female programmer on
Silicon Valley when the Pied Piper guys help her with her software. Its later revealed that shes not really a programmer at all,
and was only using the men to better her company, implying not
only that women cannot be programmers, but that women in the
tech industry are frauds.
So a Reagan-era show has more female programmers than one
set in 2014? Unfortunately, this isnt just another Hollywood misstep; its a reflection of todays tech industry.
According to a 2011 report from the Commerce Departments
Economic and Statistics Administration, only 27 percent of computer science (CS) jobs are held by women. This number is actually less than that of the Halt and Catch Fire era, with a high of 38
percent in the mid-1980s. While the percentage of women across
STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
has increased during this same time period, in CS it has decreased:
Today, women account for only 20 percent of undergraduate CS
majors, down from 36 percent in 1986. (The racial diversity is dismal as well: African American and Latina women combined earn
just 5 percent of all CS degrees.) This is particularly noteworthy
Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

Texas Tech: Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) of Halt and Catch Fire .
California Guys: The bros of Silicon Valley.

considering recent statistics from the Level Playing Field Institute:

STEM jobs are the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economywith
71 percent revolving around computing.
This is why characters like Howe and Clark matter, and why
Silicon Valley is missing a huge opportunity. As the first television
shows addressing the booming tech world, its important that
women are depicted as more than love interests, assistants, or
duplicitous figures. In addition, given the overwhelming whiteness of the tech industry, they should be promoting more women
of color programmers. Only one of the six programmers of Pied
Piper is a person of color, and Cardiff Electric has no nonwhite
programmers to date.
As the leading shows in this genre, both have the opportunity
to inspire possible programmers across backgrounds. Computer
science jobs were once considered womens work, akin to clerical
professions, but as technology has advanced, women and people
of color have been left behind. There is no reason that the next star
of a tech-focused TV show or movieor even the next Steve Jobs
shouldnt be a women. Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

fa l l . 1 4

issue no.64

bitch | 7

love it

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ecstasyofacripple.tumblr.com

Portrait of an artist

womannude, draped in flowers

and veilsis caught in a moment
of apparent orgasmic rapture.
Jocelyn Woodss first photographic series
in collaboration with photographer Thomas
Dodd is decidedly erotic.
But rather than a bedroom, the inspiration
for the series, Ecstasy of a Cripple: The Resurrection of Passion, started in an emergency
room where Woods was receiving treatment
for a respiratory infection that was nearly
fatal due to the neuromuscular condition she
has had since birth.

Perceptions of sexuality and disability are

notoriously problematic. At one extreme, disabled people are fetishized. At the other end,
they are assumed to be asexual or childlike.
In Woodss mind, both ends of the spectrum
are complete misconceptions, and media
portrayals tend to exacerbate the problem.
The focus has been not so much on
people with disabilities expressing their
sexuality but on this angle of, Oh, how
can we bring sex to the disabled? Woods
says. It promotes alienation of sex and disability because it makes it look as though
people with disability are socially isolated.
The 28-year-old Vermont artist tackles the
two head on, juxtaposing sexuality and disability in a refreshing and markedly different way.
Its not childish, and its not pornographic.
Its simple, sexual experience. Moreover,
its part of a wider push toward acceptance of non-normative sexuality.
Woods has always been artistically
inclined. By the age of 3, she had taken
an interest in piano, and 12 years later
she composed a classical music album. A
severe case of the flu at 18 exacerbated
Woodss condition and left her semi-bedridden, without much of the mobility
necessary to play the piano. She sought
different creative outlets, and eventually
began to explore poetry, playwriting,
acting, and modeling.
When Woods began conceiving her first
shoot with Dodd, an Atlanta-based photographer who trekked to her home in rural

Vermont, she reflected on her recent respiratory illness. Hovering on the edge of mortality,
she had found clarity and revelation.
The purest communion with infinite life
and divinity is inherently sexual, Woods says.
What better metaphor for that than the female orgasm, which is a moment when all the
aspects of yourself dissolve and yet expand
into that vastness, the unknown?
Woods and Dodd set about visualizing the
project, drawing elements from Shakespearean plays and other bardic poetrystrong
influences in Woodss work. The series clearly
illustrates how neuromuscular disorder isnt
crippling for Woods. Rather her approach
to art is intrinsically linked to her experience
living with neuromuscular disorder.
Woods addresses sexuality and disability
in many of her endeavors. In her play, The
Fools Riddle, Woods portrays an ambassador from the ship of fools, a concept she
borrows from Foucault to represent the outcasts of society. In an accompanying photo
series, also shot by Dodd, she explores the
origins of hysteria, its history as diagnosable
mental illness, and how it informed the foundations of modern medicine.
In shrugging off the -isms Woods works
beyond categories that could perhaps
support her in her message. But her work
serves to illustrate how one can help to
abandon assumptions and perceptions when
it comes to tough issues. Woods says, My
motto is, Authentic expression heals.
Elizabeth Hewitt

ceci nest pas un bad breakup

hen it comes to
domestic violence,
mainstream French
media seems to think that soccer is more headline-worthy
than dead women. In fact, backto-school sales, the anomalous
November-like weather, the
government retreat on teaching
girl-boy equalityall are given
better treatment in the recent
news than violence against
8|

bitch f e m i n i s t

women. When journalists do

write news items about domestic violence, they play down
its importance by labeling the
incidents faits diversfillers or
offbeat news.
The faits divers section is
a journalistic tradition. Sometimes called rubrique des chiens
crass (literally section of runover dogs) especially in local
newspapers, its where you learn

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

that firemen rescued a baby

from a burning building or that a
centenarian grandma is seeking
cyberlove online.
Its also where editors see
fit to print stories on women
beaten to death by their husbands. Last month, Europe
1, one of the leading French
radio broadcasters, called the
incident of a man killing his wife
and two daughters a breakup

tragedy; Le Courrier Picard, a

regional daily newspaper in the
north of France, said a mans
murder of his wife with a hammer was a domestic tragedy;
and Metronews considered a
man who tried to burn his wife
alive as news in brief.
Quelle surprisethese three
prominent media outlets are
run by men, which makes it hard
to believe that the recurrence of

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

love it

SHOVE IT

She-hulk vs. the screenwriting sleaze

n a recent episode of the podcast Scriptnotes, screenwriter

David Goyer disparaged Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk,
saying I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if
you were Hulk, you know what Im saying? She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. Its like, if Im going to be this geek
who becomes the Hulk, then lets create a giant green porn star that
only the Hulk could fuck.
In reality, She-Hulk is a lawyer with a sharp wit who eschews stereotypically idealized traits of femininity while packing a bruisers
punch. In addition, shes Bruce Banners cousin, not his love interest,
but Goyers facts were not the problem. His nasty remarks reduced
her down to fanboy fantasy fodder.
As a writer for the DC cinematic universe (The Dark Knight, Man of
Steel, and the upcoming Constantine), Goyer carries a level of authority, and if his comments go unchallenged, people with similar attitudes
feel free to perpetuate them. When a professional writer can reduce a
woman character to a big green sex object, it becomes easier for fans
to justify the same actions themselves. In addition, Goyer is about to
bring Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, to the big screen for the
first time in the upcoming Man of Steel sequel, and his statements on
She-Hulk paint a pretty dim picture of his plans for Dianas role in the
film. After all, Jen and Diana both exist outside of societal ideals of
femininity; they are both often drawn bulky with brawn. Given Goyers
thoughts relating on She-Hulk as the Hulks fuck buddy, its not a far
stretch to imagine him making the same connection between Clark
Kent and Diana.
Comics fans are used to having their faves trampled, especially when
translated to film. Ask longtime X-Men fans how they feel about spunky
and sometimes thrill-seeking Rogue, who on screen sheds her powers for
her boyfriend; or having Jubilee and Rachel Grey (both vital to the story
arc in comics) cut from the Days of Future Past movie. They know that
holding their breath until the two named women in an ensemble film talk
to one another would mean passing out from oxygen deprivation.

Anyone else want to chime in? Michael Goldens version of She-Hulk is drawn with
brawn on the cover of Savage She-Hulk #8 (Marvel, 1980).

a mitigating coverage is a coincidence. Europe 1 is managed by

Denis Olivennes and owned by
Lagardre Active, a subsidiary of
the Lagardre Group, founded
by Arnaud Lagardre and
chaired by Xavier de Sarrau since
April 2010. Le Courrier Picard is
led by publishing editor Gabriel
dHarcourt and editor-in-chief
David Guvart, and Metronews is
run by Christophe Joly.

but keeps things moving. If

calling a woman a pain in the ass
is a compliment, writing about
a woman killed by her husband
must be a coronation.
Franch media could take a
lesson from Spain. In 2002,
the Spanish national radio and
television RTVE along with
lInstituto de la Mujer published
a practical guide for journalists who write about violence

Sexist coverage and belittlement of domestic violence is

symptomatic of these news
corporations. Recently in news
magazine LExpressrun by
French feminists bte noire
Christophe Barbierran the
headline LEmmerdeuse (pain
in the ass) in bright yellow type
over socialist politician Segolne
Royal. Barbier defended the title
as a complimentshe annoys

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

Its heartening that She-Hulk creator and comics legend Stan Lee
stepped up to the plate and corrected Goyer. As her creator, he
would know. Writers have a position of power and influence over fan
spaces whether they admit it or notand when folks like Goyer mouth
off, its enough to make you want to smash something.
Brandann Hill-Mann

against women. The charter

was adopted by all RTVE editorial boards and two private
channels in Spain. The second
of these 10 commandments
reads, Sexist violence is not
offbeat news but a social issue.
By treating these issues with
the gravity women deserve,
French media could turn faits
divers into faits concrets.
lose Bouton
fa l l . 1 4

issue no.64

bitch | 9

love it

SHOVE IT

Bitch In: Transgender

Law Center

he June 9, 2014, issue

of Time magazine
featured Laverne Cox
on the cover, emblazoned with
the words The Transgender
Tipping Point, and signifying a
shift in media coverage of the
trans community. Over the past
few months, trans icons like Cox,
model Carmen Carrera, and
activist Janet Mock have actively
challenged and subverted inappropriate and intrusive interview
strategies by the likes of Katie
Couric, Piers Morgan, and
Wendy Williams by reclaiming
their own narratives instead of
having the mainstream dictate
how their stories are told.
But lets not forget the folks
working behind the scenes as
well. The Oakland, California
based Transgender Law Center
(TLC) empowers trans youth
and adults to serve as their
own spokespeople instead
of having allies speak on their
behalf. According to TLCs
senior manager of communications, Mark Snyder, Today trans
young people are leading the
movement and shifting cultural
narratives like never before.

Snyder prepares trans youth to

go in front of the camera is by
pairing them with a trans mentor
with experience going through
the media firestorm.
In addition, when Snyder
works with a young person to
amplify their story, he asks them
to do an assessment of their
online presence, teaches youth
about what it means to have a
personal brand, and prepares
them for the potential onslaught
of negative comments. When
Snyder observes a trans teen
being contacted by reporters
after posting YouTube videos
on their own, he reaches out to
learn what support they might
need. When reporters interview
minors, Snyder encourages
them to ask these youth what
kinds of support they have and
to inspire youth to establish
a support network including
parents, teachers, mentors, and
friends before stories are debuted to a large audience.
In addition, Snyder educates
reporters about trans issues
so they can ask questions that
respect the common human
dignity of interview subjects and

Trans young people are

leading the movement and
shifting cultural narratives like
never before.
Snyder is a firm believer in
the it takes a village concept,
and ensures that the youth he
works with have support from a
variety of sources and people.
For example, one of the ways
10 |

bitch f e m i n i s t

develops resources for advocates,

and other interested individuals,
to shed light on the often misunderstood topics of gender
identity and gender expression.
Becky Garrison

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

Mark Snyder WANTS YOU TO

KNOW ABOUT:
FIERCE
Im a longtime admirer of this LGBTq organization that is
led by youth of color and unapologetically advocates for
the destruction of the prison-industrial complex and the
gender binary.
Boston Alliance of glbt Youth
Headed by the first openly trans person I met, Grace Sterling
Stowell, BAGLY had a transformative impact on my development
as a queer liberationist.
The Trans 100
This annual event founded by two fabulous trans leaders,
Antonia Dorsay and Jen Richards,celebrates all the beautiful
trans people living their authentic lives.
Chelsea Manning
She was an early supporter of my activist group, QueerToday,
and she is one of the most courageous, important, truth-telling
leaders of our time.
Laverne Cox
Shes shifted the cultural narrative on gender, and shes
fucking brilliant.

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on the cover by Lydia Craig

butts, beefcakes,
and burt

illustration by beth austin

40 years of Playgirl covers

One could trace the publishing history of Playgirl

magazine in a variety of metrics: its early nude
celebrity pictorials (Peter Lupus, Christopher George,
George Maharis); its on-again, off-again decision to
show full-frontal male nudity; or even its shifting decision
as to whether or not to show erections.
(As of today, hard-ons are a-okay!)
With such vacillations in style, the magazine,

The infamous 1972 Cosmopolitan center-

as both a business and a creative endeavor,

fold featuring Burt Reynolds wearing nothing

has soared (and stumbled) through the sexual

but a rakish smile on a bearskin rug was

revolution of the 1970s, through the Girls-

rumored to inspire Playgirls founder,

Just-Want-to-Have-Fun 1980s, and into the

Douglas Lambert. He said of the bare Burt,

postGirl Power, postSex and the City world

It came to methats what women want.

of the 2010s. Retracing Playgirls evolution

Lambert was a 39-year-old Southerner with

through editors, owners, and coastsas well

a background in selling cars and running

as through content and coversoffers a look

nightclubs, and from the notoriety of

at womens empowerment and sexuality along

Reynoldss layout, he conceived of a

with societys interpretation of it.

feminist Playboy and installed former

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issue no.64

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June 1974: Love is a sensual,

bass mouthgumming of a
womans nose.

December 1973: Dont look so

surprised, its just a naked man
in a Plexiglas box.

December 1974: Cant wait to

rip the Burt Reynolds wrap off!

October 1974: The Brawny

man before his big break shilling
absorbent paper products.

November 1977: But will

men vote for a woman who
wears glasses?

Photoplay staffer Marin Scott Milam to be

unattired) on its covers. In contrast, through-

of making readership less gender specific

the mags first editor-in-chief.

out its history, Playgirl has always seemedat

(and, of course, increasing newsstand sales

After one test issue published in early

least on its coversa bit unsure or ambivalent

and subscriptions). The practice, however,

1973 (its cover a close-up of a male torso,

about how much sex it wanted to projectand

was short-lived, abandoned for not fitting

the top button of his blue jeans teasingly

how much women supposedly wanted.

the magazines editorial vision.

undone), the first issue came out in June

Playgirls cover pairings remained the

of 1973. Its debut cover featured a naked

***

couple emerging from a dark background

In Margaret Atwoods novel The Robber Bride,

notable exceptions. Occasionally, female

like a sexy bas-relief sculpture, the woman

one character, a magazine editor, laments

models appeared alone, usually depicted

embracing the man from behind.

that, when the industry wants to sell maga-

in positions of power. One cover featured

When Playgirl arrived, it was truly treading

norm for the next six years, with some

zines to men, editors put women on the

a woman standing, hands on hips, wear-

new ground. The so-called sexual revolution

cover and when they want to sell magazines

ing a t-shirt adorned with an image of the

and emerging feminist movement meant that

to womenthey put women on the cover.

Statue of Liberty and the words Im Free!

not only were women expressing their sexual-

Certainly in its early days, Playgirl held,

Another cover gal sat authoritatively behind

ity morebut that there was probably a way to

at least partially, to Atwoods assessment.

a large, imposing desk, the U.S. Presidential

make money off it. The new woman would

For the first few years of its existence, Play-

Seal directly behind her.

need a new type of magazine, one that spoke

girl covers almost always featured photos of

to her personal and political concerns, but

male-female couples. These cover models

about communicating female empower-

which also co-opted the tried-and-true tenets

were usually anonymous faces and figures

ment as the promise of male pin-ups; it

of long-established mens magazines like Play-

for hire, similar to fashion magazines of

was Cosmo meets Ms. with a lot more skin,

boy. Titles like Vision, Venus, and Viva, which

the era such as Vogue and GQ. The models

and the magazine worked to highlight

also featured male nudes and female-focused

were always shown partially undressed or in

intelligence and attitude as much as sex.

articles, convened along with Playgirl on the

swimwear and usually embracing or touch-

Early issues featured male pictorials but

newsstands. All went shortly out of business,

ing each other. The intent, no doubt, was

also serious, detailed articles on political,

some lasting only a few months. (Viva had the

to mirror the imagery on popular romance

social, and health issues like abortion, the

longest lifespan after Playgirl, running from

novel coversonly with the inside of the

Kent State shootings, and the reliability of

1973 until 1980, helped no doubt by being

publication promising much more.

Pap smears. The magazine also borrowed

a subsidiary of Penthouse.) Only Playgirl has

The use of heterosexual duos was pos-

The message here seemed to be as much

heavily from Playboys successful formula,

endured to the present day, perhaps by virtue

sibly an attempt to attract not only female

devoting editorial space to thoughtful

of its easy-to-identify name, a riff on Hugh

readers but also male-female couples

interviews with cultural and show-business

Hefners Playboy, though the two magazines

anxious to explore their sexuality together

figures, along with longer fiction pieces.

are notnor have they ever beenaffiliated.

in a newly open-minded America. Playboy

Sprinkled throughout were ladymag

The cover history of Playgirl is far more varied

would try this approach at one point: The

standardshoroscopes, movie and music

and diverse than that of Playboy, and not just

Hefner publication began to incorporate

reviews, personality quizzes, fashion and

because the latter has almost always featured

menand male nudityinto some of its

makeup tips, Hollywood gossip, and even a

solo female models provocatively attired (or

pictorials in the early 1980s with the intent

page of (adult-oriented) comics. This basic

18 |

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April 1988: Not everyone can

pull off the one-shoulder wedgie,
but this guy is crushing it.

January 1983: How Sally Field

got this guy to like her, like really
like her.

March 2001: More genital

hiding tips inside!

November 1996: Let me lead

you to my own personal Peach
Pit. 9021- oh !

February 2007: Theyre

literally made of sapphire.

editorial format would remain unchanged

cover. The list of other male stars celebrated

Lorenzo Lamas and Heather Locklear in 80s-

for the magazine for the next 15 years.

alone on Playgirls cover offers a quick his-

era bathing suits, all the cover subjects were

tory of 70s beefcake as well as a recap of the

fully clothed.

By the mid 70s, Playgirlhaving outlasted most of its early competitorshad clearly

decades most bankable big-screen names,

decided to embrace its niche. If it was now

including Robert Redford (who made his

celebrity men made the cover, fully clothed

alone in the marketplace and synonymous

first appearance in the October 1976 issue)

and all alone. These guys included such

with male nudity and other sexy content,

and Warren Beatty (November 1976).

reliable newsstand names as Warren Beatty

then it was necessary for its covers to start

Even during this epoch of couples, a few

Beginning around March 1979, a tonal

(again), Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nichol-

ref lecting that. Around this time, with only

change took place on the magazines covers.

son, and Ryan ONeal. The magazine, at

occasional exceptions, the early couples-

Both undressed and unknown models were

this juncture, seemed to be consciously

and-solo-women cover subjects disappeared

out, as were cinema heartthrobs; replacing

attempting to reposition itself. If editors at

from the front page, making way for an ar-

them were pictures of celebrity couples, fully

one time were trying to compete with Ms.

ray of square-jawed, well-muscled dudes.

clothed but very close together. Most of the

or Cosmo, they now seemed to have their

duos were film or tv costars with a series or

sights on People.

The first solo man on the magazines cover

occurred in October 1974. The name of this

movie to plug and with at least one of the pair

gentleman, with his bushy, sandy hair and 70s

interviewed inside. Hart to Hart costars Robert

strategy. If women were buying gossip

By and large, it was not a foolhardy

stache, has been lost to history, as no photos of

Wagner and Stefanie Powers; Sally Field and

rags, then Playgirl was wise to tap into that

him were repeated inside that particular issue.

Jeff Bridges (then appearing together in the

audience, promising its readers not only

The next month, another handsome, nameless

film Kiss Me Goodbye); Tattoo costars Maud

celebrity interviews but also a sexy some-

fellow followed. By the end of 1975, the lone

Adams and Bruce Dern; Bruce Jenner and

thing extra in the middlemore bang for

beefcake was the undisputed norm.

then-wife Linda Thompson; Rollovers Jane

your newsstand buck.

Playgirl is far more varied and diverse than that of Playboy, and
not just because the latter has almost always featured solo female
models provocatively attired (or unattired) on its covers.
Actor Lyle Waggoner has the distinc-

Fonda and Kris Kristofferson; and Perfects

Though fashion spreads, gossip, and media

tion of being Playgirls first centerfold (he

John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis: All were

reviews endured, the majority of the maga-

appeared in the publications first regular

among the eras cover stars. These various

zines articles began to focus on love, sex, and

issue in June 1973), but actor Burt Reynolds,

two-shots were pretty tame, especially when

relationship issues. By the end of the 1970s,

again making ladymag history, was the first

contrasted with the cover photos of the maga-

only one or two articles per iss-ue dealt with

male celebrity to be featured on Playgirls

zines inaugural years. With the exception of

hard-hitting issues, perhaps tackling infertility

C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E 2 5

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on self-love by Yumi Sakugawa

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issue no.64

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on desire by Lisa C. Knisely

Its Not Me, Its You

The absent dialogue around
fat womens sexuality

In May of this year, comedian Sarah Baker garnered a lot

of attention for the monologue her character, Vanessa,
delivered at the end of an episode of Louie. Vanessa asks
Louie (Louis C.K.), point blank, why men hate fat girls so
much. What is it about the basics of human happiness,
feeling attractive, feeling loved, having guys chase after
us, thats just not in the cards for us? she asked.
Listening to Vanessa, my heart leapt into

systems of power intersect with the intimate,

against discussing womens experiences

my throat. As a fat, white, middle-class

personal, deeply subjective terrain of rela-

of love, sex, and being fat. Of course, this

woman like Vanessa, who sometimes dates

tionships between particular individuals.

is nuts. For decades, theres been plenty of

men, I could relate.

Vanessa wasnt just recounting her experi-

television exploring these themesfrom

ence of dating as a fat woman; she was

Roseanne on.

For me, the brilliance of Vanessas words

was that she didnt position fat women as

demanding recognition that she was worthy

tragic figures needing pity or shame, nor

of respect and love in a culture hell-bent on

with her, felt that the show was garnering

did she boldly claim sexual empowerment

denying fat women both. Her words were

undue attention while it ignored previous

in the name of fat women everywhere.

not merely personal, but also political.

representations of fat women in pop culture

Vanessa was simply asking to have a dia-

Not everyone was as impressed with

Nussbaum, and other critics who agreed

and the media.

logue with Louie and hold him accountable

Vanessas Louie monologue as I was. Some

for his beliefs and his behaviors in relation

critics felt that Louis C.K. had overstepped

male chubby chasers (his preferred

to her fatness. She says, Look, I really like

his bounds, speaking for fat women while

term) and author of the blog Ask a Guy

you, youre truly a good guy, I think. Im

fat womens own attempts at articulating

Who Likes Fat Chicks, Dan Weiss also

sorry Im picking you. On behalf of all the

their experiences have been mostly ignored.

weighed in on the monologue, taking Louie

fat girls, Im making you represent all

As Emily Nussbaum asserted in the New

to task for ignoring men who prefer fat

the guys.

Yorker, Despite [Bakers] best efforts, her

women. He lamented in an article for The

monologue came off as stiff and polemical,

Concourse, Vanessa would have far less

on behalf of all the fat girls, Vanessa

like edutainment in shaky-cam drag. Still, it

trouble getting someone to hold her hand

conjures the junction of where the big,

got plenty of praise, much of it giving Louie

in real life, and while this was every bit

impersonal beast of gendered, sociopolitical

credit for breaking a supposed tv taboo

the excellent, conversation-starting Louie

By making Louie represent all the guys

22 |

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episode its being touted as, is its creator,

psychiatrist that a major source of emo-

culture to think of the political and the

or anyone else in the tv bubble, actually

tional distress was how other people were

intimate as polar opposites. This ideology

aware of that fact? ... Its great that Louie

treating me because of the size of my body.

pits the rational and the irrational against

was perceptive enough to join the conversa-

His advice? Cut out potatoes, rice, wheat,

each other along with other corresponding

tion. But he didnt start it, and plenty of

and corn from my diet. Implicitly, he was

binaries: the masculine and the feminine, the

men were already eager to have it.

confirming that the problem was me, not

public and the domestic, the mental and

other peoples treatment of me. If I wanted

the emotional, the mind and the body, the

respect, I should be thinner.

head and the heart.

Weiss, while seeming to advocate for

fat women, is actually talking about fat
womens experience for us and redirecting

Holding other people accountable for how

Even feminist, queer, and antiracist

the conversation to be one among men.

they treat fat people is still very taboo. By ex-

activists are often dismissive or cruel when

This is really Weiss speaking to Louis C.K.,

tension, attempts to work through the politics

people of size politicize their personal expe-

leaving Vanessa and other fat women out of

of desirealready a topic met with hostility

riences. Many people dont believe sizism is

the conversation once again. Weiss misses

and derisionare especially difficult for fat

a legitimate form of discrimination worthy

the point that Vanessa is crucially initiating

people. We have been trained in Western

of discussion. There have been times when

a conversation with a man she desiresa

point glossed over too quickly by Nussbaum
in her rush to point out that Louie isnt the

A not-so-thin line: Vanessa (Sarah Baker) dishes some real talk to Louie (Louis C.K.) on Louie.
fx networks

first show to broach the topic of fat womens

sexuality or romantic lives. That fat women
have things to say to other people about the
relationships between their body types and
their romantic lives barely seems to register
on the larger cultural radar.

***

Discussing the politics of desire takes

major guts in our culture, especially as a fat
person. Most people still believe they dont
need to question their own reactions to fatness and fat people or how those reactions
affect us. Many people still regard fatness
as the exclusive problem of fat people. If we
want to be treated better, we should stop
being fat, right?
Once during college, I visited the local
urgent care facility because I was feeling
deeply depressed. I explained to the on-call

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Ive tried to discuss my body size as a politi-

family photos. Sometimes it feels like Im not

to imagine a scene with Adam and Hannah

cal issue and Ive been told I am playing the

even there, or that Im not supposed to be.

in which her body size or body type becomes

This double bind of hypervisibility and

the explicit focus of their sexual interactions

Oppression Olympics or trying to falsely

compare sizism to more serious, histori-

invisibility is manifested in sex and dating

or conversations. While we dont see that sort

cal forms of oppression such as racism or

for fat women between the extremes of fat

of scene in Girls, there is a lot of hand-wring-

sexism and thus detracting from those

fetishization and sexual violence specifically

ing in real life, mostly from men, about how

more politically important conversations.

targeting fat women, such as the practice

Dunhams real naked body makes them

Fat people are told over and over that there

of hogging, which is when men, often

feel. As it is, fat women (and Dunham is just

simply isnt enough space for fat bodies. Of

in groups, seek out fat women for sexual

a little chubby, really) are supposed to be

course, for me, there is no understanding

encounters as a joke. Many fat women learn

grateful were even allowed to appear on tv at

of my own privilege, power, or identity as a

to give up trying to discuss our experiences

all without being made objects of fascination,

middle-class, queer-ish, white woman that

and sexualities in a nuanced way with others

reform, mockery, humor, or disgust.

isnt also about being a fat middle-class,

before weve even begun talking. One of the

queer-ish, white woman.

things that made Vanessas monologue in

class women, disabled women, whether they

I have always been a fat woman, so I

Queer women, women of color, working-

Louie so effective was that, despite initial pro-

are fat or not, will probably be familiar with

dont know what it is like to date as a thin

tests on his part, Louie shut up and listened

this experience of sex and love, as well. All

person. What I do know is that to date as a

to Vanessa. Talking the scene over with my

women may be vulnerable to slut-shaming

fat woman is complicated in ways that other

fat lady friends, we all felt that it was unre-

and sexual violence, but only certain women

people, especially thin people, dont often

alistic in that regard. Mostly, when we have

have the privilege of being represented as

seem fully able to grasp. Even when I try

gotten up the courage to talk to men were

sexually respectable at least some of the

to explain my own experiences to friends,

romantically interested in about our fatness,

time. There are no fat versions of Rose in

family, potential lovers, or political allies,

were met with protests and denials of the

Titanic or Allie in The Notebook or Carrie (or

they just dont seem to get exactly what Im

not all men variety. Stock responses range

even Samantha) in Sex and the City because

trying to say.

from I dont really think of you as fat to I

fat women fail to meet the requirements

really like you, but Im not interested in dat-

of proper upper-class, white femininity,

ing a fat woman to Shut up, you fat bitch.

which is always coded as thin. Instead, we

Being fat carries with it a lot of cultural

baggage. At the same time, fat people, especially fat women, are supposed to pretend we

People dont know how to talk to fat

get Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit in Shal-

dont exist or that were not fat. I cant count

women about our sexualities, but I cant

low Hal, a film marketed as a valentine to

the number of times thin people have made

really blame them given how few examples

fat people and actually about Jack Blacks

character, not Paltrows.
Its simply assumed that fat women are

Being fat carries with it a lot of cultural

baggage. At the same time, fat people,
especially fat women, are supposed to
pretend we dont exist or that were not fat.

not worthy of having anybody woo us or

walk down the street holding our hands, as
Vanessa points out. And there is something
pretty troubling about that fact. Crucially,
Vanessa was asking Louie to think about
why it was that he treated her as different
from other women and deserving of different treatment when it came to romance and
sex. She was asking for a response from him
that made him (and not just her as the fat
woman) responsible for the treatment of fat

reference to fat people or fatness in a negative

our culture has of how to talk with fat people

women like her. And that is nothing short of

or joking way in front of me, from the petite

about romance and sex. For example, even

revolutionary. Feminists, both fat and thin,

woman sitting next to me at the coffee shop

though there has been seemingly endless

should take note.

complaining about fat people on airplanes, to

discussion of Lena Dunhams body type and

my friends who routinely make jokes about

nudity on Girls, Hannah (Dunhams char-

Lisa C. Knisely is a freelance writer,

their inner fat kids coming out when they

acter) has been almost entirely mute on the

assistant professor of the liberal arts, and

eat a lot, to the women in my family who

topic. Given the plethora of transgressive sex

editor-in-chief of RENDER: Feminist Food &

compete to see who can look the thinnest in

scenes in the show, it wouldnt be difficult

Culture Quarterly.

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O N T H E COVER
CO N T I NUED FROM PAGE 19

or womens fictional portrayals on television.

For years, gay male readership of the mag-

The magazine also kept up its monthly cele-

azine seemed to be the publishing worlds

brity profiles, if only, one supposes, so that

open secret. Today, the current identity of

discerning female readers could state that they

Playgirl openly embraces that audience. Each

subscribed to the magazine for the articles,

new era of Playgirl covers (and content) also

like their male counterparts who read Playboy.

seems to move toward being more gay-

The magazines next major incarnation be-

friendly. The magazine has even changed its

gan in August 1986, with a cover shot of Van

title tag from Entertainment for Women to

Halens David Lee Roth. From then on, with

Entertainment for Everyone.

only a few exceptions, Playgirls covers would

The covers of the past decade have con-

be dominated by handsome male music stars

sistently (if not exclusively) shown an array

and matinee idols. Kevin Bacon, Rob Lowe,

of arousing images of sexy men in minimal

and Michael J. Fox were featured, alone and

amounts of clothing (underwear, swimsuits)

clothed, over the next several months. This

or no clothing at all (towels, strategically placed

shift seemed to indicate that Playgirl was

hands). The cover models are now mostly

ready to forgo any and all attempts to be an

no-names from inside the issue, with country

adults-only People and, instead, become an

singer Billy Curringtons (shirtless) pose for the

all-out celebration of men and the male form.

Additionally, for the first time since the

April 1977: Forget the female gaze, how does Nick

Nolte feel about sex?

magazine started up 13 years prior, shirtless

March 2005 issue being one exception; Bristol

Palins baby daddy Levi Johnston (Winter 2010)
is another. The romance hinted at with the

men began to appear on the cover once more,

simply on their appearancethey were hand-

male-female two-shots in the magazines first

and with greater regularity. And, also for

some and hunky and that was good enough.

years and, later, with the magazines celebrity

the first time, Playgirl showcased its own cen-

They also posed provocatively and were willing

pairings is long gone. Sex and solo beefcake are

terfolds and other models from its internal

to talk openly in the interviews inside about

now the order of the day.

pictorials on the cover, tantalizing the buyer

love, sex, and perhaps even their first time.

with a taste of what could actually be found

Interestingly, for a magazine aimed at

Inside, for better or worse, Playgirl has all

but abandoned topics that arent sex related.

inside the issue. If, in previous incarnations

women and based upon womens empow-

Fashion spreads have disappeared in order to

of the publications, the male pictorials were

erment, only two notable women have

create more space for nude pictorials. What

treated as a special interior surprise, now

appeared solo on Playgirls cover during its

text does exist today is devoted to sexy expo-

they were presented truly front and center:

long history, both actresses. Britt Ekland

ss, interviews with fearless, feisty women

This is what the magazine had to offer; this

appeared on the June 1975 cover and Linda

(for example, Margaret Cho), and sex toy

is why you should buy it.

Evans, at the height of her Dynasty fame,

reviews. Only the horoscopes, erotic fiction,

was on the October 1983 cover. Both, it

and personality tests within call back to the

1988, Playgirl covers alternated between their

probably goes without saying, appeared fully

publications origins. Readers now looking

Men of the Month centerfolds and male

clothed. Considering there were only two

for entertaining tips, travel suggestions, and

celebrities willing to pose at least a little

covers, solo women (even well-known ones)

the like are strongly advised to go elsewhere.

beefcake-y. Geraldo Rivera, Dweezil Zappa,

evidently didnt prove a tremendous market-

Todays Playgirl no longer wants to be a

Jean LeClerc, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and

ing and cover strategy. Even in its early days,

summation of every other womans maga-

Richard Grieco were just some of the men

Playgirl had to differentiate itself from every

zinefrom Ms. to Good Housekeeping, even

who happily posed for Playgirl photographers.

other womens magazine on the shelf and

Cosmothey just want to get you aroused.

(There were occasional head shots of men like

the presence of handsome men, famous or

Matt Damon, Wesley Snipes, Tom Selleck, and

not, clothed or disrobed, was, no doubt, the

Playgirl magazine over the years might not be

Oscar De La Hoya, who were perhaps more

best way to do that.

as interesting to some as what has taken place

For the next few years, beginning around

reticent.) If at one time, the editors of the maga-

Playgirl has also had a dismal track record

Though what has transpired on the front of

inside its covers, the changing content, concepts,

zine were concerned with showcasing only the

in terms of racially diverse cover models.

and featured hunks offer a way to chart one of

top stars of American cinema (Reynolds, Beat-

Though the magazine featured a black male

the industrys most controversial magazines,

ty, Redford, etc.), they were now casting a wider

centerfold (football player Fred Williamson

and also provide a unique pictorial of history,

celebrity netas long as their participants were

in October 1973), no African American made

sex, gender, and U.S. popular culture.

willing and at least semi-unclothed. Like many

the cover alone until actor Blair Underwood,

an actress and starlet, though, male celebrities

in July 1996. (He was followed by Wesley

Lydia Craig works at the Library

(Zappa, et al.) were now being elevated based

Snipes in April 1998.)

of Congress.

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THE

bitch
LIST

Y-Y Girls (Feral House). Todays candy-coated pop stars (looking at you, Katy Perry)
and their fans owe a huge merci to their predecessors, the Y-Y Girls of 60s French pop.
In his book of the same name, Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe explores the music and legacy of
the young women who took the western world by storm, ushering in a teen-girl culture
thats going strong half a century later. From France Gall to Franoise Hardy, Y-Y Girls is
an encyclopedia of this influential subgenre of pop, making up for what it lacks in political
analysis with detailed discographies, liner notes, and lyrics written in French and English.
Its fun reading for any Francophile or pop fan, and full of gorgeous photos to boot.
Chouette! Kelsey Wallace

Komma Lika. Swedish for getting equal, Komma Lika is a magnetic

fridge game that helps you divide up
household responsibilities. Rather than
a chore wheel or a system where the
winner works the most, Komma Lika
rewards you for doing the same amount
as the other people in your house.It has
a simple, beautiful design that allows
you to build cool and colorful shapes
from refrigerator magnets with varying
point values and comes in 2- or 4-person
sets. Developed to address gender discrepancy along the chore lines, cohabitants of all genders will find it useful.
Although its not technically available
in the United States yet, you can e-mail
info@kommalika.se to order one for
yourself. Amelia Ayrelan Iuvino

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Parris Goebel. Growing up in New

Zealand, Parris Goebel was inspired
to take up dance after seeing 2004s
hip hop battle movie You Got Served.
Now running a dance studio of her own,
she leads the all-female ReQuest crew,
who have won battles worldwide. Her
career began on YouTube; with no film
training, she choreographs, directs,
and edits videos that draw half a million
views. These eye-popping Polynesian
swagger routines are set to music like
Janelle Mone, Santigold, and Missy
Elliott. Goebel's most ambitious project
yet is the entirely improvised 30-minute
film Free Mynd, an astonishing avantgarde exploration of Beyoncs selftitled album. Find her on YouTube or
at thepalacedancestudio.co.nz.
Margaret Howie

TransCuba (Daylight). This latest

collection of photographs and interviews by longtime trans ally Mariette
Pathy Allen offers a glimpse into the
everyday lives of Cuban transgender
women. The book comes at a turning
point in Cubas history, when the countryslgbtqcommunity is enjoyingif
tenuouslyincreased visibility and
acceptance after years of institutionalized discrimination. Eschewing theater,
Allens lens favors everyday gestures,
reflecting what photographer/activist
Allen Frame writes in his introduction
that TransCuba observes the small talk
[and] lack of drama in a context that has
been overloaded with it. Ellie Piper

Smut Peddler. Recently funded on

Kickstarter, Smut Peddler 2014, the second installment of the successful erotic
comics anthology made by and for
women, has something for everyone.
The collection promotes a diversity of
storytelling, with comic heavy-hitters
like Jess Fink, Megan Rose Gedris,
and Joanna Estep contributing a range
of art styles to satisfy even the most
discerning eye. The anthology, put
together by C. Spike Trotman, features
both queer and kink material, and stories of seductive witches, randy wedding guests, and crash-landed aliens
manage to carve out a queer, womanfriendly niche at the intersection of two
male-dominated industries: comics and
porn. Alyssa Favreau

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

Symbology: an A to Z of
Archetypes and Epiphanies
(Grimoire Press). Annie Murphys
32-page personal journey through
magical symbolssits somewhere
betweenscholarly musings on the goddessand alphabet primer for a cool
witch child.The book designwhite,
die-cut style illustrations starkly sitting
atop black-inked pagesmakes this minicomic feel like a sacred object. Murphy
may be familiar for her previous feats
of publishing as editor of the 2011 Gay
Geniusanthology (Sparkplug) as well as
her extensive work with the Collective
Tarot. Suzette Smith

United Colors of Amani. Racist

choreographers, questionable casting
calls, and clueless directorsthese are
just some of the Hollywood hurdles that
multiracial performer and writer Amani
Starnes satirizes in her and Michael
Agrestas YouTube series United Colors
of Amani, in which Starnes plays a
young performer trying to make it in Los
Angeles. Poking fun at ignorant casting
directors and racist choreographers,
Starnes humorously critiques an industry
that she herself is part of, but that also
often omits the experiences of multiracial performers. The shows popularity
has led to a second season, or as its tagline says, More Amani, more problems.
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank

Static TeleVision. If you like to wear your pop culture enthusiasm on your sleeve,
youll definitely want to pick up what Static Television owner and designer Lizzie May is
putting down. The one-woman Brooklyn companys black-and-white line drawings and
repeating patterns of tv and music icons are printed on plain white t-shirts and sell for
$35. Whether you want to wear a rendering of Elvis Costello (I know I do!) or get inspired
by the Women in History design featuring the likes of Tina Turner, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
and Sally Ride (again, I totally do, and my birthdays coming up), these shirts really are
tops. Andi Zeisler

Quotations By Women. Do you

ever find yourself at a loss for just the
right quote to accompany your grrrl
punk blog post? Or perhaps an apt
saying for your moody Instagram cat
photo? Then check out the website
QuotationsByWomen.com, a kind of
feminist Bartleby.com. Rosalie Maggio,
founder of the site, said her inspiration
comes from widely held perceptions
that because women are not quoted,
they have nothing to say. Yet Maggio
says its the oppositeWe think women
never said anything because they were
never quoted. Her next step should be
making an app so the next time youre
in the middle of a witty tte--tte, you
can whip out your phone and drop a bell
hooks bomb. Anna Miller

Girls With Slingshots. Although

Danielle Corsettos daily webcomic
focuses on trials and tribulations fairly
common to those in their late twenties
and early thirties, Corsettos cast is anything but typical. In recent storylines,
a pansexual-asexual relationship gets
complicated, a dominatrix debates when
to share her kink with her crush, and an
interracial lesbian couple tie the knot.
Every character and scenario is achingly
authentic with a dash of dry and zany
humor. Corsettos style and her realness
make the comicnow in its 10th yeara
must-read. Alyssa Nabors

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ThE madAMe
BuTTErfly effECt
Tracing the history of a fetish
I cant compete with an Asian chick, says the comedian Amy Schumer. When a
busty, blue-eyed blonda type that launched a thousand wet dreamsadmits she
cant contend with Asian women, it signals a certain shift in our cultures preferred
sexual tastes.

In her act Mostly Sexy Stuffone of Comedy Centrals

most watched stand-up routines of 2012Schumer lists off
all the reasons she cant contend: Asian women are good
at math, they have naturally silky hair, they cover their
mouths modestly when they laugh cause they know men
hate when women speak. But trumping all of that? Asian
women have the smallest vaginas in the game. Schumer,
creator and star of Comedy Centrals Inside Amy Schumer,
has been described in the New York Times as having a laserlike focus on sex and sexual politics, yet her Asian-chick
joke merely echoes already hackneyed stereotypes of Asian
female anatomy.
This perception of our bodies had been news to me
some 15 years ago, when I visited a friend at his MIT frat
house. His fratmatesadhering in every way to the MIT
stereotype (brainy, gadget-driven, perhaps involuntarily
celibate)proceeded to inform me of all the ways Asian
women were desirable. As they deconstructed the female
body, they ticked off features like they were taking inventory: Asian women had dark eyes, straight black hair,
petite frames, and small hands (which, in the throes of
third base, make your dick look bigger). When they
gathered in the parlor to watch a pornographic video, they
extended an invitation to me and I consentedwhen in

Rome, I suppose. The screen f licked onto a white man and

an Asian woman. As the man spun her in various sexual
positions, the fratmates running commentary was punctuated with oohs and ahhs about the tightness of the Asian
porn starlets genitalia. From that night at the frat house
to Schumers joke and a million places in between, there
is a casualness and ease when talking about this fetish, as
if discussions about sex with Asian women were a normal
everyday aspiration.
A recent study released by the online dating app Are
You Interested found that Asian women are the most
desirable racial group among white men (and men of all
other races, for that matter, with the interesting exception
of Asian men). What is particularly noteworthy about the
AYI study is how quickly it went viral, despite its shaky
stats. The data contradicted an earlier study published by
sociologist Kevin Lewis examining interactions between
OKCupid users. Lewiss data showed that most potential
dates preferred to initiate contact with people of the same
race with the exception of Asian women, who were more
likely to message white men than Asian men.
Yet the AYI chart quickly gained traction across social
media outlets; even NPR ran a story based on the data,
titled Odds Favor White Men, Asian Women on Dating

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App. Cultural evidence abounds that Asian

women are trending. Terms like Asian fetish,
yellow fever, and Asiaphiles circulate regularly in our modern-day vernacular without the
need for an explanation. White maleAsian
female pairings are so commonplace its almost

Imagine the Victorian Western manbuttoned-up, moving stiff ly through a society

with strict social codes and uneasy views on sex and bodiesconfronting the image of a
Japanese geisha: a diminutive female dressed in rich fabrics, thick makeup painted across
her face, jet-black hair piled high on top of her head. The geishathe name coming from
gei (art) and sha (person)was at her essence an artist/entertainer. She was a separate
entity entirely from the paid-for-hire prostitute (though she did engage in sexual favors if

Loti today is widely read as exemplifying what went wrong with

Western approaches to the East. Still, the image of miniature Asian
dolls scuttling about with food trays was already set in motion.
a clich. As a recent date once informed me:
Youre only my second Asian. Writer, comedian, and performance artist Kristina Wong, in
an XOJane.com article, writes: White guys with
Asian fetishes used to be easy to spotpathetic
social pariahs planning their sex tour vacations
to Thailand, creeping around Japanese language
classes. Now, Asiaphiles are attractive tattooed
hipsters that possess fantastic social skills, and
we meet them through friends of friends.

Asian women might be the f lavor du jour, but

the construct of the sexualized Asian female has
been centuries in the making.
Theres been a very long history and tradition in Europe of a kind of fascination with and
terror of the Eastern Other, says Kim Brandt,
associate professor of Japanese history and author of Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics
of Folk Art in Imperial Japan and the forthcoming Japans Cultural Miracle: Rethinking the Rise
of aWorld Power, 19451965. In the 17th and
18th centuries, the Western male fetishized the
veiled Middle Eastern woman. One need only
watch The Thief of Baghdad (1924) to catch a
glimpse of some of these perceptions at work. In
the 1840s, following the end of the First Opium
War, the treaty port cities in China, Japan, and
Korea were the site of a feeding frenzy for the
United States and other Western powersall
desiring a piece of the profitable trade-route
action. This led to a rise in the Western bourgeois desire for Oriental art and collectibles:
decorative fans, postcards (more often than
not bearing sexualized images of geishas), and
other bric-a-brac.
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she so chose). Still, the geisha became a highly sexualized image for the Western male.
The East Asian female in native dress, Brandt says, was viewed as a decorative object but
also a sexual object.
At its core, to fetishize somethingor someoneis to objectify it to the point that it
becomes divorced from the person herself. And its easy to see how the fetishization of
Asian women developed. Valerie Steele, in her book Fetish: Fashion, Sex, and Power, turns to
19th-century sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing for an early working definition of fetishism: The association of lust with the idea of certain portions of the female person, or with
certain articles of female attire. According to Krafft-Ebing, in pathological eroticism the
fetish itself (rather than the person associated with it) becomes the exclusive object of sexual
desire. There is an inherent deconstruction at work in this definition of the fetish, one that
breaks down the actual female body. Steele posits that some degree of fetishization is the
norm for men (but not for women); to indulge the old adage divide and conquer, one reading of fetishization could be the male attempt to conquer the foreign female body.
French writer Pierre Lotis wildly popular 1887 novel, Madame Chrysanthme, largely
cemented Western perceptions of Japan and, in turn, of Japanese women. The book is a
semiautobiographical tale of a naval officer who travels to Nagasaki and takes a temporary wifea woman who is painted as a plaything, another piece of Oriental artifact to
be acquired. The wife he desires? A little, creamy-skinned woman with black hair and
cats eyes. She must be pretty and not much bigger than a doll. The novel is peppered
with details of slim, graceful, dainty little women with delicate hands, miniature
feet and natural skin of deep yellow, who are the exact types of the figures painted
on vases. In one scene the narrator describes how the local women grovel before me
on the f loor, placing all this plaything of a meal at my feet. What we see emerging from
Lotis text are continual images of tiny, doll-like Japanese women no more human than,
in Lotis own words, china ornaments.
In The Chrysanthme Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthme and Other
Documents of French Japonisme, Christopher Reed describes the unquestionable impact of
Lotis noveltranslated into every major European language and reprinted over 200 times
during the course of the authors life aloneon the Western construction of the East Asian
woman. Reed writes that while Madame Chrysanthme still evokes a nostalgic pleasure for
its era in French literature, recent scholarship on it and Lotis other popular novelswhich
include similar travel narratives of Western men taking on a native woman as lover from
Turkey to Tahitioften assess them as tools of sexual and cultural exploitation.
Reed goes on to tell us that Loti today is widely read as exemplifying what went wrong
with Western approaches to the East. Still, the image of miniature Asian dolls scuttling
about with food trays was already set in motion.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

frOm cHrysanthmE To BOoTIEfLy

From the 19th century on, the Madame Butterfly archetype has continued to
flap its wings. Below is just a sampling of its pop-culture influence for more
than 100 years. Amy Lam

Madame Chrysanthme (novel, 1887)

Madame Butterfly (film, 1932)

Pierre Loti starts it all with his diary-novel about a French naval officer stationed in Japan whose sole goal is to find a doll-like Japanese
wife to amuse him, only to unceremoniously leave her when its time
to return to Europe. How does one say icky and pig in French?

Cary Grant stars as Pinkerton in this film adaptation. Cio-Cio-San is

played by white American actor Sylvia Sidney and in one film poster
her skin appears so yellow it radiates a lemony hue onto Grants
face as he embraces her. Classy move, old Hollywood.

Madame Butterfly (short story, 1898)

M. Butterfly (play, 1988)

Puccini would base his opera on this short story by American author
John Luther Long, which Long in turn based on Lotis novel. Longs
character Cho-Cho (which means butterfly in Japanesesigh) is left
with a son by the American officer Pinkerton. The ambiguous ending
in this version lets Cho-Cho-San live on with her son in Japan after
attempting suicide.

David Henry Hwangs play, loosely based on true events, subverts

the traditional Puccini narrative by presenting French officer Ren
Gallimard as so lost in his idealized fetish that he is unable and unwilling to see that his beautiful Butterflya Beijing opera singeris
actually (spoiler alert!) a male Chinese spy. Hwang won a Tony Award
for Best Play that year, the first Asian American to do so. The play
was turned into a 1993 film by David Cronenberg.

Madama Butterfly (opera, 1904)

Giacomo Puccini brings Mme. Butterfly to the spotlight with this
opera. Puccini solidifies the sacrificial-butterfly narrative with a
Japanese bride so forlorn without Pinkerton, her white hero, that
she kills herself so Pinkerton can take his son home to America with
his white wife.

Madame Butterfly (film, 1915)

Cio-Cio-San makes her first, but not last, big-screen appearance
directed by Scott Olcott. Silent filmera star Mary Pickford appears
(in yellowface) in the titular role.

Harakiri (film, 1919)

German director Fritz Langs adaptation of the story gets right to
the pointthe title is the Japanese act of ritual suicide.

The Toll of the Sea (film, 1922)

Although this film featured Chinese-American actress Anna May
Wong in her first starring role, theres little else to applaud. Set
in China, Wong plays not Butterfly, but Lotus Flower (collective
groan). She rescues an American visitor from drowning and he reciprocates by marrying her, then leaving her in China with his son while
hewell, you know how the story goes by now. In the end, Lotus
Flower drowns herself in the same ocean where she found the dude
(double groan).

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Miss Saigon (musical, 1989)

Japan is so 19th centurytime to update the narrative with a completely different Asian country! So thought Claude-Michel Schnberg
and Alain Boublil, who wrote this musical reframing the PinkertonButterfly coupling for an American soldier and a Vietnamese prostitute with a heart of gold, sending the narrative into new levels of
fucked-up neocolonialism.

Pinkerton (album, 1996)

With its referential cover art and title, direct references to Cio-CioSan, pining for a Japanese fangirl across the sea, and a final track
entitled Butterfly, Weezers second album is more or less a shameless love letter to a fetish.

Big Bad Chinese Mama (website, 2000)

Kristina Wong creates an internet performance installation, Big Bad
Chinese Mama, as a mock mail-order bride website. But rather than
finding an ideal Asian mate, visitors will instead encounter profiles
like Madame Bootiefly, who sits on a toilet doodling graffiti on the
wall and is in search of someone hairy, racist, unable to cope with a
nonsubmissive female, and plagued with the socially defunctness of
fetishism. Bootiefly waits for no one, cries for no one, and certainly,
dies for no one.

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Hollywoods Golden Age gave rise to another

archetype of the sexualized Asian female: the
dragon lady. Unlike her butterfly counterpart,
the dragon lady was a fierce Asian woman who
wielded powermore often than not of a sexual
natureto the detriment of the men around her.

Madame Chrysanthme is widely acknowledged as the source for Puccinis famous opera,
Madama Butterf ly. The opera, which premiered
in 1904, chronicles a similar story: Pinkerton,
an American officer, travels to Japan and takes
on a local wife during his sojourn, only to
return to the West to legitimately marry a white
American woman. Cio-Cio-San, the abandoned
Japanese wife who has given up everythingher
religion, her family, her son, and finally her
own lifeto be with Pinkerton, became a new
archetype. Now the image of the Asian female
dainty, diminutive, doll-likegets compounded
with yet another feature: self-sacrifice. This
specific narrative is so intertwined with the
perception of Asian women that it was reworked
with another Eastern locale in the 1989 musical
Miss Saigon, set in Vietnam with the American
war as a backdrop. After an announcement of
the 2014 London revival of Miss Saigon, presale
tickets were reported to be $4.4 million on the
first day, breaking box office records and proving that the narrative is not just still popular,
but profitable as well.
Lotis and Puccinis inf luence also found its
way onto the pop charts; the band Weezer gave
a direct nod to Madama Butterf ly in their album
Pinkerton (1996). Take, for instance, the lyrics to
the song Across the Sea, dedicated to an 18-yearold Japanese girl: I wonder what clothes you wear
to school/ I wonder how you decorate your room/ I
wonder how you touch yourself/ And curse myself
for being across the sea.
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Hollywoods Golden Age gave rise to another archetype of the sexualized Asian
female: the dragon lady. Unlike her butterf ly counterpart, the dragon lady was a fierce
Asian woman who wielded powermore often than not of a sexual natureto the
detriment of the men around her. This vampy femme fatale was first popularized by the
Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong, who, as the only high-profile Asian American actress of that era, fascinated European and white American men at the time, says
Elaine H. Kim, professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley and writer and director of the short film Slaying the Dragon Reloaded: Asian Women
in Hollywood and Beyond. The character was an exotic (read: dangerous) seductress,
and Wongs dragon-lady status was epitomized in her role as Fu Manchus daughter
in Daughter of the Dragon (1931). Yet the characters Wong played always met the same
tragic end; in many ways, dragon-lady roles were merely a racier rehash of Loti and
Puccinis quivering butterf lies.
But perhaps the biggest factor sealing the image of the sexualized Asian female as
we know it in the United States was the U.S. military presence in Asia, beginning in
World War II and continuing through the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Military camp
towns cropped up around the U.S. bases, and a local industrynamely juicy bars and
brothelswas created with the sole purpose of servicing U.S. soldiers. With the universal draft, American men who may not have held preconceived ideas of Asian women
were now shipped to Asia, where they would be confronted with local women working
in the sex industry. Stanley Kubricks film Full Metal Jacket (1987), about American gis
in the Vietnam War, made famous the following quote, uttered in broken English by a
Vietnamese female prostitute: Me so horny. Me love you long time. Me sucky sucky.
Mixed in 1989 as a sample in 2 Live Crews Me So Horny, the quote has taken on a
pop-culture life of its own.
The American soldierAsian female union began as one of commerce: money
exchanged for sexual services. But historians layer a possible second reading to this narrative: colonization. The American gi representing a first world power with first world
resources and privilegescolonizes the Asian female, who comes from a place of poverty, weakness, and everything else often associated with the third world. The Asian
female sex worker could be read as another version of the dragon ladya seductress
capitalizing on the demand for sex.
The end of the Korean War in the early 1950s created a rise in overseas adoption. War
orphans were airlifted from Korea and later Vietnam. The aftermath of the wars abroad
brought about an idea of benevolence toward Asian countriesof bringing women
and children into our beautiful families, Kim explains. At that time, it was possible to
think of bringing an Asian woman into your family, and not just someone you take in
the back alley.
A savior narrative began to take shapeAsian women became the native women who
needed to be whisked away from their impoverished homeland. In the backdrop of the emergence of blended families came two films introducing the archetype of the noble-hearted
Asian prostitute in need of salvation: Sayonara (1957) and The World of Suzie Wong (1960).
The native woman gets her fairy-tale ending: The Western man marries her.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

This salvation narrative is also exemplified in Graham

Greenes 1955 novel The Quiet American, set just before
the dawn of the Vietnam War. When the titular American,
a young, overly idealistic man named Alden Pyle, first
lays eyes on Phuong, a young Vietnamese dancer who
is already mistress to an older British journalist named
Thomas Fowler, he says, She seems fresh, like a f lower.
Later, Pyle informs Fowler of his plans to steal Phuong
away from him and take her back to America as his wife.
I want to keep her, Pyle insists. I want to protect her.
To which Fowler, who is already married to an Englishwoman back home, retorts, I dont. She doesnt need
protection. I want her around, I want her in my bed.
Greenes novel presents both forms of the romanticized
Asian female: the native woman as layover wife during
your foreign sojourn as well as the native woman you
want to airlift from the wreckage and whisk back to the
safety of American soil. As for Phuong, the object of desire for these two Western men, she remains ever silent.
For the majority of the novel Pyle and Fowler talk over
her, filling in her desires and wishes with their own.

Surveying the history of representation in text and film,

the Asian female has continually been exoticized and eroticized, an image that persists today. Last year Katy Perrys
performance of Unconditionally at the American Music
Awards was both lauded and derided as a form of yellowface. Perry appeared onstage in a Hollywood (read: sexier)
version of a kimono, along with a troupe of similarly clad
backup dancers. They spun their paper umbrellas on a
set designed like a Japanese garden and sang about, well,
unconditional love. Bloggers dubbed it Perrys geisha performance and criticized it as perpetuating images of the
groveling, self-sacrificial woman who has been abandoned.
Cases of extreme Asiaphiles aboundthe subject of
Debbie Lums recent documentary Seeking Asian Female
is a self-described Asiaphile named Steven Bolstad, a
60-year-old white male who finds his bride in China
through an online service. When asked what drew him to
his prospective wife, he simply responds, She looks so
Chinese! but fails to elaborate on what he actually means
by Chinese. The abhorrent and potentially harmful case
of Michael Lohman, a Princeton graduate student who
admitted to pouring his urine and semen into the drinks
of Asian women more than 50 times in the graduate school
cafeteria is an example of an Asian fetish gone too far.
But perhaps the Asian fetish is best captured in the
song Asian Girlz, released last summer by a band called
Day Above Grounda song that quickly went viral with
lyrics like the following: I love your creamy yellow thighs/
Ooh your slanted eyes/ Its the Year of the Dragon/ Ninja
pussy Im stabbin/ Asian girl, youre my Asian girl.
Rivaling the lyrics was the video itself; it featured a
skimpily dressed Asian woman who drinks a magic potion,
shrinks down a troupe of (white) men, and locks them up

in a cage. The public may have decried the crassness of

the song, but no one was asking for explanations for the
references made in the lyricsonce again demonstrating
how pervasive stereotypes of the sexualized Asian female
have become in our culture. The band quickly released a
statement explaining what they called their satirical tribute
to the always lovely Asian woman [...] some of the most
gorgeous women on the planet.
In a recent New York Times piece, Bloomberg View columnist Jonathan Mahler writes, When you fetishizeas
opposed to valuesomething, you wind up celebrating the
idea of the thing rather than the thing itself. In other words,
the fetishized subject becomes the objectified. And when this
fetishization applies to a whole group of people, like Asians, it
translates to an obsession with the idea of the Asian woman,
rather than the individual herself. UrbanDictionary.com, that
shorthand source on all matters current and crude, cites the
primary definition of the Asian fetish as a strong attraction to Asians, most prevalent in Caucasian males. Although
Asian girls have As in more than just grades: what they lack
in boobs, they make up for in beauty. Usually exotic and
petite, guys dont necessarily feel superior but more masculine around them.
The perception of sexualized Asian women was informed
by a long tradition of the Western male writing and controlling that perception, leaving the women with no agency
and no control over their own representation. Asian women
in the media have been few and far between; what few
there were often had no choice but to take on the archetypal roles of Asian females. But the landscape is changing.
The earlier Asian female icons are joined by a growing
rank of women working to shed the stif ling images of
self-sacrificial butterf lies or the dragon-lady seductress.
From Connie Chung to Julie Chen, from Margaret Cho to
Sandra Oh to Saving Face director Alice Wu, we are seeing
a rise of Asian American women taking control of their
own representation. With heightened visibility and the
increased diversity of voices in our culture, we hope to
have more nuanced narratives about the lives of Asian
women. It might be only a matter of time before these
pervasive, confining archetypes of Asian women themselves
become dated. Soon the Asian female may no longer be
presented as wordless Phuongs, leaving the Western male
to fill in the ellipses of her narrative.

Patricia Park has been published in

the New York Times, the Guardian, Slice
Magazine, and others. Her forthcoming first
novel, Re Jane, is a modern-day retelling of
Jane Eyre.

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LETS GET D

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r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

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Ask any World of Warcraft player about

Goldshire and youll likely hear more than a
little embarrassed giggling. The small town
just outside the human capital of Stormwind

DIGITAL

THE PREJUDICESAND THE POTENTIAL

OF GAMING AND EROTIC ROLEPLAYING
by Katherine Cross | illustrations by Amy Martin

is a known hotbed of erpshorthand for

erotic roleplayingderided but secretly loved
in the gaming world in a way that mirrors
the physical worlds vexed relationship with
sexuality. In Goldshire, among other little
hideaways in online games, ones chat window
might fill with seamy erotica that seems lifted
from a bodice-ripping penny dreadful, with
players speaking their parts in describing an
unfolding sexual drama between their avatars.

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oleplaying in a video game or in pen-and-paper (pnp)

roleplaying games (rpgs) means adopting another
persona through a kind of method acting, allowing you
to inhabit an avatar adventuring through the game world. You do
not just play with these roles, you are the role in a certain sense.
To roleplay in any kind of game is to make the road by walking it;
it is a microcosmic form of biblical creation, where words create
worlds and action shapes the contours of its topography.
While sexuality abounds in gaming culturescantily clad
women gracing rpg manuals and magazines, intimations
of sex from f lirtatious succubi or Dark Elvesthe world of
roleplaying is incredibly skittish or childish about sexuality,
from the fantasy tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)
to the multiplayer online World of Warcraft (WoW). To broach
the subject in an open way that announces itself and gets to the
heart of sex (thus helping players have a healthy relationship
with it in the game world) is all but verboten.
But erp isnt just an esoteric hobbyits a steadfast component of many online roleplaying game worlds. Neverwinter
Nights, an early online roleplaying game, let player-hosted
servers be listed on an in-game portal that allowed players to
select player-created multiplayer worlds outside the immediate jurisdiction of the game developers. These social servers
were universally understood as a polite euphemism for sex
servers where erp was the norm, complete with nude avatars,
sexy clothing, s & m kit, and more.
In general, the rpg community has a live and let live (preferably somewhere else) attitude about erp, one that parallels
the putatively liberal tolerance of sex is natural and everyone
does itjust dont talk about it. Likewise, sex and sexuality in
rpgs are understood as both ubiquitous and unspeakable. Its
there, everyone does it, but it need not be discussed openly.
After all, everyone knows how to, you know, do it.
Most pen-and-paper roleplaying games have hundreds or
thousands of pages worth of rules, ideas, story content, and
other kinds of errata, but very few devote any of that space to
content that addresses issues like consent, sexual diversity or
orientation, or the sexual culture of the world one is playing
in. In-game, then, one is often subject to depressingly familiar forms of sexual harassmentmen having their avatars
walk up to yours and awkwardly propositioning you, for
instance, or refusing to take no for an answer if one rebuffs
their entreatiesin or out of character. Online roleplaying
gaming simply follows the paths of sexuality laid out in the
physical world.
In spite of this, sexuality is endemic to the world of rpg and
part of its visual culture. Commercials and box art for games
are rife with heaving bosoms while pornographic proportions
are common background decoration, seen by gamers and nongamers alike.

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Much as in the physical world, an objectified female body is

offered up time and again as window dressing for the enjoyment of male gamers. She adorns book covers, video game
box art, and 3-D models with fully rendered animation whose
dance is an eternal reminder of the Victorias Secret imagery
that saturates our wider culture. The ubiquity of sexual imagery in roleplaying game culture is matched only by the silence
that surrounds it.
As it is, many established roleplaying gamers see erp as
detrimental to the hobby or evocative of the crude stereotypes
normal folks have of us nerds. Much as in the physical world,
this is a vexed relationship rife with petty hypocrisies: Gamers will angrily declaim cybersex one moment then roleplay
a steamy werewolf scene in Goldshire the next. This attitude
channels the culture of erp into shadowy corridors, far from
the bright drags of online gaming, and the salacious parliament of whispers away from the gaming table in pen-andpaper rpgs. Those of us involved have had to make do, quietly
finding community established through winks, nods, and bad
puns. Websites like Darknest and F-List blossomed around the
subculture-within-a-subculture that erp created, providing a
hidden forum for every sexual fantasy.
What remains out in the open, however, is rather sterile.
Even in the most alien of fantasy worlds, portrayals of romance are oddly familiar, drawing from the same store of rom
cominspired tropes. Most pen-and-paper rpgs confine their
discussions of romance to (heterosexual) marriage. D&Ds
second edition included a special supplement for roleplaying the
knight-in-shining-armor paladin classThe Complete Paladins
Handbookwhose treatment of courtship rituals, while simultaneously adorable and creepy ([the paladin] attaches a lock of
the beloveds hair to his shield), were decidedly confined to the
most chaste forms of stereotypical chivalry. A f leeting glance or
a chance meeting, the book says, is all thats required for the
paladin to become hopelessly smitten, recapitulating the hoary
old love at first sight clich.
Later editions of D&Ds Forgotten Realms do slightly better
by including a pantheon of deities, some of whom openly extol
a (thinly described) libertine sexualitybut it refers to little
beyond the vaguest sexual touchstones of our own real world
culture. Sune Firehair, for instance, is a goddess of beauty and
love, with dogma that includes Believe in romance, as true love
will win over all. According to the sourcebook, her Order of
the Ruby Rose has followers who, among other things, often
adopted a beautiful individual to adore from afar whether that
individual would be f lattered by such attentions or not.
The stalking motif is strong with D&D, it seems. But like in
the paladin book, this is framed as virtuous and romantic; both
paladins and Sunes Order are rendered as objectively good in the
game material, encouraging players to regard such ideas as moral.

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More troublesome is the fact that one evil deity, Loviatar, the Maiden of Pain, is
given a strong bdsm theme. In fact, most games often portray dominatrices as explicitly
evil characters who do not distinguish between painful pleasure and actual torture. World
of Warcrafts shivarra and succubi creatures are given similar motifs, one being called a
foul demon dominatrix by a human questgiver.
Players are therefore left on their own if they want to color outside the lines. In the
shadowed world of erp, players must weave their own stories of love, lust, and everything
in between, with no help or guidance. The resulting culture is a paradox: emancipating
gamers from the sexual monoculture of mainstream gaming but trapping them in new
(albeit sexier) fetters as well.

n 2011 I interviewed two erpers for a project at the feminist gaming blog The Border
House entitled Cyberfucking While Feminist, with the intent of exploring
genders valence in erp.
The two women I spoke to were adamant that erp had allowed them to experience a
magnificent sexual awakening. One spoke of the raw sexual power she felt after a good
erp session; the other felt it lent depth and complexity to the character she played, providing a compelling backstage to her adventures in WoWs Azeroth.
Yet they also had to navigate a tricky minefield because of the silence around erp that
prevails in gamer culture. I really dread the idea of my normal friends ever finding out
that I enjoy erp, one said.
The women also talked at length about the way gendered double binds seeped into the
play, one explaining that erp is used as a means of argumentum ad hominem. Its a way
of discrediting someone. Just as in the physical world, in the realm of rpgs, a woman (or
a man roleplaying as a woman) is most easily vituperated by insinuating that she has an
active sex life.
When I caught up with one of my interview subjects to probe her thoughts for this
piece, she described erp as a sword that cuts both ways. It could be positive and affirming, potentially, but also a conduit of toxicity and sexual insecurity. She recounted how

But even the most chaste forms of romance

remain suspect, and when they are discussed
openly it tends to be in deeply disturbing ways.
When romance is done well in roleplaying
games, by contrast, many male gamers have
been known to sound off rather violently on the
matter. Roleplaying of any romantic sort becomes suspect for emasculating forces in gaming and, to some gamers, represents a cancer to
be cut out.
Just as romance is segregated on bookstore
shelves and consigned to feminine irrelevance in
the physical world, romantic roleplay gaming
whether or not it expressly involves anything
sexualis looked askance at, as something that
somehow drains roleplay gaming of its grittier
essence and threatens to drown epic storylines
in cooties.
This antagonism to romantic plotlines in
roleplaying games has a strongly gendered
character to it. When former BioWare writer
Jennifer Hepler was viciously harassed for
expressing her views on game design, she was
hit by a wave of male displeasure about her role
in writing romantic plotlines for BioWares
Dragon Age video game series. Amid a slew of
misogynist slurs, she was told she should go
write young adult romance novels, and that
she wrote for middle-aged women who read
yaoi fanfic. Many men complained about what

ROLEPLAYING OF ANY ROMANTIC SORT BECOMES SUSPECT OF

EMASCULATING FORCES IN GAMING AND, TO SOME GAMERS, REPRESENTS
A CANCER TO BE CUT OUT.
one man on a popular erp forum would act out misogynist fantasies with the women he
erped with, even when they said they were no longer comfortable with a scene or being
contacted by him. You do have to remember that creeps exist, and the sexualized nature
of the roleplay only encourages them to express their worst side, she said.
The mainstream world of rpgs , in its various games and guises, tends to take no
responsibility for such behavior, instead pouring scorn on the entire exercise, even in its
most benign forms. Exploration and education are actively discouraged, considered too
racy for open discussion in most game forums and source material.

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they alleged to be forced gay romance in

Dragon Age 2 (DA2), blame for which was partly
laid at Heplers door, since she wrote one of the
games gay characters.
Despite the singular lack of smut in these
games, they are still condemned as aggressively
sexual and even emasculating. A popular complaint from heterosexual male gamers about

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DA2 was that even if they roleplayed as men, a male character by the name of Anders would f lirt with them. (Yes,
the phrase shoving homosexuality down our throats
came up.)
This soaring level of original discourse is matched by
YouTube comments on a video made by a young man exploring
Goldshire with his character and reading out the hypersexual
profiles of other characters. (Sample text includes macro futa,
loves giant booty, blow jobs. Turnoffs: all gore, watersports,
scat, boys, other futas (sorry).) While some erpers disdain

stud. Female character, unabashed and confident about sex,

isnt really ashamed of her various partners? Whore.

hat this antipathy to romance and eroticism evinces

beyond the obvious prejudicesis a collective
unwillingness to openly explore a universe of stories that
allow for more complex roleplaying. Romance, after all, is a
huge part of our lives; though it is considered a stereotypically womanly interest in its narrative form (which by itself

WHETHER ONE BELIEVES ALL ERPERS ARE LONELY HOUSEWIVES OR PERVY

TEENAGE BOYS, EACH MYTH IS A DEFENSE OF THREATENED MASCULINITY.
this sort of f lagrance and adopt more subtle or less-graphic
approaches in their roleplaying, the popular response to this
knows no such distinctions. One commenter on the video
simply said, ok that is just gay. Another says a lot with a little,
writing ya all need to get this shit off of [WoW] its a fucking
game NOT A WHORE HOUSE.
To be sure, the pornographic roleplaying profiles of many
of the Goldshire characters are shocking to the uninitiated,
replete with all manner of kink and fetish jargon. But the
anger sired by this more extreme group of erpers, who are primarily interested in roleplaying fetishistic sex, is instructive.
Another commenter says, Its actually kind of rare that dudes
do that, defending the idea that this pastime is feminine in
nature, and not something that real men would be caught doing. Other commenters aver the opposite: Female avatars, they
claim, are all played by men because only lonely, horny men
would erp. Teenage boys are scapegoated routinely, presumably
because of raging hormones or some such.
Whatever the pearl-clutchers argue, it turns on questions
of gender and proper gendered behavior: Whether one
believes all erpers are lonely housewives or pervy teenage
boys, each myth is a defense of threatened masculinity. Real
men should have real (heterosexual) sex available to them,
and ought to have no need of cyber sexuality. In my time playing WoW, I saw that argument appear repeatedly on forums:
Real men got real chicks, pathetic men roleplayed their sex.
There was no other reasoning. Women who erped, meanwhile, were met with the same opprobrium that greets all
sexually active women.
The old double standard is still there, said one of the
women I interviewed, when talking about attitudes among
erpers. Male character, tons of women in his e-harem? Total

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accounts for its vicious devaluing in rpg culture) it affects

us all regardless of gender, and the best plots in rpgs or
player-driven stories often draw from that wellspring of
human experience.
This is not to say that everyone should erp or romantically
roleplay, but we must bring this kind of play out from the
shadows so that it can no longer be used to shame roleplayers,
reinscribing a virtual madonna/whore complex.
This means being able to discuss erp without fear, and that
game developers should welcome and sanction it rather than
pretend that such groups do not constitute part of the fanbases.
Are there models for this social magic? Happily, yes.
Monte Cook Gamess Numenera is an independent, crowdfunded pen-and-paper rpg with a lightweight set of rules (less
math and dice rolls, more actual roleplaying) and a heavyweight story. It is set in the Ninth World: Earth, one billion
years in the future, after eight hyperadvanced civilizations rose
and fell. The setting of Numenera is that of a society rather
like Game of Thrones but considerably less bleakly patriarchal,
and with more explicit magic. That magic comes in the form of
the titular numenera, the technology left behind by the eight
previous civilizations.
Simply for the sheer, lovingly crafted scope of its vision, it is
worth checking outperhaps even as a game for first-time pnp
roleplayers. But it also stands out for being one of the very few
games to have actually given thought and care to sexuality and
romance in its setting.
Thats where writer and lead editor Shanna Germains
excellent 13-page supplement Love and Sex in the Ninth World
comes in. Though purchased separately from the main book,
its worth every penny of its $3 price. In its introduction, Germain manages to go further than most rpgs with two simple

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sentences: When bringing love and sex into a game, its important to remember that
most of our modern-day sensibilities about those topics dont carry over into Numenera.
Because people of the Ninth World dont have the same cultural norms, pressures, and
expectations that we do today, they have very different views of relationships and sex.
Unlike most other games (which, despite their fantastical settings, just give us
reruns of television and film clichs about love and sex), Germain digs deep into the
larger source material to compel players of Numenera to think differently about how
they play with sex and gender in their games; she skillfully harnesses the climate of
alien unfamiliarity to pique player curiosity about kink, queerness, polymorphously
perverse morphology, and more. Much of what she describes in these all-too-brief
pages is not unfamiliar to some of usqueerness, transness, bdsm, sex toysbut she
queers it all again through the vagaries of the titular numenera. The hyperadvanced
technology suffusing the otherwise medieval setting magnificently warps and distorts
the society.
Enchanted sex toyspreternaturally cool rods that stay chilly regardless of temperature, a randomly vibrating sphere, super goo that assumes any shape, devices that change
a persons physiologyall abound. Rituals and wildly disparate norms of gender also
populate the text, as do frank discussions of all the ways sexual exploitation can occur in
the setting. Rather than eliding such things or shying away from them, Germain makes
clear the dynamics inherent to coercion, rape, and sex trafficking, as opposed to enthusiastic consent and sex work as a career.
She does this through the authoritative voice of the text (which, in most roleplaying
games, dictates what the entire game world looks like) but she also takes things a giant
step further by encouraging that all-important discussion in the text. Time and again she
encourages openness and respectful dialogue among players to sort out the understandably controversial and, perhaps, discomfiting material they are presented with. But what
this also does is short-circuit the everyone knows fallacy that suffuses other roleplaying
games by reminding players that, when it comes to sex, everyone doesnt know; boundaries and comfort levels vary, and the most important thing in introducing sexual roleplaying is to respect that, Germain argues.
She also throws a wrench in other long-standing rpg conventions by stating clearly
that no player should feel their character is being compelled to do anything sexual that
they want no part offor example, forced seduction (I have a numenera device
that puts you under my control, and theres nothing you can do about it) and impossible
circumstances (Sleep with me or I kill your loved ones). If only such rules had been in
place in one D&D game I played where the dungeonmaster took his title a bit too seriously and imposed impregnating tentacle rape on all of the players.
Bringing consent and dialogue back into the picture, as Germain avers in her Numenera
ruleset, would go a long way to preventing players from stoically facing such nonsense during
their leisure time because they dont know how to say no,
or know of any sexual alternatives.
There are hopeful signs in Paizo Gamess Pathfinder as well, where a good deal of text has been
devoted to new imaginings of fantasy religion that are
more sex-positive, while avoiding the association of free sexuality or
kink with evil or femme-fatale archetypes. Pathfinder, now the biggest rival to
Dungeons & Dragons, has surpassed the granddaddy of rpgs in sales. This happened
for a number of reasons, some of which would be far too nerdy to get into (Id rather not
bore you with the finer points of the fourth-edition D&D ruleset), but Pathfinders bid
for sexual maturity and diversity is surely not repelling players either.

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Games like Numenera and Pathfinder not

only unravel the conventions of our cocooned
hobby but also provide a model for the rest of
the world as well, in an environment where
social experimentation is often the norm. If
roleplaying can overcome its sexual silences and
slut-shaming, as is tentatively promised by these
literary greenshoots of new games, then there
may be hope for the rest of the world yet.

hen I reinterviewed one of the women I

spoke to for Cyberfucking While Feminist she told me that one critical thing in erp
had changed for her down the years.
Five, six years ago, Id have felt bad and
ashamed about it. These days, if someone
tries to call me out on the basis of enjoying
erp and being shameless about it, my response
is something along the lines of, Yes, I do.
And youre going to have to go to the back of
the line.

Katherine Cross is a PhD student and

sociologist at the CUNY Graduate Center,
a games critic, and a weekly columnist
for Feministing.

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SEEKING SEXUALITY AS A LIFELONG PROCESS

At the risk of perpetuating

stereotypes, I once went through
a bisexual stage. I was a teenager,
and I tried on the label as a way to
describe my affection outside of
prescribed definitions of love and
lust. But like the too-small shoes
Id wear before I came across
affordable size 12s, the identity
was ill-fitting.

by joshunda sanders

But discarding it was difficult. I am a regimented woman; I

love structure. I love labeling things with Post-it notes and
storing them in pastel Martha Stewart accordion files. I am
a Catholic choir lady, I run marathons to relax, and I truly
enjoy the manic discipline of arranging words on paper.
But you cant file away desire. The maddening and
amazing thing about the heart is its inability to be classified or pinned down. Labeling myself sexually has never
worked, as much as I have admired the gumption of
women like Sex and the Citys Samantha or The L Words
Shane. I have been a folder without a label, languishing
in sexual limbo during a time of increasing mainstream
acceptance of lgbtq identity.
But while the Q of queer is rightfully gaining more
traction, the Q of questioning doesnt get a lot of love in
a culture that demands definition. I have always envied
people who find the perfect sticker for themselves and
proudly display it one way or another, but I grew up
finding role models in people of color who expressed a

illustration by michelle leigh

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sexuality f luid enough to seem as close to being a questioners love as possiblethe

broad romanticism of Zora Neale Hurston, bell hookss adamant romantic f lexibility, the
undesignated bisexuality of Lorraine Hansberry, or the declared free sexual expression
of Alice Walker and Meshell Ndegeocello. Even the rappers I loved, MC Lyte and Queen
Latifah, were presumed to be gay because they operated in the male-dominated universe
of hip hopbut I respected that, like Jodie Foster and Frank Ocean, they never declared
their sexuality one way or the other.
Perhaps it is easiest to fully disregard sexual categorization altogether, like quite a
few young celebs are doing. In October, Hunger Games costar Josh Hutcherson told Out
magazine that he is mostly straight but that, like a lot of people of his generation, he
wouldnt rule out the possibility of same-sex attraction. Ive never been, like, Oh, I
want to kiss that guy. I really love women, he said. But I think defining yourself as 100
percent anything is kind of nearsighted and closed-minded.
The question of defining oneself as totally in one camp or another has been on my
mind as so many African Americans in the pop-culture spotlight have come out in a way
that is nothing short of historic. From Good Morning Americas Robin Roberts, Michael
Sam in the NFL, Jason Collins in the NBA, and Brittney Griner in the WNBA, it has
been encouraging to see their courage affirmed more often than not.
What we questioners have in common with our decidedly gay and lesbian brothers and
sisters is the same impulse to destroy our lives when we feel suddenly that we may be locked
out of any sense of true community. When I first realized I was something other than heterosexual yet wasnt quite willing to claim queer, I let myself sink first into suicidal despair. I
realized that I might not have a single team to join, but perhaps more than one, maybe one
that was beyond language, beyond the acceptable parameters of longing prescribed by my
Catholic upbringing, my Baptist family, or anyone else who was already looking to exclude
me from the normalcies of daily life because I was born poor, black, and a woman.
The freedom to choose was constricted by what I grew up experiencing and believing.
As I saw more and more lgbtq people come out of the closet, I wondered whether or not
I even had a closet to walk out of.

I was born to a devout Catholic mother and grew up in New York City in the 1980s and
90s. In middle school, I found my first literary angel and mentor, James Baldwin, in
a nonfiction collection called The Price of the Ticket. In his essay Here Be Dragons,
Baldwin wrote about each human as androgynous, containing elements of both man and
woman. Until I read his work, I was fundamentally unable to separate the act of loving
from the act of sex: Popular culture discussions and depictions of sexuality, after all, center on who does what with whom. But love enchants us because it is the least mechanical
aspect of our lives, the place where we can still encounter spontaneity.
Love between any two human beings would not be possible did we not have available
to us the spiritual resources of both sexes, Baldwin wrote. Love and sexual activity are
not synonymous: Only by becoming inhuman can the human being pretend they are.
Black mothers are so frequently portrayed as f lawed and inhumane that I struggle
always to describe the cruelties and failings of my mother, even though those are the
key aspects of my childhood with her that I remember. She was a funny woman, but
also mentally ill and unmedicated. I do not know how much of her religious fervor was
related to her bipolar disorder, but I do remember watching her disgust during Mass at
St. Patricks Cathedral as men with pink triangles and the words Silence = Death on
their shirts stood up in silent protest during homilies.
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During her manic moments, she sometimes referred to me

as a lesbian bitch. The epithet made it easy for me to make
the leap from fearing her rejection to trying to kill myself
when I was around 11, after kissing Lydia, the daughter of
Jehovahs Witnesses. When her parents discovered what we
had been doing, I never saw my friend again. I was devastated. I also felt trapped in an identity structured to pacify my
mother and make our hard lives as relatively easy as possible.

Family, was a rare exception, where she writes about falling

in love with her friend Clare without stating her sexual preferences explicitly. Not long after, articles in the New York
Times Magazine and Salon incisively explored both queer
and straight resistance to the widely acknowledged (if rarely
tolerated) notion of the Kinsey scale of sexual f luidity.
In Salon, Louise Sloan wrote about coming out of the
bisexual closet after identifying as a lesbian for years. Even

IT HAD NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT MY STEADFAST AMBIVALENCE ABOUT

LABELING MY SEXUALITY MIGHT BE VIEWED AS A POLITICAL COP-OUT.
My mother might have f lipped out if Id told her that
Id hooked up with Lydia. I never considered that if she
disowned me I would not lose anything (as we had nothing),
but that my life might actually get bettera testament to the
stronghold her mental illness had on my well-being.
She would have been livid to see any of the envelopes
labeled Beautiful Black Bisexual that I sent to my two best
friends in high school. Those words were my bridge to them
from upstate New York on scholarship at boarding school,
hundreds of miles from my mother in the Bronx. There, I
tried on the words that still didnt fit, hoping I could grow
into the courage of understanding who or how I was supposed to love properly.
A decade ago, when I found myself in love with a woman
for the first time, I was living in the Bay Area, a center of free,
open sexuality. But my queer (soon-to-be-ex) friends felt that I
was not being honest enough, and my friendships with heterosexuals ended as soon as they began quoting chapters of the
Bible that outlined my fate for kissing girls and liking it.
I worked myself into the ground trying to make my sexuality a exclamation point instead of a question mark, and was
not even close to being successful. Years later, the question of
whether I am straight or something else stubbornly remains.
Like many people, I long to fit into a neat category, and it irks
me to be so open to the possibility of love in any form. But a
lifetime is a long time to be at war with yourself.

Unsurprisingly, there remains a persistently unaddressed and

entrenched cultural bias against people who identify as bisexual or questioning. Maria Bellos November 2013 Modern Love
column in the New York Times, Coming Out as a Modern

though she knew she had always been attracted to men, her
choice to identify as gay was purposeful: Adopting a label
that didnt quite fit me was definitely a political choice. No
one wanted to discriminate against me for liking men.And
with people getting fired and denied many basic rights for
having same-sex relationships, I felt the term bisexual,
though accurate, just confused the issue, she wrote. Refusing a label altogether? Tempting, but total political cop-out.
The way I looked, people would just assume I was straight.
Until I read Sloans piece, it had never occurred to me that
my steadfast ambivalence about labeling my sexuality might
be viewed as a political cop-out. Bisexual erasure and invisibility are real, for certain, but so is the invisibility of those
of us who feel levels of attraction along a continuum. What
of those of us who, even as adults, are not adamant about a
specific location along the sexuality spectrum? Questioning ones sexuality is often considered (like bisexuality) to
simply be a confused, temporary stage on your way to being
gay or lesbian, a mushy gray area of romance.
Lisa Diamond, who studies identity and same-sex attraction,
was quoted in the New York Times Magazines The Scientific
Quest to Prove Bisexuality Exists, and took the words right
out from under my keyboard: I think our categories of gay
versus bisexual dont capture all the important space in
between. Diamond was also quoted, along
with several other researchers, in a
February 2014 piece published in The
Advocate, Exploring the Umbrella:
Bisexuality and Fluidity, discussing
data that shows that 10 to 14 percent
of American women

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I CANNOT IGNORE THAT FREEDOM TO

ME LOOKS DIFFERENT. IT LOOKS MORE
FLUID AND LESS DISCRETE.
describe themselves as mostly but not completely heterosexual; 6 to
9 percent of American men identify similarly.
There is a place, researchers and advocates agree, for our sexual
attractions to grow and change over time. Denise Penn, who is on
the board of directors for the American Institute of Bisexuality, put
it this way in The Advocate: I think that f luidity is simply a way to
express the gray area that reality really is.... Fluidity refers to a range,
and I think thats good.
But if f luidity is gaining acceptance and we can all begin to see that
we share an evolving sense of sexuality, why is it always left out of the
conversation? In a 2012 Gallup Poll announcing that 3.4 percent of
Americans identify as lgbt, the Q was eliminated altogether. Online
searches about the meaning of that Q reveal forums and pdfs explaining that there is power in declaration, and declaring oneself in one
way or another is a way of being truthful, empowered, and free.
I cannot ignore that freedom to me looks different. It looks more
f luid and less discrete. It is possible that I am unlike other nonwhite
Americanswho, according to that same Gallup Poll, are more likely
than our white counterparts to identify as L, G, B, or Tand I am
allowing shame or fear or my general dislike of categories to keep me
in the closet. At the same time, many of us question our sexuality
for far longer than beyond adolescence. That is not abnormal; it is
not some suspension of adulthood or extension of childhood. It is a
way of allowing love and intimacy to develop outside of conventional
standards or definitions of how sexuality should be expressed.

My journey as a lifelong questioner, perhaps pansexual, perhaps

truly bisexual, began with the notion of safety. I conceived of love
and romance as an imaginary site of security, beauty, and comfort.
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Unfortunately, I knew very few available men who offered these

things to women. While it is never useful to generalize, I can say that
the men in my mothers life, whom she said she loved, abandoned
her regularly and left us vulnerable. Women, such as her friends, or
our relatives, unfailingly picked up the pieces those men left behind.
Women were human beings I knew along a far greater, more diverse
spectrum, available as confidantes, playmates, friends, sisters, mothers, aunts, and more.
I grew up attracted to men and masculinity, but felt safest in the
company of women. When I actually fell in love with a woman, it
surprised me so much that I was also sexually attracted to her that
I ran my car right into the back of another vehicle after we kissed.
The moment terrified and thrilled me. I met her not long after a bad
relationship with a nice-enough guy who needed me more than I
considered sexy or financially viable. I loved her so ardently because
she was independent, more macho than him, brave, creative. She was
a survivor.
She was also not availableshe did not love me the way I loved
her. Eventually, she found the woman of her dreams, and in an era
when they can wed. I was left to sort out my questions by avoiding
them, turning them over again and again and year after year: Am I
asexual? Do I even care about sex with another person? Will I marry
a man? Am I too (fill in the blank) to be able to marry anyone?
Unfortunately, we are a nation that is rarely satisfied with unanswered questions. Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage recently told
interviewer James Hibberd in Entertainment Weekly, Nowadays,
theres so much information about everybody that its hard to see
the performance when you know what [the actor] had for dinner last
night. You want to keep a mystery. I think its healthy too. You want
your privacy as a human being.
It is healthy to keep a little to yourself. But is it my shame and lack
of self-acceptance saying that? Is it an excuse to not come out, or is it
valid? I cant tell.
I wonder if, in the perceived pressure to declare oneself along
one line or another, we dont also confine ourselves to thinking
about desire in compartmentalized ways. In Letters to a Young Poet,
Rilke writes, Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and
like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. And the
point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you
will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day
into the answer.
I live those lines like a mantra. I like that possibility and openness. I have learned to be comfortable with the ambiguity, even if the
world isnt quite ready yet.

Joshunda Sanders is a speechwriter in

Washington, D.C. and a frequent Bitch contributor.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

FEMINIST PORN START-UPS ARE GETTING

SPANKED WHEN IT COMES TO FINANCES.
BY LYNSEY G

Four women sit around a gleaming black dining-room table in a loft

apartment. In the center of the table, white ceramic vases shaped
like pistols sprout peonies. Original paintings hang on every wall, a
taxidermied snake and mongoose stand locked in eternal combat on
a coffee table, and a Gucci gold-plated alligator guards a photo of the
apartments owner, who is clad in black leather.
Advertising executiveturnedentrepreneur Cindy Gallop
and her team are working quietly from their respective
computers inside the infamous Black Apartment on 23rd
Street in Manhattan. Theyre answering e-mails, making
phone calls, improving their website, and editing content, just like any other start-up team. But unlike most
start-up teams, they are working on a technology-enabled,
radically disruptive website called MakeLoveNotPorn.tv,
which focuses on what they call real-world sex. Everyday
folks (theMakeLoveNotPornStars) upload videos of

themselves having sexno bells, whistles, fancy lighting,

or ultra-athletic positions. Just regular folks getting it on.
These videos, after a careful curation process, can be rented
by subscribers for three weeks at $5 a piece. The profits are
shared equally between the MakeLoveNotPornStars and
the team that runs the site. The goal is to provide an
alternative to mainstream porn and to open up the conversation about sex in our culture, while developing a
self-sustaining economy that rewards everyone involved.
> >>

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As a reviewer, fan, and critic of adult entertainment, I talk to people about pornography
a lot, and I frequently hear a common refrain: A lot of peopleparticularly women, and especially feminist womenhave trouble finding porn they like. Its not that theyre against
porn, per se, its that most of the porn theyve seen is the same: skinny, white, able-bodied,
hetero people in the same (ridiculous) positions with the same (bad) music, performed
and edited to conform to culturally prescribed ideas of a white male fantasy. The resulting
material ranges from boring to laughable to downright gross, and many viewers feel slimy
for watching it. Why, people often ask, isnt there better porn out there?
The answer is simple, but surprising: Its not that there isnt better porn out there, its that
the people trying to make it find it enormously difficult to do business. There are plenty of
producers who want to make better adult entertainment. Many of them make feminist porn
featuring explicit consent, a wide range of sexual practices, and performers of diverse body
types, races, genders, and ability levels. While the Internet has leveled the playing field for
creative start-ups in many sectors, and even made cookie-cutter porn from southern California more mainstream, adult entertainment start-ups face financial obstacles on every
imaginable rung of the ladder to success. Cindy Gallop and her team, along with numerous
other adult entertainment start-ups who are trying to disrupt established norms both inside
and outside the adult industry, have a particularly difficult time swimming upstream against
a financial current that discourages and sometimes outright discriminates against their type
of business.
Right out of the gate, adult start-ups of all stripes have it tough. Investors are terrified
of them. Small business loans for porn start-ups are virtually impossible to get due to
banks morality clauses. Kickstarter and most other crowdfunding websites do not permit
pornographic projects to raise funds on their platforms. And porn-friendly crowdfunder
Off beatr takes 30 percent off the top of funded projects, which any start-up founder will
tell you can make or break a f ledgling company.
And, once capitalfrom an investor, crowdfunding campaign, or elsewherehas been
located, finding a place to keep it is another challenge. Cindy Gallops exasperation is visible when she says, I couldnt find a single bank in America that would allow us to open a
banking account for a business that has the word porn in its name, even though our name,
by the way, is MakeLoveNotPorn. But the mere mention of the P-word sets off red flags
for banks with time-honored morality clauses. Chase Bank closed the MakeLoveNotPorn
teams account when the nature of its business surfaced, and has recently been closing porn
performers personal bank accounts for no given reason. (Yesthe establishment that paid
$1.86 billion out of court this February to settle accusations that its unscrupulous handling
of home loans was a prime mover behind the 2008 banking crisis is calling shots on what
is and is not immoral.) Most adult start-ups must resort to moving their money through
innocuously named holding companies to fly under the radar.
Even when bank accounts have been set up somewhere, adult start-ups must register
as a merchant with Visa and MasterCard, the two biggest credit card companies on the
planet. Both card companies require that adult merchants, which fall into the high-risk
category (along with loan refinancing and online gambling), pay fees of at least $500
to register with each of their networks. Once theyve passed muster, another $500 is
charged annually for as long as the businesses operate. Thats $2,000 up-front, to accept
credit card payments from just two companies, before the start-up in question has earned
any profits. Two grand may sound like small potatoes to some start-up founders, but for
many feminist adult entertainment start-ups, which often run on shoestring budgets
with the goal of making a positive change in the world rather than big profits, such sums
sound a death knell.
A producer of feminist porn from Australia, who prefers to remain anonymous, attests
that these up-front costs are essentially nothing more than a blackmail fee. They make
it difficult for independent adult businesses to get off the ground, and, even if a company
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is doing well enough to pay the fees, she says, it only takes
Visa or MasterCard to get angry and everything collapses.
But high fees arent only being leveled by the credit
card companies themselves. After all, once a business has
been approved byand paid intoVisas and MasterCards networks, it must still find a payment processor.
Online payment processing is an oft-overlooked but
powerful industry, essentially gatekeeping every monetary
transaction on the Internet. But the big guysPayPal,
Amazon Payments, and Google Walletall refuse to work
with adult merchants. When I contacted the companies
for comment, they each sent me some variation of the
following statement (from Amazon Payments): We are
prohibited by our agreements with providers to service
sexually explicit material for transmission over the Internet. Not much in the way of explanation there, and their
terms of service arent much more illuminating, offering only blanket prohibitions against pornography and
sexually explicit materials.
While its certainly within each companys right to deny
service to whomever they wish, it bears mentioning that
Amazon makes a hefty profit on its sexual wellness section,
which sells vibrators, sex furniture, erotic films, and more.
PayPal is owned by eBay, which happily allows its users to
sell porn in its Adults Only area. And lets not even start on
what sorts of entertainment one can find using Google. But

porn was used in association with it, and that seems to

have been enough.
Tobi Hill-Meyer is an award-winning director of queer, feminist docu-porn focusing on trans womens diverse sexualities
through her company Handbasket Productions. She is familiar
with the power these corporations can wield over a client. Even
if a business tries to follow all the processors rules, she says,
If some PayPal employee decides [youve violated their rules],
theyll shut you down and take all your money without any real
options for appeal. Ive heard of folks whove had that happen
for really unexpected things, such as having a link on the web
store to another site that had a link to another site that had
explicit content.
Backed into a corner, many porn start-ups turn to
third-party payment processors that specialize, or at least
dabble, in handling adult merchants. These processors,
most prominently CCBill, offer a full range of services,
including dealing with IRS audits and managing subscriptions. But for adult businesses grossing under $50,000 a
week in transactions, CCBills fees start at 11.5 percent and
go up from there. The lower the companys gross profits,
the higher the transaction rates. (For companies grossing
more than $50k a week, rates are negotiable, according to
CCBills website.) By way of comparison, a merchant selling baseball caps and using PayPal, for instance, might pay
between 2 and 4 percent on each transaction, depending

MOST FEMINIST PORN START-UPS SIMPLY

CANT AFFORD TO KEEP OUT OF THE RED WITH
ADULT-FRIENDLY PROCESSORS RATES WHEN
THEYRE ALREADY MOVING THEIR MONEY
THROUGH HOLDING COMPANIES AND PAYING
OBEISANCE TO CREDIT CARD GIANTS.
still, MakeLoveNotPorns videos of real human sexuality and
the anonymous Australian producers ethically made feminist films are too risky to process payments for.
And its not just PayPal and the big boys that are so vehemently anti-pornographysmaller processors have followed
suit, as well. Early this year, Andre Shakti, a performer
from the Bay Area, raised more than $500 through Fund.
ly, a crowdfunding site whose tagline is Raise Money for
Anything. Shakti planned to go to Toronto for the Feminist
Porn Awards and Conference in Toronto. Fund.lys terms of
service do not prohibit the use of funds for adult purposes,
but the terms of service of its payment processor, WePay, do.
Shakti was denied access to the $545, which wasnt going
to be used for filming or distributing porn. But the word

on its volume of sales. The difference in rates is vast, and

it feels unfair to those who are trying to scrape together
enough profit to pay their performers and keep their business running.
Cindy Gallop calls it like it is: Because the adult industry has nowhere else to go, the rates [for adult-friendly
payment processors] are extortion. For MakeLoveNotPorn
and its revenue-sharing model, these transaction fees
present a major problem: Their profit margin is far lower
than that of most adult companies. (There are some small
processors who bypass credit cards and charge lower fees,
like Dwolla, with whom MakeLoveNotPorn does business,
but their reach is limited because they must play by the
rules of banks morality clauses.)

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Revenue-sharing model or no, most feminist porn start-ups simply cant afford to keep
out of the red with adult-friendly processors rates when theyre already moving their money
through holding companies and paying obeisance to credit card giants. Hill-Meyer, who
makes films for a niche audience as a form of activism, has typically made profits under
$1,500 a year (before the launch of her new website, DoingItOnline.com, whose profitability remains to be seen). It just does not make sense to hand over more than a third of my
income to the payment processor, she says.
Jiz Lee, an award-winning genderqueer performer, educator, and activist, ran an art project called Karma Pervs for years. Karma Pervs raised money for sex-positive, kink, eco-sexy,
queer, and trans-friendly nonprofit organizations by selling artwork for which Lee modeled.
But in 2013 Lee shuttered the project due to the cost of doing business online. [Credit cards]
were charging $1,000 a year, and [my payment processor] was taking out a percent of the
income as well, Lee says in an e-mail. Considering I was only able to raise a little more than
$1,500 each year for nonprofits, it seemed like it just wasnt a good investment. Lee hopes
to keep the project alive as an art book or as collectible postcards, but the original vision of
Karma Pervs has taken a back seatat least for nowto financial concerns.
We dont know how many other feminist-minded, progressive adult efforts like Karma
Pervs have folded under the pressure of feessome of which can reach 15 percent per
transaction for high risk merchantsbut it seems safe to assume that others who
might want to make better porn or sex-positive art have been unable to make their
efforts financially viable.
However, some adult entertainment start-ups see the high transaction rates as worth
the hassle. Courtney Trouble, a trailblazer in feminist queer porn for over a decade, runs
numerous websites and uses profits from membership fees and clip stores to afford an
adult-friendly payment processor. Trouble thinks their comprehensive service plan is worth
the expense. The merchant account company I work with also handles all of my subscriptions, affiliates, cancellations, and renewals. Its a business cost thats worth paying.
Troubles is an exceptional case of perseverance, though. I would keep doing it even if I
were broke, she says. In fact, there have been many years that I have been broke.
To be fair, financial institutions do have reasons for making things difficult for adult
entertainment companies. Because of the industrys notoriety in the financial world (documented ties to organized crime, money laundering, etc.), audits and investigations are more
common in that sector, which can lead payment processors, credit card companies, and
banks to spend more money on oversight for accounts that fall into the adult category. Charging high fees helps to offset these potential expenses.
But theres a more immediate reason for the high rates: chargebacks. An anonymous
source at a payment processor presents a hypothetical scenario of somebody buying a
porn subscription in the heat of the moment and their partner later finding the charge.
If the purchaser denies any involvement, the partner calls the credit-card issuer and
demands the money back. These chargebacks are more common in the porn industry
at large than in most others, due to our cultures generally shame-filled relationship
with porn. The anonymous source says hes seen easily 6 to 7 percent of an adult
companys transactions called into question. A percentage that high requires more
oversight from the processor involved, which is expensive, so higher fees are seen as a
preventative measure.
Chargebacks are, in theory, a legitimate concern for payment processors and credit-card
issuers, but its important to note that many of the people I talked towho pride themselves on ethics and transparencyhave lower chargeback rates than even many low-risk
merchants. These companies, which are actively trying to counteract the sexual shame
that leads to chargebacks in the first place, cater their products to a customer base that
stands behind its purchases. Feminist consumers, in particular, are so hungry for sexual
entertainment that meets their ethical standards that they are willing to pay for it when
they find it, and to remain loyal to the people who make it. Hill-Meyer is proud to say, Ive
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never had a contested charge. People buy my work because

they want to support it. Likewise, the Australian producer
says her newest website hasnt generated a single chargeback since I started, and that her older one typically has a
ratio of chargebacks under 1 percent.
MakeLoveNotPorns customers, in fact, are proud
enough of their purchases that they follow the companys
suggestion to contact their credit card issuers when they
join, explaining that charges going to MakeLoveNotPorn
are legitimate. Strange as that may seem, this is a necessary precaution because, when credit card payments are
made to high-risk merchants, the accounts are often
pinged or stopped automatically. While the card issuers
insist they are protecting their customers by enacting such
stringent measures, this strategy nevertheless provides a
built-in loophole: When your credit card issuer calls to ask
if you meant to buy porn, you can always say no and get
your money back. This escape hatch places high-risk merchants in a vicious cycle that practically invites consumers
to make chargebacks, thus keeping adult startups firmly
ensconced in the high-risk category. Its only the integrity
of their content and their customers trustworthiness that
keeps merchants like MakeLoveNotPorn viable.
Hill-Meyer insists, Im creating something very different from what you would normally find if you Google
porn. Cindy Gallop, Courtney Trouble, Jiz Lee, and my
Australian source might agree with hertheir products
go beyond entertainment and into the realm of activism.
While what defines pornography is difficult to put a finger

So while start-ups that want to make better porn can

hardly afford to do business, they are growing, and they
are banding together. Courtney Trouble has begun taking smaller companies under the successful wing of her
company Trouble Films: James Darling, a performer and
director who runs FTMFucker.com, and Tobi Hill-Meyer
are both using Troubles larger company as an umbrella for
their websites and distribution. Pink & White Productions,
a company specializing in queer sexuality run by awardwinning director Shine Louise Houston (who calls her
business the best piece of art that Ive ever made in my
life) is also providing a home for filmmakers like disability porn pioneer Clark Matthews. And, despite the many
f laming hoops Cindy Gallop and her MakeLoveNotPorn
team have been forced to jump through, their site has well
over 100,000 subscribers and continues to grow.
Its worth noting that Gallop is at the forefront of the
movement to shine light into the shadows, and shes not a
woman to take lightly. Shes been at the helm of non-adult
businesses, she knows how business is supposed to work,
and she is on a mission to change the discrimination
MakeLoveNotPorn has faced, talking publicly about their
struggles in the hopes that things will change.
When you force somethinganythinginto the
shadows and underground, you make it a lot easier for bad
things to happen and a lot more difficult for good things
to happen, says Gallop. The answer to everything that
worries people about porn is not, as the rest of the world
is saying, to shut down, censor, clamp down, repress. The

FEMINIST CONSUMERS ARE SO HUNGRY FOR

SEXUAL ENTERTAINMENT THAT MEETS THEIR
ETHICAL STANDARDS THAT THEY ARE WILLING
TO PAY FOR IT WHEN THEY FIND IT, AND TO
REMAIN LOYAL TO THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT.
on, all these artists and entrepreneurs want to change the
landscape of adult entertainment and redefine the way sex
is treated culturally. They want to produce content that can
make viewers feel better about themselves, rather than
ashamed of their immoral behavior.
But try explaining that to a financier. This is porn, says
another anonymous payment processor source. Hes looking
at MakeLoveNotPorn.tvs website while were on the phone.
It might be calling itself something different, but this is
just the same old thing with a new name. From a financial
perspective, he insists, what Gallop and her team are doing
deserves to be lumped in with the people who make the
same-old, slimy-aftertaste porn.

answer is to open up. Open up the ability for people

entrepreneurs like me and my teamto do business on
the same terms and conditions as everybody else. Thats
the answer. It might seem like a moot point to financial
institutions with their morality clauses and outdated
understanding of the financial ramifications of pornography,
but Gallop thinks they are missing a golden opportunity.
The bank that welcomes ventures like ours, designed
to change the world through sex, she says, will make a
fucking shitload of money.
Lynsey G is a writer who focuses mainly on
issues of sex, feminism, and pornography.

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SCANDAL-LESS
WHY ARE FEMALE POLITICIANS IMMUNE TO SEX SCANDALS?
2017 will mark 100 years since the first woman, Jeannette Rankin from Montana,
was elected to serve in Congress. Since then, a total of 298 women have served in
the Senate or House of Representatives. In other words, if we were to take all of the
women whove ever served in Congress, theyd fill only 56 percent of seats in the
current congressional class. If thats not sobering enough, consider the June 2014
report from the Institute for Womens Policy Research, which predicts that we wont
have gender parity in Congress until 2121. A baby born today would have to live until
the age of 107 to see a congressional class that has equal parts men and women.

ut if theres only one woman

for every five members of
Congress, lets look at the
bright side: At least shes keeping it in
her pants. Yes, the one area in which
we can unequivocally applaud the
dearth of women in politics is in the
embarrassing and ever-more-inevitable political sex scandal.
Tallying up the list of male politicians whove put nookie before civic
duty, conducted affairs during office
hours, and let power go to both big
and little heads is a daunting task,
and the sexual indiscretions of men in
American politics would fill at least one
presidential library. But a preliminary
totting up of pervy pols in the last 10
years alone would have to include former New Jersey Governor James

BY

HINDA MANDELL

McGreevey, who proclaimed I am a

gay American after being caught in an
affair with a hired aide; former Florida
Congressman Mark Foley, who sexted
with congressional pages; former Idaho
Senator Larry Wide Stance Craig,
who attempted to solicit sex with a man
in a Minneapolis airport bathroom;
Louisiana Senator David Vitter, whose
name (along with his predilection for
diaper play) was found in the little black
book of the D.C. Madam; former New
York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who enjoyed romps with high-end escorts; his
successor David Paterson, who admitted that he and his wife had multiple
affairs; John Edwards, the presidential
candidate who got carried away with his
campaign videographer; former South
Carolina Governor Mark Sanfordnow

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

a congressman from that same state

whom well all recall used the excuse
of hiking the Appalachian Trail
to explain away a sexytime absence;
former Nevada Senator John Ensign,
who did the deed with a staffer who
happened to be close friends with his
wife; former New York Congressman
Chris Lee, who e-mailed shirtless
photos of himselfto a woman he
met via Craigslist; former New York
Congressman Anthony Weiner, who
had a thing for tweeting crotch-specific
selfies; and Louisiana Congressman
Vance McAllister, a father of five who
was caught making out with a female
staffer whom he fired as soon as news
of the scandal broke.
The list might not be exhaustive, but
its certainly exhausting. And thats not

NESS LEE

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even touching the scandals that have been part

of American presidencies since their inception.
From Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings to
the Kennedy brothers and Marilyn Monroe, from
illegitimate children to ill-placed cigars.
The gleeful news coverage of our politicians
sextracurricular activities came to an abrupt halt
in the early 20th century, as the field of journalism attempted to coat itself with a glossy patina of
professionalism. (Translation: Journalists started
to get buddy-buddy with political elites and didnt
want to jeopardize access to cozy relationships.)
Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and JFK, among others,
could frolic in freedom without worrying about
reading the details in the mornings newspaper.
And frolic they didafter all, you cant become a
scandal if no one is willing to write about it.
By the end of the 20th century, the pendulum
of political sex scandals swung back again, and
both the public and media industry were ready to
consume and produce sex-scandal news coverage. Watergate showed journalists that politicians
couldnt and shouldnt be trusted or protected. In
1991, Anita Hill exposed the egregious behavior
of her supervisor, the Supreme Court nominee
Clarence Thomas, in televised hearings. And, later
that decade, the advanced media and cable-news
system, along with the Internets growth spurt into
sex-confident young adulthood, set the stage for a
frenzy surrounding a presidential intern, a cigar,
and a dna-encrusted blue dress. President Clintons
sexcapades became famous the world over, even
though his activities likely didnt differ much from
those of his presidential predecessors.

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Yet to date theres never been prolonged news coverage at the national level of a Congresswoman Antonia Weiner sending sexy tweets of her nether regions. No media spotlight on a
Governor Eliana Spitzer, going wild with escorts (while still wearing her black trouser socks)
in a five-star hotel in the nations capital. Theres certainly no news of a Congresswoman
Vanessa McAllister, swapping spit with her staffer, only to immediately fire him and
declare that shes still going to run for reelection, or of a mysterious black book bursting
with the erotic preferences of the Capitols women.
Through it all, female politicians have sat on the sex-scandal sidelines, and as more and
more of them are elected, perhaps its worth wondering why. Are female politicians better at
keeping it zipped, or simply better at keeping the unzipping out of the medias unyielding
scandal spotlight? It cant just be that female politicians are too Pollyanna for illicit activitiesor, on the flip side, simply better at not getting caught. Its tempting to think, rather,
that political sex scandals are just as gendered as politics itself has long been.
Dr. Kathryn L. Pearson, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who
studies women and politics, was quoted in the New York Timess 2011 article When It
Comes to Scandal, Girls Wont Be Boys: I have no hard evidence that women are less
likely to engage in risky or somewhat stupid behavior. But women in Congress are still
really in a situation where they have to prove themselves to their male colleagues and
constituents. Theres this extra level of seriousness.
[Politicians] go through a grueling process in order to get elected, and once in office
people kiss [their] ass constantly, said Dr. Alison Dagnes, professor of political science at
Shippensburg University. For men it gives them validation that they can pretty much do
what they want. It amplifies in men a sense that they are as important as everyone says
they are. But for women, I think, its validation of all of the hard work theyve done.
A communications director for a veteran congresswomanwho requested anonymity
due to the sensitive nature of the subjecthas witnessed male politicians do what they
want when it comes to private affairs, a trait that he says is absent in female politicians, at
least from what hes observed of them. When he was working at the state level in the 1980s
he met a U.S. marshal who was an assistant to a statewide elected official and whose job
was to hold off any potential love interests in order to prevent hanky-panky. He was not
successfuland he was a U.S. marshal.
As for why so many male politicians succumb to the hubris that makes them vulnerable to sex scandals, the communications director speculated that men are attracted to
the power, prestige, and treatmentlike royalty in the United States, as he puts it.
There are young staffers, interns, you name it, everywhere, and they are all adoring
well, maybe not all. But many understand the power relationship and look up to these
men. He adds: In Washington, D.C., its all about power.
But those beguiled by power relationships can become careless, and overestimate its ability to save them from political collapse. Men are under the assumption that they dont have
a price to pay, says Jennifer L. Pozner, a media critic and founder of the New Yorkbased
advocacy group Women in Media & News. And quite often, theyre correct. Pozner cites New
York politicians Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner as Exhibit A: The fact that they both had
enough support to launch new campaigns for office after being sidelined by their unethical
behavior [suggests] men in politics dont have to pay much of a price after sex scandals.
Still, sex scandalsespecially lurid ones like Spitzers and Weinersdo have legs, and
not all scandalized politicians become political phoenixes. Weiner lost his post-scandal bid
for New York City mayor in 2013, as did Eliot Spitzer for New York City comptroller five
and a half years after he resigned his governorship in disgrace. They may think theyre
immune, they may think the [scandals are] nothing, says New York State assemblywoman
Amy Paulin, [but] the people obviously dont agree with them, and the people are voting
them out. If they won, I think it would be very troublesome.
In the Democratic primary in September 2013, Spitzer lost by just under four percentage
points to Scott Stringer, even though he outspent his opponent by two to one, according to
Politico. An unnamed political consultant in a September 2013 Buzzfeed article noted that
Spitzers whole message was overshadowed by his past misdeeds. He should have known
that. (Spitzer also should have known that the public would not look favorably on his romantic relationship with the spokeswoman of his comptroller campaign, which came to light

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

around the same time that Silda Spitzer

filed for divorce in December 2013.)
When Weiner, in the same election
cycle, came in fifth in the Democratic
primary for mayor, he angrily flipped
the bird to reporters after his concession speechall the evidence they
needed that Weiner blamed the media,
and not his own impulses, for his career downfall. In attempting to reinvent
themselves, both men only succeeded
in revealing more of the same: Spitzer
couldnt keep it zipped and Weiner
couldnt censor himself.
Indeed, though media coverage of
political sex scandals has changed over
the years, male politicians themselves
havent appeared to evolve. Call it the
inheritance of male blinders: such figures enjoy their place in a centuries-old
culture of boys-club promiscuity; their
entitlement is rewarded, and as a result
they havent tempered their behavior.
Now, new technologies combined with
abiding interest leaves them vulnerable
to scandal in ways that seem obvious to
us but unfathomable to them.
Data from the 2010 National Opinion Research Centers General Social
Survey shows a 40 percent bump since
1991 in the percentage of heterosexual
wives who cheat on their husbands,
with 14.7 percent of wives now reporting affairs (compared with 21 percent
of husbands). Yet even if its libido, not
love, that drives womens extramarital
affairs in the civilian population, those

socialized to build consensus and not

overtly pursue their own interests
sexual or otherwise.
Thats not to say that rumors and
accusations dont occasionally sully
the reps of female politicians. When
Nikki Haley ran for governor of South
Carolina in 2010, a political blogger
came forward with an account of an
inappropriate physical relationship
with Haley; shortly afterward, another
mana paid political consultant from
her opponents campaignadmitted
to a one-night stand with the gubernatorial candidate in 2008. No evidence
ever emerged from those allegations,
and Haley vehemently denied them.
While her opponents campaign fired
that chatty consultant, the damage
was done. At the time, Haley said,
This is just disgusting politics. Two
or three months ago I was Nikki
who? and nobody was saying anything. [But] a couple weeks ago we
started going double digits up in the
polls and now we have [this scandal]
thrown at us.
Then there were the accusations of
lesbian sex surrounding the lieutenant
governor of Florida, Jennifer Carroll,
in 2012. The backstory is that Carrolls
former aide was fired and arrested on
charges that she illegally taped and
leaked political staff conversations to a
newspaper. This aide then alleged that
she was really fired because she caught
Lieutenant Governor Carroll receiving

The dearth of sex scandals among

female politicians may simply reflect
the beliefs that shape the state of politics to begin withbeliefs that often
emerge well before potential candidates
reach voting age. In 2012, Dr. Jennifer L. Lawless, a political scientist at
American University, and her research
collaborator Dr. Richard L. Fox, a
political scientist at Loyola Marymount
University, surveyed a national random
sample of approximately 2,100 college
students about running for office and
working in government. The results
revealed a marked difference in ideas
about working for a constituency.
In their report, titled Girls Just
Wanna Not Run: The Gender Gap
in Young Americans Political Ambition, the political scientists found
that young women are less likely
than young men ever to have considered running for office, to express
interest in a candidacy at some point
in the future, or to consider elective
office a desirable profession.
One in five male respondents, for
instance, said they thought about
running for office many times. Yet
only one in 10 female respondents
agreed with that statement.
The study also revealed different
motivating factors in running for
office, which Fox admitted looked
almost like a clich. Young boys are
more interested in making money and
having power, he said of the results.

Even if libido, not love, drives womens extramarital affairs in the

civilian population, those cheating percentages dont translate to
the elite political arena.
cheating percentages dont translate to
the elite political arenaa place where
women must traditionally conduct
themselves according to stalwart constraints of heteropatriarchy in order to
get anywhere. And when they do take
the reins of power, these women are

oral sex from another female aide.

While the she-said-she-said accusations
amounted to a sex scandal on simmer,
the lieutenant governor resigned about
a year later, following an unrelated
criminal investigation into her role in
an online gambling site.

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

Young women are more interested in

helping people and solving problems.
Just as clichd are findings from
Lawless and Foxs 2001 study, in which
the team surveyed a random national
sample of 3,700 men and women whom
they identified as prospective political
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candidates, including an accomplished group of

community leaders, lawyers, businesspeople, and activists. The study examined the gender gap in political aspirations between men and women. Respondents were asked about their interest in running
for office. The same group was resurveyed in 2008.
Again, a significant gender difference emerged in

Celinda Lake. (Indeed, Davis has placed her experience as a single mother at the forefront of
her campaign, although shes caught heat about the truthfulness of some story fragments.)
For [both] male or female candidates, we try to figure out what may be known and what isnt
known, says Lake, president of the Washington, D.C.based Lake Research Partners. In her
experience, women are more transparent about sensitive details of their private lives that have
the potential to harpoon campaigns. Men, she notes, think they can get away with [lying]
the thing that leads them to have affairs is the same thing that leads them to lie to the pollster.

Were dealing with this [scandal] nonsense instead of dealing

with the peoples work, said Amy Paulin. Instead of advancing
issues that matter to people, were getting stuck.
their responses: The men surveyed reported more
time for hobbies and exercise than women. Men
also had more time to devote to personal interests.
By contrast, women have a lot less freedom in their
lives, said Fox. Literally, less time.
In addition, Lawless and Fox found that not only
do women with a professional background of a sufficiently high caliber to run for political office lack
free time, they also have an abundancewhen compared with their male counterpartsof self doubt.
Women hold themselves to a hypothetical bar
that no one can ever meet, said Lawless, who herself ran for Congress in a Rhode Island primary,
but lost, in 2006. The old jokethat if a man lives
down the street from a senator, he believes he can
run for office tooseems, even in these more equitable times, to still be a single-sex proposition.
Dr. Dianne Bystrom, who runs the Carrie
Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at
Iowa State University, offered her version of the
joke. Men get up in the morning, look in the mirror,
and say, I can run for governor. I think women
are much more careful, said Bystrom. They put
much more thought into running for office. Potential women candidates are often self-censoring. If
theres a skeleton in the closet, they often dont
run, said Lawless, the American University political scientist. Political operatives are paid to find
dirt on their opponents, after all: As a current
example, Shippensburgs Dagnes points to Texass
first female gubernatorial candidate in 20 years,
Democrat Wendy Davis. If [Davis] f lirted with
somebody at a gas station, the Right is trying to find
[it] in an attempt to discredit her, she notes.
Yet if Davis does have such skeletons, shes more
likely to disclose them to her pollsters and strategists
than her male opponent, says Democratic strategist
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The New York State Assembly has had its share of sexual impropriety in recent
years, including at least three instances since 2012 of assemblymen sexually harassing
their female staffers. Amy Paulin says that when news breaks of yet another scandal, it
consumes the leaderships timeand regardless if that leadership is male or female, it
does nothing to advance the often pressing issues on the table. Were dealing with this
nonsense instead of dealing with the peoples work, said Paulin. Instead of advancing
issues that matter to people were getting stuck.
New York State Assemblywoman Sandy Galef adds that her female colleagues scratch
their heads in disbelief when they learn of yet another instance of bad behavior on the
part of an assembly member. The discussion is [like], Dont they understand this? It
happened last year. The person was on the first page of the paper. He lost his position;
he lost his race. Dont they understand theyre in a very public space?
Most academics, political scientists, and consultants interviewed said they could envision
the day when a major political sex scandal with a female politician becomes media fodder.
(But it would surprise me if the scandal was happening in real time, said Lawless.)
Others are less sure. Dr. Justin Esarey, a political scientist at Rice University, found in
his 2013 article in Politics & Gender that female politicians in democratic countries from
Mexico to Burkina Faso are, overall, less susceptible to corruption than their male counterparts. According to the article, thats because women, who generally engage in less
risk-taking behavior than men, are less likely to offer or accept bribes when bribery is not
a routine part of the political landscape. In addition, Women are also more vulnerable to
punishment for violating political norms because of explicit or tacit sex discrimination.
The Pew Research Center reported in 2013 that media coverage of major sex scandals can
occupy as much as 20 percent of a weeks entire newshole in the United States. Thats a
whole lot of media coverage devoted to the same gender narrative over and over again, further
reinforcing culturally embedded gender traits that women cant be bad and men cant be good.
But we might be on the cusp of smashing these cemented gender traits, especially with
the possibility that our first female president might also be a grandma. Hillary Clintons
potential to be elected as the most powerful person in the world will forever reframe gender
norms in terms of what we expect of men and women politicians. And if theres a grandma
in the Oval Office, it might also be time for a grandma to have her own sex scandal. Im just
sayingwhy not smash both gender stereotypes at once?
Hinda Mandell, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of
communication at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. Her
2011 doctoral dissertation focused on media coverage of political wives
whose husbands were caught in sex scandals.

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book
REVIEWS

LOST IN
THE AMAZON
ARE DIGITAL BOOKSELLERS
SUPPRESSING SELF-PUBLISHED
EROTICA?
BY KATE LARKING
ILLUSTRATION BY PERRIN

At first glance, e-readers seem like the

perfect medium for erotica and erotic
fiction. Where else can you slink into
a steamy love scene in the office break
room or on the commuter train without
worrying about risqu covers or judgmental stares? E-readers also made it
possible for greater distribution of selfpublished works; between 2007 and
2012, the number of self-published titles
grew 422 percent according to a recent
survey by publishing database Bowker.
Love it or hate it, E.L. Jamess Fifty
Shades erotic trilogy started out as a
self-published work.
Diverging from the offerings of the traditional publishing market,
James served up a romp that got everyone talkingand roped herself
58 |

bitch f e m i n i s t

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

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books

a sweet publishing deal in the process. Self-published erotica has

surged without the restricting gatekeepers of traditional publishing,
representing a wide range of sexual tastes and fantasies.
So between the demure-looking e-readers and the booming selfpublishing market, one can expect plenty of selection for your literary sexual escapades at competitive prices, right?
Well, not so fast. Starting as early as fall 2011, erotica authors
noticed that their risqu content no longer surfaced in Amazons
general search results. Amazon had implemented an adult content
filter, which meant that erotica titles no longer appeared in user
search results. But readers and authors alike didnt know about the
filteras there is no mention of it under Settings and certainly no
off switch availableand it took the community of self-published
authors comparing notes to get to the root of the issue.
Self-published erotica author Virginia Wade noticed something
fishy around this time. I plugged in my name [to check my sales rank]
and discovered some of my bestselling stories had been adult filtered,
which hides them in the searches in the Amazon store. This meant
that instead of erotica readers browsing idly to find her books, they
would have to specifically search for an exact title or author name to find
her worka process akin to Amazon hiding books under the counter
and customers needing to whisper a code word to get what they want.
More recently, in September 2013, erotica authors widely
reported that Amazon and some other digital booksellers have
outright removed content from their stores, mostly self-published
erotica and erotic fiction. At least with blocked books the author is
informed that their work has been removed from the storeWade
and her fellow self-published erotica writers were not informed of
the adult filters implementation.
Amazon and other retailers have essentially decided to wage a
war on women and what women want to read, says erotica author
Selena Kitt, who estimates her readership to be between 70 and
80 percent female. The filter means that any book title or content
Amazon deems adult is hidden from the retailers search results.
Covers with mature content, such as the representation of a bare
female bodyeven with strategically concealed body partsare
condemned as well, with or without erotic content in the book. While
some writers have reported decreased visibility in searches for their
best-selling content, others report that their books have been outright removed from the store.
New terms of service offer little guidance. The Kindle Direct Publishing terms of service offers only two (rather unhelpful) sentences to
guide erotica authors: What we deem offensive is probably about what
you would expect. We dont accept pornography or offensive depictions
of graphic sexual acts.
But is erotica pornography? Many would say that while porn appeals exclusively to our sexual senses, erotica and erotic fiction are
literature intended to arouse sexual desire in addition to engaging
our aesthetic senses. Of course, the difference can be an artistic
judgment. But Kitt points out one major f law in Amazons standards. Amazon hasnt banned the sexual content most consumed
by menif you go into movies and tv on Amazon and type in
gangbang, for example, youll come up with tons of results with very
explicit titles and covers.

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Erotica author M. Keep of the duo J.E. & M. Keep sees it as a direct
blow to womens sexuality and sexual desires and expression as
women are the primary consumers of erotica, including dark erotica.
I think the reason that people are panicking so much is that on some
level they realize this, and that women are interested in sex that isnt
always vanilla or light bdsm, and that scares them under the guise of
protecting children. Keep adds, Im sure youre aware of just how
often they say protecting children and silently add on and women
from themselves.
In addition, the way Amazon and other digital booksellers seem
to judge the legitimacy of eroticaand, by proxy, the artistic nature
of the workis whether or not the work is self-published or not: traditionally published works are examined with a less critical eye than
self-published authors.
But burgeoning self-published erotica writersmostly women
sharing sexually freeing fiction (according to one survey by The
Fussy Librarian, an e-book blog approximately 94 percent of erotica
authors are female)struggle against these restrictions with little
recourse. Self-published authors are eager to meet the guidelines
set out by Amazon, but the terms of service are so vague that erotica
authors must use a sophisticated (and expensive) guess-and-check
method to know if their work passes muster.
Frustrated erotica authors are stuck with costly changes and a
potential loss of transparency with their readers. Rework costs have
been enormous, explains Kitt, author of Babysitting the Baumgartnersnow Sitting for the Baumgartners. Every cover [Amazon] disallows has to be redone. Titles have to be changedsometimes more
than once, because Amazon will decide down the road that something that was once acceptable now suddenly isnt. She gives an
example: My book Babysitting the Baumgartners has three separate
covers. The first showed a womans bare bottom. Then they slapped
that with the adult filter, so we put a thong on her. Then Amazon
decided thongs werent okay, and we had to have a full bikini bottom
on. Three covers.
These expenses are magnified for authors working to expand their
audience. Translations and audiobooks are also filtered, comments
Wade. If its [filtered] in their store, you wont recoup your costs. I
learned that the hard way.
Self-published authors network on forums outside of the Amazon
environment. It only takes a few mentions of newly blocked books
for the erotica authors to know that a crackdown is on the way. On
communities like KBoards, a forum for Kindle users, authors put
together updated lists of what is and is not acceptable from Amazons
point of view based on what books are blocked and titles censored.
There is no formal communication from Amazon when these crackdowns occur on what is not prohibited.
Mentioning babysitting in the erotica category is a no-no, as Kitt
found out with her bestselling Baumgartners series. But this list is
constantly shifting and not communicated. Amazon is notoriously
inconsistent when it comes to applying filters on erotica, says erotica
author Aubrey Rose. They claim to ban such things as incest,
bestiality, and portrayals of underage sex. However, V.C. Andrewss
incestual Flowers in the Attic sells quite well, as does Nabokovs obviously underage Lolita. Is Amazon then in the business of deciding
fa l l . 1 4

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books

what is literature and what is not? It appears that they are trying, and
obviously failing, to arbitrate such a distinction.
Authors of erotica featuring legal or college-aged protagonists
in the new-adult age groups receive the most censorship from
mainstream erotica listings. Is your protagonist a virgin and is that
mentioned in the title or the product description? Forget about it
that titles blocked from search results.
Fetish-based erotica and taboo sexual literature has also been hit hard
by the restrictions. Readers of this brand of erotica argue fetish-erotica
can enlighten and educate readers while the taboo topics fascinate and
enthrall readers imaginations. Pseudo-incest stories, where characters
of legal age have step-relations, are frequently filtered. But why are
taboo sexual subjects judged so harshly when other illegal subjects,
such as graphic depictions of murder and other types of crime, remain
untouched? Kitt says, You have to remember, this is fiction. Fantasy.
No different than a horror author writing about a serial killerjust because you write about serial killers doesnt mean you want to be one or
condone serial killing. So because an erotica writer writes about incest,
that doesnt mean they want to do it or condone it.
Wade tackled the cryptozoological porn taboo with her work, Cum
for Big foot. Amazons spring 2013 push to filter erotica caused 60
percent of her work to disappear from searchesand caused her
income to plummet. Amazons fall 2013 crackdown led her to change
the title to a less graphic name, Moan for Big foot. All the filtering
and tinkering has ruined this pen name. Ive moved on to romance
because its a less stressful work environment.

why are taboo sexual subjects

judged so harshly when other
illegal subjects, such as
graphic depictions of murder
and other types of crime,
remain untouched?
Shes not the only one backing off hardcore erotica and taking
up new pseudonyms for greener, tamer pastures. Many authors are
understandably frustrated that they have had to abandon their profitable niche and settle for gentler genres.
Authors are also disserved by Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishings poor category management offerings for self-publishing.
If erotica authors could properly select their niche categories, that
would help Amazon refine their customers searches. Instead,
authors face a mass cull and unspecified reworks to a search barrier
unknown and intangible to customers who might actually be looking
for such an erotic romp.
Even as authors create new covers, retitle works, and craft new
descriptions to avoid words that might be considered adult for
their previously acceptable and unjustly removed works, they face
an uphill battle with the bookselling giant. After the changes are
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submitted, authors must wait for the f lagged material to either be

accepted or rejected, usually received in the form of cut-and-pasted
sections of the terms of service. However, authors who repeatedly
attempt to republish a book may find their account soon locked
which could effectively end their career (or that of their pen name)
on Amazon.
Keep says that Because of the changes, were no longer able to
provide trigger warnings for our writing in the blurbs and are forced
to put them in on the first page and hope readers find them.
Amazons categories allow for writers to select erotica to the
exclusion of all other categories. This single categorization sharply
increases reports of books being slapped with the intangible adult
filter and removes the works from casual user browsing. Some
erotica authors are covertly fighting back, reworking their books
appearance to one that is acceptable at a glance and categorizing
their characters falling in love stories, no matter how explicit, as
romance. By selecting romance, authors can avoid being assessed
under the erotica category and potentially falling under that invisible adult filter. However, now visible under romance, the sanitized
blurbs and titles might mislead readers who are looking for something gentler. This adaptation only damages the transparency of
product offerings on Amazon and possibly mismatches the product
from its intended audience.
These vague descriptions and tame titles muddy the readers
awareness and visibility of the authors true offerings. Kitt explains,
Ive created alternative, cleaner versions of my books for Amazon,
but it can get confusing for readers. When the books end up appearing like tamer romance novels to fit Amazons f luctuating standards,
readers might not get what they are looking for. Authors fight with
themselves about how honestly they are presenting their work
through these sanitized descriptions.
This leaves erotica authors in a bind. On the one hand, they
dont want to mislead customers. On the other, categorizing their
work as erotica means fewer people finding their workand fewer
sales. Some authors want Amazon to allow users to actively approve
erotica showing up in their searchesit would stimulate sales by
increasing erotica searchability for readers who have f licked the
switch to yes. I feel like if Amazon (and thereby other venues for
self-publishing) would just be honest with their customers about
how the porn is over here, then erotica writers wouldnt mind labeling themselves more clearly, says author E.K. Sabins. More sales
for erotica authors translates to more profit for Amazon. It sounds
like a win-win scenario, right? However, Amazon would have to put
such a function on their website, admitting to all customers that
this content is part of their repertoire and available for purchase
and that they profit from the sales of it. For now, Sabins is saddened
by the situation. As it is, clearly labeling to avoid mistake purchases
gets you locked in a cellar.
While some erotica authors take their marketing outside Amazon
and work to build better interfaces for readers to find what they want,
like Kitts BannedEroticBooks.com, Wade sums up the issue: The
choice to read what you wish is no longer yours. You see only what
Amazon wants you to see.

Kate Larking is a freelance writer and fiction author based out of

Calgary, Alberta.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

books

Bad Feminist: Essays

Roxane Gay

{Harper Perennial}

In a May review of Roxane Gays

debut novel, An Untamed State,
Nolan Feeney deemed 2014 the
Year of Roxane Gay. Pop culture
has no shortage of tales about tragedy, he wrote, but rarely does it
offer anything more than a glimpse
of the trauma that lingers and
haunts its survivors. In her novel,
Gay went far beyond a glimpse,
as she does in her new nonfiction
outing, Bad Feminist, a collection
of mostly republished work that
has appeared everywhere from The
Rumpus (where she is an editor) to
the Los Angeles Review of Books.
In all of her writing, across
genres, Gay is witty, delicate, and
sometimes jarring, a combination
of qualities that is rare and refreshing in a writer. In the entertaining

Gays cultural and feminist

analysis is intriguing mostly
because it is confessional,
authentic, andin the best way
possiblelowbrow. Of the HBO
show Girls, she writes that the
stark whiteness of the cast
disturbs and disappoints me; at
the same time, she acknowledges
that we have so many expectations for this show because Girls
is a significant shift in what we
normally see about girls and
women. After all, she points
out: Clever defiance does not a
diversity problem address.
The writing professor does not
confess to any catharsis in writing about subjects like fat camp
(which is likely to feature heavily
in her forthcoming memoir about
weight loss). She does say, The
older I get the more Im able to
make sense of life and how I move
through the world and experiences and how theyve shaped me.
Theres something cathartic in
realizing that you do gain wisdom
as you get older. Bad Feminist is
an outtake of her wisdom, and we
would all do well to take heed.
Joshunda Sanders
and enlightening 37 essays that
make up this collection, Gay also
displays quite a bit of range. She
holds court on everything from
Scrabble (she plays professionally)
to Sweet Valley High, broken men,
rape, coverage of sexual assault,
sculpture, and fat camp.
Bad Feminist, as a title, seems
like a misnomer. I dont think a
universal definition of bad feminist exists, she said during a
phone interview. Im a feminist
and I have some contradictory
ideas that Im okay with. For so
long, feminism demanded perfectionism of womenyou cant
wear certain things or say certain
things. Im not going to demand
that of women. What can I do
to elevate the status of women
and make gender equality across
all genders more of a possibility
than what we currently have?

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE:

Some laughter and tears with
your intersectional feminist popculture analysis.

Men Explain
Things to Me
Rebecca Solnit
{Haymarket Books}

In the essay Men Explain Things

to Me, which first gained popularity online in 2008, Rebecca
Solnit mapped a history of men,
well, explaining things to herin
many cases, things that she knew
far better than they did. The piece,
though initially about Solnits own
experiences, addressed broader
questions about the gendered
dynamics of sharing knowledge,
and went on to inspire the nowstandard term mansplaining.

Roxane
Gays cultural
and feminist
analysis is
intriguing
mostly because it is
confessional,
authentic,
andin the best
way possible
lowbrow.
Solnit, meanwhile, leveraged the
pieces popularity into her new
collection of seven complex, passionate essays.
Though well known for her
intelligent, precise writing on
subjects including politics,
literature, and the environment,
Solnit cares deeply about gender
inequality, and in particular,
domestic and sexual violence.
Several of the essays in Men
Explain Things center on those
topics; others employ the tactic
of shifting focus stealthily but
dramatically, the better to highlight how harm comes in degrees.
Take Grandmother Spider,
where Solnit begins by discussing the invisibility of womens
accomplishments in history, but
ultimately leads us to an analysis
of womens actual disappearances
through abuse and murder. In
this way, Solnit attempts to bridge
the gap between the abstractions
of womens oppression and their
tangible consequences.
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Unfortunately, her efforts to

draw attention to the universality of womens suffering across
cultural and class lines often leads
her to dispense with specificity.
When she writes in The Longest
War that violence doesnt have a
race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender,
she ignores the decades of work
that women of color and women of
the Global South have done to convince mainstream feminism that
experiences of gender inequality,
and even gendered violence, are
intensely mediated by womens
other identities and oppressions.
The essays were written between 2008 and 2014, but at times
Solnits writing feels oddly dated,
and the conclusions she reaches
about topics like the emancipatory
potential of same-sex marriage or
the necessity of a feminist movement to bring together multiple
fights for justice and liberation
seem to echo already widely
accepted premises of feminist

A common
thread of
Craftivism
is that the
seemingly
simple act
of making
is itself
political.
writing. The second-to-last essay,
an examination of Virginia Woolf
and the importance of addressing
the unknown and unpredictable,
is the books strongest. Solnit
is at her best in pieces like this,
which take a specific topic and
weave it into a wide range of other
subjectsfrom Susan Sontag to
walking and wanderingrather
than those that make broad generalizations about gender. A m e l i a
Ay r e l a n I u v i n o
DONT MISS: Each essay is
paired with a beautiful painting by
Ana Teresa Fernndez, an artist
who engages in performance documentations that depict womens
labor and sexuality.

Craftivism:
The Art of Craft
and Activism
Betsy Greer, Ed.
{Arsenal Pulp Press}

The concept of craft as a form of

activism can be a bit overwhelming to process: If the world is
crashing around our ears, how is
crocheting a doily going to help?
Craftivism answers that question
by taking a highly organized view
of the form and function of both
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craft and activism that ends up

being great fun to read.
Editor Betsy Greer combines
contributor essays, interviews, and
vivid photos to show and tell how
crafters get their politics on. Lauren OFarrells tiny knitted mouse
clutching a Down with Fat Cats
sign holds his own in the midst
of Londons Occupy protests and
is widely photographed. A Boston
group crochets nets for abandoned basketball hoops, works of
functional art that offer hope for
more inclusive public spaces. And
quilters respond in force to everything from the Boston Marathon
bombing to the history of Chileans
disappeared under the rule of
Augusto Pinochet. A beautiful
arpillera tapestry square shows a
family seated around the dinner
table, but at the head of the table
there is only a question mark. Just
above it, there is a mans portrait
with the words DONDE ESTA
stitched in.
Many of the makers profiled
here have backgrounds in fine
arts that they use to more populist ends. While trained artists
using craft to send a message are
f luent in the conceptual language
of protest, theres plenty of blank
canvas for the rest of us to work
with. Whether its acts of guerrilla kindness like making toys
or cupcake sculptures to give
away, or encouraging first-timers
to draw or help stitch a giant
embroidery canvas, a common
thread of Craftivism is that the
seemingly simple act of making
is itself political. Sourcing materials (Michaels or the dumpster?),
slowing down to focus on a
project, and working in community with others can all be seen as
acts of rebellion; if the end result
is a grenade-shaped clutch purse,
so much the better. A thoughtful piece on upcycling offers tips
for reuse projects that make the
whole world your potential craft
store while keeping valuable
goods out of our landfills.

In an interview about the book,

Greer advises would-be craftivists
who fear theyre not creative to
play with different media to find
a good fit, and then find a cause
that speaks to them and see what
emerges. Anyone short of ideas
need only browse through Craftivism for an imagination boost: Its
a wide-ranging survey of whats
been done, and a sure way to
inspire whats to come.
H e at h e r S e g g e l
PERFECT GIFT BAG: This book,
a pound of coffee, a glue stick,
and a new Sharpie.

My Body is a Book
of Rules
Elissa Washuta
{Red Hen Press}

Elissa Washuta is white and Native,

bipolar, and lost her virginity to
rape. Her first book, My Body Is a
Book of Rules, is a modern coming
of age memoir that reaches into
these tangles of the body and mind
through American pop culture. Its
not a traditional memoir: Washuta
employs linked essays that mimic
the cyclical wrapping of her experiences. She draws from the lessons
of her sixth-grade Catholic school
and intertwines them with a
Cosmo magazine quiz, tells the
story of her rape as an episode of
Law & Order: SVU, and counts
down her lovers to the moment of
trauma, where the broader context
of her often self-destructive decisions are revealed. Chapters are
divided by a 16-part autobiography
of her Native heritage that asks
what makes an authentic Indian.
Is it regalia, the skins ability to tan,
the measurable drops of Indian
blood quantum, or the historic
traumas of genocide, war, and
rape? These intervening sections,
which she describes as the backbone of the book, are every
bit as powerful as the chapters,
and make a welcome and familiar resting place.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

books

At times I wanted to read this

book through my fingers, the
way I sometimes watch a scary
movie. When Washuta describes
her rapist, who she continued to
date afterward, as that boy who
turned you from a girl to a gash,
Im inside her body, feeling the
wounds cauterize and rip open,
again and again. Thats why this
book and Washutas voice, matter.
She does not turn away from her
own agency and she does not let
anyone off the hook. She intertwines the threads of her multiethnic identity, bipolar diagnosis,
and rape, and sets them against
the backdrop of culture and young
adulthood. In doing so, she reveals
the explicit and the implicit ways
in which we are all injured, and
also how we heal, one step at a
time. As I read, I wasnt sure I
wanted to tear off my own bandaids, but Washutas just-the-facts
ways of recording her journey left
me no place to hide. Her honesty
invites us explore questions were
not usually encouraged to ask:
What makes our experience of suffering legitimate? Why do some
of us lose faith in the world so
young? How do we reconcile our
brains, bodies, and cultures and
come out whole? S a m a n t h a
C l a i r e U p d e g r av e
PAIRS WELL WITH: Deborah A.
Mirandas Bad Indians: A Tribal
Memoir, Leslie Jamisons The
Empathy Exams: Essays.

Sworn Virgin
Elvira Dones, translated
by Clarissa Botsford
{And Other Stories}

In the unusual gender-bending

tradition of Albanian mountain
people, a young unmarried
woman may take an oath of celibacy, upon which the community
expects her to dress and behave as
a man. The Kanun, a set of local
laws passed orally until the 20th
century, strictly codifies womens
social status as secondary to
mens: Women cannot buy or sell
anything without permission,
participate in village assemblies or
elections, drink in public, smoke,
or wear a watch. By becoming a
sworn virgin, a woman transcends these limitations under the
condition that she never marry or
have a family of her own; if she
breaks the oath of celibacy, the
punishment may be death.
This practice, increasingly
rare in post-Communist Albania,
serves as the premise for the
2007 Italian-language novel by
Albanian writer Elvira Dones,
translated by Clarissa Botsford.
Dones traces a fictional survivor of
the practice, Hana/Mark Doda as
s/he abandons the mountains and
emigrates to the United States.
The novel picks up Dodas story
as he arrives at Washington D.C.s
Dulles airport in December 2001,
slowly masters English, finds a job
and an apartment, and relearns
to act and to relate to herself as a

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

woman. Several lengthy flashbacks to the 1980s show Hana

as a university student in Tirana,
making the decision to return to
her native village and to honor her
dying uncle and adoptive father by
becoming Mark, his male heir.
One of the fascinating parts of
Sworn Virgin is following Hanas
transformation into Mark and,
16 years later, Marks journey
of becoming Hana again. The
freedoms that her male status
allowed, though significant, left
Mark trapped in the rough life of a
mountain truck driver, the sparseness of his existence intensified by
the breakdown of the Communist
regime and general lawlessness in
the countryside. Soon after taking
the oath, Hana/Mark realized
that she failed to escape the law
itself: Man or woman, the Kanun
governed her everyday life. In the
United States, rediscovering her
female self, an older and wiser
Hana is looking for a compromise,
aware of the inherent strengths of
the Mark part of her personality.
This unique cultural prism
allows Dones opportunities
for keen observations on the
performance of gender, as well
as a good deal of humor. In D.C.,
Hana lives with her cousin Lilas
family, sleeping in the kitchen
of the tiny apartment Lila shares
with her husband and daughter.
The interactions between cousins,
at times tender and loving, at
times cantankerous and fraught
with misunderstandings, give
this novel great momentum and
allow the characters to fully come
alive on the page.
Olga Zilberbourg
POSTSCRIPT: A sister publication
from And Other Stories, Helen
DeWitts novel Lightning Rods
takes the notion of the male gaze
that disassembles a woman into
body parts to a satiric extreme,
providing a biting commentary on
the American corporate culture.

Scandals of
Classic Hollywood:
sex, deviance, and
drama from the
golden age of
american cinema
Anne Helen Petersen
{Plume}

If you thought our collective love

of celebrity gossip began when
Brad chose Angelina over Jen,
think again. People have always
hungered for a good Hollywood
scandal, and the stars of yesteryear paved the way for todays
eager paparazzi and gossip
bloggers with trysts, trials, and
tribulations just as salacious as
anything youd find on the newsstand today. In Scandals of Classic
Hollywood, Anne Helen Petersen
takes us back to the beginnings
of modern-day celebrity culture
and shows us that the more celebrities change, the more our love
of gossip stays the same.
The bookwhich spans about
50 years of Tinseltown royalty
is handily organized not just
chronologically, but by volume.
In Twilight of the Idols we meet
Fatty Arbuckle, whose trumpedup arrest made him the tragic fall
guy of the film industry. In The
Blonde Menace Petersen deconstructs the personae of two very
different bombshells, Jean Harlow
and Mae West. Broken by the
System offers a critique of a sexist
and racist Hollywood through the
lives of Judy Garland and Dorothy
Dandridge. The book covers the
big scandals youve probably heard
of (Montgomery Clifts drinking
problems, James Deans driving
problems) and those you probably
havent (Rudolph Valentinos slave
bracelet, anyone?). Throughout
its manageable 200-and-change
pages, Scandals of Classic Hollywood brings them all to life. And
lest you think the old days were
boring, fear not: The secret affairs,
copious drug use, and elaborate
coverups of yore make for plenty
juicy reading.
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Petersen has an academic background, but anyone whos seen her

Scandals of Classic Hollywood
column in The Hairpin (on which
this book is based, though the
scandals are new) knows her writing is smart, relevant, and fun.
She brings plenty of context and
history to each chapter, but Scandals reads more like a magazine
than a textbookthink TMZ with
a PhD. Its a great book for anyone
who loves classic Hollywood, but
its an even better one for those
readers who dont know Wallace
Reid from Douglas Fairbanks.
K el s e y Wa l l ac e
MAKES A GREAT GIFT FOR:
Your smart friend whos always
snagging your copies of Us Weekly.

Making Sense of
Intersex:Changing
Ethical Perspectives in Biomedicine
Ellen K. Feder

{Indiana University Press}

Ellen K. Feders new book,Making

Sense of Intersex, assists both academia and the public turn a corner
in making sense of a phenomenon
that most intersex folks know as,
well, their bodies. Acknowledging
that societal ignorance is at the root
of most individual identity crises,
the book works to dispel misconceptions about intersex people and

explores the roles that a deeply gendered, patriarchal society plays in

pathologizing the idea of intersex.
In charting intersex history from
anatomical surgeries to genderquestioning kids, Feder employs
perspectives gleaned from bioethics, philosophy, and gender studies.
She explains that past medical and
scientific standardswhich hold
that there are only two ways for our
bodies, minds, and chromosomes
to existhave led intersex individuals to be considered only through
the lens of normalization.
Unfortunately, pathologizing intersex people is more the symptom
than the actual sickness, leaving
our cultural and medical obsession
with normalizing bodies to be truly
at fault. Feder describes this as
the imperative of normality and
is not afraid to pointedly address
the bioethical misunderstandings
of intersex individuals medical
professionals and parents alike.
Making Sense of Intersex holds
the medical industry accountable for the misunderstanding of
intersex bodies and addresses unexplored issues regarding intersex
identity. For instance, is being intersex incidental to ones person or
their identity itself? Does one use
the term intersex people or intersexuals? Is being intersexual
incidental to the body, ones sexuality, or both? Elsewhere, Feder uses
scientific facts originally cited

by feminist scholars like Anne

Fausto-Sterling to deconstruct the
myths that undergird genderobsessed parenting, making this
a recommended read for parents
or those who plan to have kids.
Her all-inclusive, nonpatriarchal
rhetoric leaves readers with more
insight into where the intersection of intersex folks and bioethics
stands in the 21st century.
M a l i D . C o l l i n s
FUN FACT: In 2000, FaustoSterlings team estimated that 1.7
in 100 intersex babies were born.

The Ministry of Thin:

How the Pursuit of
Perfection Got Out
of Control
Emma Woolf

{Soft Skull Press}

I will try not to refer to my own

anorexia too much, Emma Woolf
vows in the introduction to The
Ministry of Thin. But heres what
Id like to understand: If being
thin is the answer, whats the question? The author, a great-niece of
Virginia Woolf, previously wrote a
memoir titled An Apple a Day: A
Memoir of Love and Recovery from
Anorexia. The goal of its follow-up
is to drive readers toward a better
understanding of how being thin
became such an obsession in modern Western culture.

In each chapter, Woolf discusses a different ministry (e.g.

Food, Diets, Surgery), examining
the lies women are told by various
industries in order to lower selfesteem and sell, sell, sell. In The
Ministry of Fat, Woolf writes,
Overeating, just like undereating,
is more likely to be an avoidance or
replacement activity, a way to bury
pain or anxiety and avoid facing
up to the real problems in our
lives. For some people, its easier
to control ones weight than ones
emotions; its also easier to sell
products to alter ones appearance
rather than to cure whats ailing
them beneath the surface.
Despite Woolfs stated attempt
to avoid talking about her own
disorder, The Ministry of Thin
often views thin-obsessed culture
through an exclusively anorexic
lens, giving inaccurate descriptions of other womens struggles
in the weight war. Woolf thinks
women who want to lose weight
but cave in to temptation, for
example, happily eat in public
and that they [may] feel guilty for
eating a chocolate brownie in the
afternoon, but the guilt will be
fleeting, assuming only anorexics
suffer endless guilt and pain in
eating. When addressing pregorexia, Woolf states that having an
eating disorder does not make you
a bad mother, and it doesnt necessarily harm your baby. (Woolfs
own desire for motherhood led the
author into recovery.)
While thought-provoking, the
book ultimately focuses too much
on Woolfs own life to explore
her subject with much depth or
objectivity. More disappointing is
her conclusion, which basically
tells women to wake up and stop
believing the hypea rather
anticlimactic ending to a discussion that demands a real plan of
action. C r y s t a l E r i c k s o n
WATCH THIS INSTEAD: 1987s
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter
Story, a 43-minute cult classic

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books

reminder that, while we celebrate

legal gains in the lgbtq community, for many, coming out of the
closet can initially trigger a keen
sense of loss. When that first gut
feeling isnt one of grief, but one
of excitement over an authentic
self-discovery, well know weve
really made lasting progress.
K at e L e s n i a k
IF THIS BOOK WERE COMPETING IN A MARCH MADNESS
BASKETBALL GAME: Itd be the
underdogso make sure you pick
it over the bestsellers!
that chronicles Carpenters life
and struggle with anorexiausing
a cast of Barbie dolls.

The Reappearing
Act: Coming Out As
Gay on a College
Basketball Team
Led By Born-Again
Christians
Kate Fagan

{Skyhorse Publishing}

Long before Brittney Griner

graced the cover of ESPN magazine, Kate Fagan was coming out
of the closet and making waves in
the womens basketball scene. In
her new memoir, The Reappearing Act, Fagannow a writer and
columnist for ESPNtells her
own coming-out story, one that
was complicated by her career
as an elite college athlete on an
emphatically Christian team.
Coming-out stories generally
follow one of a few classic arcs.
Some are triumphant and almost
entirely devoid of the self-loathing
we so often see gay characters
ascribed in pop culture. Fagans,
however, is framed by an intimate
process of mourningand
The Reappearing Act follows an
Elisabeth Kbler-Rossstyle pattern. Its all there: the denial, the
anger, the bargaining, the depression, and finally, mercifully, the
acceptance. Fagan grapples with
her newfound sexuality and tries
her best to balance basketball,

school, friends, and family. The

core of her story is powerfulat
times, it evoked long-buried
feelings from my own days as a
college athlete.
But more than anything, The
Reappearing Act is an accessible
memoir; a story that, culturally,
weve become more and more
comfortable hearing. In some
ways, the book, straightforwardly
written as it is, could even work
as a ya read. Unfortunately,
at times Fagans matter-offact sportswriter approach to
storytelling left me wishing
for moremore vulnerability,
deeper feelings, a longer, more
drawn-out struggle. What kept
me reading, though, was her
ability to capture the tenor of
the panic and confusion that
too often goes along with coming outand that, for her, was
amplified by a struggle with
evangelical faith. I had prayed
just the night before. Take this
away, God, please. Make my
heart still and calm again. I uttered those words in the middle
of the night, wide awake in my
corner bedroom...I was kneeling...my forehead pinned to my
clasped handsthe very picture
of desperation.
And so it goes, back and forth,
until finally, Fagan emerges with
a job, a girlfriend, and an It Gets
Better attitude. Ultimately, The
Reappearing Act serves as a stark

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

Things I Should
Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons &
Love Affairs
Pearl Cleage
{Atria Books}

Things I Should Have Told My

Daughter begins with a conversation between award-winning
author Pearl Cleage and her
daughter Deignan Njeri. It is
about Cleages journals, which she
has kept since she was 11. Cleage
would like to see them passed on
to her granddaughter, but rather
than agree, Njeri suggests Cleage
burn them. Instead, to the benefit
of readers everywhere, Cleage has
them published.
The diaries begin in 1970,
when Cleage is just 22. Over the
course of almost 20 years, we
watch the authors life ebb and
f low: marriage, divorce, motherhood, trysts, professional success, struggle, her lifelong love
affair with Atlanta, and finally,
emerging as the writer and artist
shed always strived to be.
What truly makes Cleages
writing specialand perhaps
this is easier to do in journals
that you assume will always be
kept privateis her unf linching honesty. This is especially
refreshing when she writes
about motherhood: So often
we hear f lowery narratives that
romanticize a womans first

child, especially when the story

is being told in retrospect. Cleage
pulls no punches, detailing every
fear and uncomfortable detail,
from concerns about returning
to work to fears about postpartum depression. When asked,
repeatedly, if shes excited
about the upcoming birth of her
daughter, Cleage touches on
how the question alone offends
her, writing, It means a whole
altering of your style and your
life and your specificity to make
you into a big glowing maternal
being. I think that is negative to
you and your kid.
There is much more to Cleage
than motherhood, but reading
the details of her creative life
and her intimate thoughtsat
times both heartbreaking and
hilariousits hard not to continue revisiting the conversation
Cleage had with her daughter at
the beginning of the book. When
pushed as to why the journals
shouldnt be passed on to her
granddaughter, Njeri says, She
doesnt need to know all that. I
would argue otherwise. If youre
lucky enough to have a badass
like Cleage as your grandmother,
youre going to want to know
every detail: every love affair,
every concert attended, every critique of sexism, every hard detail
about racism, every thought on
feminism, every joint smoked
before settling in to write, every
dress worn, every word written.
T i n a Va s q u e z
RECOMMENDED IF: Youre a
writer struggling to find your
voice, or you like politics and
romantic advice in equal measure.

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REVIEWS

CAST ASIDE
THE RECENT TV RISE OF THE
BLACK MISTRESS
BY PHOEBE ROBINSON
ILLUSTRATION BY PERRIN

Thanks to recent pop culture phenomena

such as the highly addictive, ratingsjuggernaut Scandal and BETs freshman
series Being Mary Jane, black actresses are
no longer relegated to Law & Orders S.
Epatha Merkerson territory (i.e., a professional black woman with no discernible
personal life who dresses in asexual
Talbots pantsuits). Scandals Olivia Pope
(Kerry Washington) and Janes Mary Jane
Paul (Gabrielle Union) are a new kind of
black tv woman. Theyre thirtysomethings with thriving careers, incredibly
chic wardrobes, and active and complicated
love lives. And by active and complicated
love lives, I mean most likely to lean
from behind a support beam at Target la
Michael Jackson in Smooth Criminal to
spy on their very married soul mate and
his wife in the frozen foods aisle.
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screen

Thats right, Pope and Paul are the foremothers of a growing trend in
tv : the black female side piece. To be clear, these two are no ordinary
mistresses. Rather than being stereotypically uncouth baby mamas,
these highly successful women are, respectively, a Washington,
D.C. fixer and a popular tv anchor/pundit who are ensnared in starcrossed love affairs. Their relationships are riddled with over-the-top
yelling, lengthy speeches, and what I affectionately call #StruggleSex
(because in tv, the best way to illustrate an illicit couple in the throes
of passion is to show them tugging at each others clothes like kids on
cow udders at a county fair). You see, as in all Side Piece Theater, Pope
and Paul are each consumed by a love that, while passionate, probably
wont pan out in their favor. This timeless conundrum has captured
the hearts and minds of millions of viewers and received plenty of
positive reviews from critics who are happy to see more fully realized
characterizations of black women on the screen.
Still, the shows have their detractorsviewers incensed with what
they perceive as a glorification of the mistress role. I am not in this
camp. Both shows are must-see-the-day-it-airs tv for me. However, my
enjoyment is not without ref lection. It seems like a black woman who
is one-half of her romantic relationshiprather than a third partyis
exceedingly rare in television. Gone are the days of Clair Huxtable
playfully chastising her husband Bill over his diet. Instead, we see
Pope and President Grant sneaking a kiss in the Oval Office with his
chief of staff and first lady right down the hall. True, some of the differences between the two scenarios are due to The Cosby Show being a
family sitcom while Scandal centers around a dramatic love triangle.
But a switch in genres doesnt quite explain the subtle shift from the
sexless strong black woman (or if were lucky, the happily married
black woman) to the mistress black woman as the de facto image.
Im curious as to how repeated exposure to such images informs
the black female psyche, her expectations for current and future relationships, and whether or not she is subconsciously acting out what
she sees on tv in her personal life.
Ever since I have been dating, Ive noticed several media outlets will,
every few months, do exposs on the less-than-satisfactory love lives

the tip of the iceberg of the Oh noes, its hard out there for single black
ladies articles that are spoon-fed to the public. This is to not to say that
these op-eds, even the supremely bone-headed ones, arent rooted in
some sort of factual data. Unfortunately, they are.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program
Participation, In 2009, 70.5 percent of black women age 25 to 29 never
married compared with 43.3 percent of non-Hispanic white women. As
a black woman in this age range who is open to the possibility of marriage, this news is disconcerting. However, the same study also showed
that black women 55 and older have a higher marrying percentage rate
compared to non-Hispanic white women. So what does this all mean?
It seems that black women are marrying later as opposed to the
widely held belief that they dont marry at all. This is great, except
for three things. One, the average life expectancy for black women
is around 74 years according to the Health Services Research study
conducted by UCLA (white women are at almost 80 years). Sure, its
better to find long-lasting love later in life than never at all, but excuse me for not finding solace in the notion that many black women
wont find sustaining love until theyre eligible for AARP benefits.
Two, the cold, hard fact is that the dating pool for women gets
shallower and shallower as they get older. The men in their age
bracket tend to date younger, which leaves middle-age and older
women with fewer options. As a result, some may find themselves in
competition with younger ladies, which may explain the legions of
middle-age women getting their faces surgically pulled tighter than
an Olympic figure skaters ponytail in hopes of snagging a partner.
Three, and this is probably the most damning of all, black women,
on average, want to end up with black men. However, because of various factorsincluding but not limited to the disproportionate rates
between black women (63 percent) and men (37 percent) obtaining
higher education and the rapidly growing number of incarcerated
black men (which then further hurts their chances of winding up in
the same workplace and social scenes as black women)it appears
that, statistically, black women have a much more difficult time finding a partner within their race than women of other races.

it seems like a black woman who is one-half of her romantic

relationshiprather than a third partyis exceedingly rare
in television.
of black women. J.J. Smiths article The Real Reasons 70% of Black
Women Are Single: Its Not What Theyre Telling You! is written with
the same excited tone as a Cosmo sex-tips column proclaiming to know
what guys really want but arent saying (which somehow always involves
a prop youd find in Carrot Tops suitcase). Jamila Akils Black Women
Are Spending Too Much Time and Effort Going to School, They Should
Be Spending That Time Trying to Get Married is for those who want
to be told in a long-winded way that women + books = boner samurai
suicide. Theres also Shawn Jamess Why Most Black Women Will
Remain Single for the Rest of Their Lives, which is laughably ludicrous
in its argument that feminism is detrimental to black women because
they dont know how to be subservient to real black men. And thats just

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

On top of that, black women also have trouble finding love outside
their race. Based on the latest census data from the Pew Research
Center, one in six new marriages in America are interracial, but just
9 percent of them include black women, making them the least likely
of any race to marry outside their race. Nika C. Beamon, the author
of I Didnt Work This Hard Just to Get Married: Successful Single Black
Women Speak Out (2009), sheds some light on that statistic during a
February 2012 interview on BusinessInsider.com, saying, Most of the
women I spoke to preferred to date black men. It wasnt that they were
opposed to dating men of a different race, but there was often guilt associated with dating men who werent black, and concerns about being
accepted by friends, family, and members of the community.
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Given all this context, it is not surprising that these recent television
series headlined by black actresses deal with the somewhat dire romantic prospects of black women, especially considering that the shows are
created by black women of differing relationship status (powerhouse
and single mother Shonda Rhimes is the mind behind Scandal, while
Mara Brock Akil, married, came up with Being Mary Jane).
So maybe it would be a touch disingenuous for them to create Clair
Huxtable 2.0 when both creators (Akil more so than Rhimes) like
their work to ref lect what is happening in the world. This is not to say
that showing a black female character in a healthy relationship would
be unrealistic; rather, that perhaps the black tv pendulumonce
firmly in the area of traditional family values, particularly during the
90s with The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Martin, etc.is
now swinging toward a decidedly murkier area. Now, the female protagonist doesnt have it all figured out, she might not spark with eligible men the way she does with one particularly unavailable one, and
she may ref lect the 70 percent of late-20s, unmarried black women.
But why the role of mistress? Perhaps these characters mirror accomplished black women off the screen who, as they advance further
in their careers, are less likely to mate up. With coupledom nothing
more than a dream deferred, they settle for what they can geta
part-time man. While Ive never been a mistress, I can attest to the
difficulties of trying to date as I advance further in my career as a
stand-up comedian and writer. The number of eligible men, black or
otherwise, has dwindled significantly as I have progressed.
Or maybe its simply a case of one or the otherRhimes and
Akil have no interest in contributing to the Hollywood stereotype of
black women who are loud, lazy, and uneducated. If Pope and Paul
are going to have it together professionally, then their personal lives
have to be a mess in order for the show to have conf lict. Given that
some of todays most compelling dramas (Breaking Bad, Mad Men,

the characters mistress status

is not always interpreted as
merely an act of storytelling
by some critics, but as realworld commentary.
The Good Wife) feature crumbling relationships and families, denying strong black female leads those kinds of stories could create its
own set of problemsnamely, less complex characters who move
through life with a sort of Sidney Poitier dignity. Not that stoicism is
a bad quality, but its not the only way to be, and dignity and nobility
should not be the only imagery of blackness that gets presented. Nor
should the role of the mistress be the only imagery of black women
who are in love.
Regardless of the origins of the black female side piece, what do
we do now that were here? We must acknowledge that images of
black female characters with unsatisfying love lives may not be accurate, but are still powerful. Black women, on the whole, may not have
the exact same romantic struggles as their television counterparts,
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but it would be naive to believe that they arent inf luenced at all by
the fantasy of tv drama. The typical straight-girl fantasy of finding
a soul mate to build a life with has been usurped, at least for black
female viewers, by a tragic, devastating loveone that is seen as
desirable because, after all, love is only really love if it hurts.
But its just tv, right? Well, if that were the case, folks wouldnt
have cared that Kerry Washington was the first black woman to
star in her own network tv series in 40 years. Twitter and Tumblr
wouldnt be f looded after every episode of Scandal and Jane with
women posting that what happens on these shows is just like their
lives. Imagery, whether in the media or in art, can help shape how
people behave and how they perceive their lives. And in the case of
Pope and Paul, theyre the leaders of the small pack of black women
on television, and, fairly or unfairly, have to carry a disproportionate
amount of the burden of representing all black women. They cannot
simply be one among many like The Good Wifes Alicia Florrick or
Homelands Carrie Mathison. Instead, their every move is scrutinized, their every line of dialogue is infused with a meaning that
may or may not be there, and most importantly, their actions (say,
infidelity) take on a level of import and may even become inf luential
with some viewers. This may explain why their characters mistress
status is not always interpreted as merely an act of storytelling by
some critics but as real-world commentary and perhaps, to some
viewers, a ref lection on their everyday lives.
But when viewers are proclaiming, This is just like my life,
theyre probably not talking about the Pope-like scenario of POTUS
building them a cabin in Vermont to shack up in once (read: if) he
leaves his wife. None of the black women I know are like Jane, having this is true love shower-stall sex with a married man professing his love. Instead, their reality is a Zales pendant with a gift
receipt and a dude who disappears for weeks at a time, sending them
into a what does it all mean tailspin. These feels, while confounding, align with what they have seen in the media. Nowas wrong as
this wrongness seemsits somehow right because thats how love
is shown time and time again in the mediapainful and impossible. While Scandal and Being Mary Jane may have started out as a
ref lection of some black female lives, they may now have become a
definition for some black women to live by.
And yetquite a few of my female black friends are married. I,
myself, am in a long-term relationship. So, clearly, some real-life black
women are not only bucking the trend of the mistress role, but are also
proving that the relationship statistics they are bombarded with on a
daily basis are only telling part of the story about black women and
relationships. What seems to be happening is that because the de facto
image is ever-changing, virtues are being pulled from all the black
women in the media, both past (the healthy relationships that both
Clair Huxtable and Fresh Princes Aunt Viv forged with their partners)
and present (the career-driven nature of Pope and Paul) and used to
illustrate how truly multifaceted we can be. Hopefully, this means
we are one step closer to having completely three-dimensional black
female characters in tv that ref lect the newer generation of real-life
black women.

Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comedian, writer, and performer

living in New York City.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

screen

particularly striking example of

the reasons women of color felt
that the feminist movement was
not for them. The white women
speak about needing to get out
of the house sometimes, while
the black woman explains that
without stable work, she and her
children will go hungry.
In another piece of footage,
a committee of women begin to
organize a grocery buyers club
for women on welfare only to
be interrupted by a man from
higher up in the organization
who tells them that it wont work.
The womenboth organizers
and potential beneficiaries of the
buyers clubcome together to
tell him to mind his own business. It is this sort of interaction,
in which we are able to witness
the movement-building that
these women took part in as well
as the ways they worked together
and supported each other, that is
truly inspiring to witness.
A m e l i a Ay r e l a n I u v i n o

REFLECTIONS
UNHEARD:
black women in
civil rights
Director: Nevline Nnaji
{women make movies}

Nevline Nnajis first film is a feature-length documentary focusing on the role of black women
in the civil rights movement and
their dual marginalization by
the Black Power movement and
the mainstream white feminist
movement. Through a combination of archival footage from the
1960s and 70s and interviews
with black female activists from
organizations like the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers,
Nnaji crafts a compelling narrative of the struggles these
activists faced in their fight for
liberation, and the intersectional

black feminist movement that

they ultimately organized.
Without any overt narration,
Nnaji unspools a fascinating
story that is loosely divided into
sections about sexism in the
Black Power movement, racism
in the womens lib movement,
black women as mothers, the
formation of alliances with
women from the Global South,
and finally the formation of the
black feminist movement itself.
Photographs and video clips
bring these passionate women to
life and form the backbone of the
film, while women who actually took part in the movement
are able to explain these images
to viewers themselves. In one
clip, a black single mother and
two privileged white women are
interviewed on a talk show about
the need to work, providing a

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

WATCH IF: You like accounts of

history that emphasize movements over movement, with all
the disagreements, differences
in approach, and complexity that
peoples real lived experiences
have to offer.

With a spare script, pacing as precise as the Kentucky

Derby, and a visual lushness as
heady and breathtaking as the
rural landscape, this story pits
foreclosure against not just the
environment, but the fabric and
well-being of a family. The film
chillingly asks how far youd go
to save your family, while also
raising the ancient, harvest corollarywhom do you sacrifice?
Joanne Kelly plays Betty, a
Kentucky farm mom whose
pesticide business, family, and
marriage are all imperiled by Big
Chemicals monopolistic grip
on real estate, seeds, pesticides,
fertilizers, and finances. Betty
must decide whether to dump
chemicals she and her husband
sold a neighbor onto her own
landin order to save her
farm. As a woman with a family
and her entire livelihood at stake,
Kellys luminous yet grounded
performance anchors the entire
film. Alex Shaffer as her collegebound son shines; the camera
work by Hermes Marco haloes
Kentucky with nostalgia and
lushness, sans treacle. L i s a
M o r i c o l i - L at h a m
SEE IT WITH: Someone you want
to know betterleave plenty of
time for deep talk afterward.

RUNOFF
Director: Kimberly Levin
{Cantuckee pictures}

Elegantly framing all the challenges of American farming

within a single family, this tour
de force by first-time director
Kimberly Levin may be a new
dawn for stories about women
of a certain age. Levin does not
merely have a brilliant career
ahead of her, but may have ushered in a new realism in female
characters written by women,
shot by women, and destined for
all audiences.
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MY ATOMIC AUNT
Director: Kyoko Miyake
{inselfilm produktion}

On March 12, 2011, the Fukushima

power plant in Japan had a massive failure triggered by a tsunami,
and several reactors shut down,
releasing radioactive materials into
the surrounding areas. The meltdownthe largest nuclear incident
since Chernobylturned the seaside vacation town of Namie into
a wasteland.
Filmmaker Kyoko Miyake was
living in London at the time, but
decided to return to Namie to see
if her aunt and uncle who lived
there were all right, as well as to
piece together how such a disaster could have happened.
The film that resulted from her
trip follows her Aunt Kuniko, a
lifelong resident of Namie and the

energetic owner of a wedding salon, a funeral parlor, and a bakery.

Kuniko is granted special permission to enter the disaster zone: In
a plastic suit and white face mask,
she measures the radiation from
the backseat of the car and is later
seen picking up a moldy baguette
when she goes to survey the damage to her bakery. What could easily have become a sort of familymember voyeurism is thwarted
by the clear level of respect that
Miyake has for her aunt.
We see Aunt Kuniko become an
impassioned protester who shouts
Stop the Nuke, and Miyake
realizes that had she been in her
aunts place 40 years earlier, she
too would have fallen for TEPCOs
(Tokyo Electric Power Company)
courtship practices. After all, a
nuclear plant meant revenue, job

Ship Out of Water: A surreal scene from My Atomic Aunt, which looks at the aftermath of a tsunami that turned the coastal city of Namie into a ghost town.

creation, and pride Namie could

take in making an important contribution to the rest of Japan.
The coloring of the film is
muted; a once-vibrant seaside town
appears leached of color. It is Tokyo
at night that is alive with color, in
the form of millions of flickering
city lightsbut we are reminded
that they do so at the expense of
the little towns like Namie where
energy is harvested. Miyake comes
to understand that as long as the
lights come on in Tokyo, people will
forget about the tragedy in Namie,
and they will forget about the refugeesincluding her auntwho
live so close to its toxic epicenter.
My Atomic Aunt is a wonderfully
executed film that offers a full picture of grief after disaster; it proves
that a little seaside townalong
with the ghostly human spirit it
still containswill not be erased
from the planet. JP P o o l e
FALLOUT FACT: The trees
around Chernobyl have barely
decomposed 30 years after the
nuclear disaster in 1986, proof that
radioactive contamination lingers.

MY PRAIRIE HOME
Director: Chelsea
McMullan

{National Film Board of Canada}

What do Canadian prairies,

dinosaurs, choreographed dandy
foxes, and Greyhound bus rides
have in common? They are just a
few components of the tapestry
woven together by filmmaker
Chelsea McMullan in her debut
film, My Prairie Home. Featuring
the exceptional music of genderqueer singer-songwriter Rae
Spoon, the film is equal parts
pastoral memoir and art-school
film in the best possible way.
The opening sequence shows
Rae at a provincial truck stop,
back turned and nursing a cup of
coffee. In a continuous shot, Rae
croons, strums on their guitar,
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and walks slowly through the caf,

taking the diners by surprise. It is
the perfect introduction to Raes
dreamy song stylings, as well as to
the cultural landscape where they
grew up in Alberta, Canada.
My Prairie Home takes a direct
approach to gender politics and
visibility: Rae Spoon describes
their rejection of the gender binary
by speaking about the significance
of meeting transgender folks for
the first time and how it shaped
their own identity. However,
whereas many queer biographies
have a tendency to devote a lot of
screen time to queerness itself,
this film is chiefly about the
journey of a talented musician and
their cultural landscape (via the
prairie and Canada at large). We
follow Rae as they traverse Canada
by bus, perform at tiny venues
by night, and move from motel
to motel. There are moments
of delight and beautylike the
reenactment of Raes high-school
prom, or recording the sound of
wind through a prairie field, for
example. Each vignette or song
takes the form of a confessional.
With the archetypical breakinto-song-and-maybe-even-dance
routines, fantastical visuals, and
catchy melodies, its easy to fall in
love with this film. The soundtrack
pulls from several of Raes previously released albums (and the
tracks are damn good), perfectly
in tune with the films stylings.
But the story itselfthat is, Raes
personal story, evident in both their
lyrics as well as the candid scenes
where they speak directly to the
camerais what gives such imaginative filmmaking and terrific
scoring its wings.
Rhienna Rene Guedry
PLAY ON REPEAT: Remember
how good Jann Ardens Insensitive was? Do you have an
unspoken obsession with the
time-tested ballad I Will Always

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

screen

Istanbul, with
its current
boom of drastic, neoliberal
urban renewal,
displays in
rare clarity
how gender
minorities are
casualties of
gentrification.
Love You? Raes Bandcamp page
(raespoon.bandcamp.com) features covers of both, along with all
of the tracks featured in this film,
available to stream or download.

Trans X Istanbul
Director: Maria Binder
{maria bendor-cornix film}

I live in a world built on the penisand-vagina system, says Ebru K.

with half a laugh, kicking off Trans
X Istanbul, a documentary by German filmmaker Maria Binder.
Binder follows a dynamic community of trans women divided
across two neighborhoods in Istanbul, where rapid developments, and
the accompanying rent hikes, have
driven the citys sexual and ethnic
minorities from one neighborhood
to another, and another. The women, who have already abandoned
the city center, congregate largely in
a single apartment complex. Other
residents of the complex begin
staging protests against their new

neighbors, eventually leading police to seal the apartments of the 10

trans residents to investigate allegations of prostitution. Ebrus social
circle operates as a family, supporting each other through evictions,
attacks, and death, as they work
toward setting up a trans retirement home where they can find
stability and grow old.
lgbtq rights have been slow
to take hold in Turkey, and trans
women suffer significant injury
because of entrenched intolerance.
Often discriminated against by
employers, many trans women
resort to sex work. Trans X Istanbul follows Ebru as she seeks
out information about a friend
murdered in her apartment, and
coordinates a citywide search for a
young trans woman whose throat
was slashed. Yet Ebru and her
friends have not let tragedy and
injustice rob them of their agency,
and they fight with protests and
campaigns for the rights to their
homes and their safety.
Istanbul, with its current
boom of drastic, neoliberal urban
renewal, displays in rare clarity
how gender minorities are casualties of gentrificationa trend
that occurs more subtly in cities
around the world, including in
the United States. Against this
canvas, Binder succeeds in showing the juncture where gradual
ejection of undesirable urban
populations results in real and
sometimes fatal violence. Though
Ebru is navigating the streets of
Istanbul, her story is representative not just of gender minorities,
but of other minority populations
contending with out of sight, out
of mind policies in urban areas.
Elizabeth Hewitt
FOLLOW UP WITH: A visit to
transxistanbul.com, where Binder
will be collecting short videos
made by transgender women
throughout Turkey.

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

REDEMPTION TRAIL
Director: Britta Sjogren
{Breaking Glass Pictures}

Saddle up, lovers of horses and

emotional thrill rides. Redemption Trail is a contemporary
Western that tells the story of two
women, Tess (Lisa Gay Hamilton)
and Anna (Lily Rabe), who have
escaped personal trauma and
seek liberation in their shared
reclusion. In the heart of sunny
California, Anna grieves the loss
of a family member while Tess
recovers from the violence she
suffered from her involvement
with the Oakland Black Panthers.
Though the two women are an
unlikely pair, they become close
when Tess saves Annas life after
a suicide attempt.
Not wanting to return home,
Anna moves into Tesss house
and the women shun the responsibilities of relationships in favor
of spending quiet time together.
Tess is pursued by the owner
of the ranch she tends to, and
Annas husband David implores
her to come home so they can
deal with her grief togetherbut
both women refuse to make commitments to the men. Instead,
they have meaningful, soulbaring, and Bechdel testpassing
conversations about their turbulent pasts. Along with the drama
of Tesss and Annas personal
lives, the film also follows a local
woman named Lilia, who shows
up sporadically throughout the
film but whose story is never fully
developed. However, the titular
redemption seems to come from
this storyline, as Tess and Anna
eventually avenge a great injustice
done to Lilia and her family.
Still, Redemption Trail lacks
a sense of resolution. Director
Britta Sjogren seems intensely
focused on the beauty of the
piece, with gorgeous cinematography of Sonoma County and
the California plains and skies.

But watching the women mount

and dismount horses and walk
romantically through fields of
grain while never really resolving their personal strife grows
a bit tiresome. While there are
many deeply emotional one-line
exchanges set to a background
of vineyards and sunsets,
Redemption Trail ultimately fails
to redeem. A n n a M i l l e r
WATCH THIS WITH: Your favorite horse-patterned hankie.

OUT IN THE NIGHT

Director: blair
dorosh-walther

{the fire this time the film}

Feeling safe at night can mean

many different things, and the
threats we face can vary greatly.
For the group of queer black
women who would come to be
known as the New Jersey Four,
danger materialized in a place
they expected to feel safe
Manhattans West Village. One
night in 2007, a man on the
street harassed them with gendered and sexualized threats and
epithets as they walked by him.
When they responded, he initiated a physical altercation with
them that culminated in one of
the women stabbing him with
a penknife.
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screen

Sex (Ed) is
funny at
times, referencing film
strips with
titles such
as Condom
Sense and
Would You
Kiss a Naked
Man? But it
also confronts
current ways
sex is taught
outside of
the home.

Out in the Night examines

the medias portrayal of this
incident, which resulted in convictions and sentences ranging
from three and a half to 11 years
for the four women. Through
interviews with each of the
womenas well as their family
members, legal counsel, and
others involved in organizing
around the casedirector blair
dorosh-walther raises the questions of who is permitted to act
in self-defense and who is not;
who is believed to be in danger
and who is not; and the ways that
race, gender, and sexuality inf luence societys answers.
However, just as the film expresses frustration that the New
Jersey Four were not believed
to have acted in self-defense,
it also draws attention to the
inadequacy of a self-defense
framework for understanding
this case. It acknowledges the
broader context surrounding
the events of that night, such as
ptsd, childhood sexual trauma,
aggressions and microaggressions accumulating over time,
and police brutality resulting in
self-reliance and lack of trust for
law enforcement.
dorosh-walther, who identifies
as gender nonconforming and
uses male and female pronouns,
built long-term relationships with
the women and their families,
and their trust in hir is apparent
in their interviews. By giving us
a glimpse into the human lives at
stake in this high-profile case and
confronting the complicated gray
areas that fill in its background,
this film begins to provide the
nuance and understanding that
the American justice system and
media lack. A . A . I .
WATCH IF YOU LIKE (OR
DISLIKE): Orange Is the
New Black.

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r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

The New Jersey 4, Now: Venice Brown, Terrain Hill, Patreese Johnson, and Renata
Hill of Out in the Night.

Sex(ed) the Movie

Director: Brenda
Goodman
{sex(ed) the movie}

Sex education in the United States

has had many monikers since its
introduction in schools at the end
of the 19th century, from Family
Relations to Moral Education.
But as Sex(Ed) points out, we still
have a long way to go when it comes
to comprehensive sex education.
The documentary, directed
and coproduced by University of
Southern California film professor
Brenda Goodman, traces the history of sex ed, focusing primarily
on the educational films that rose
in prominence following World
War II, when there was an influx of
projectors and other film equipment into nonprofits and educational institutions. Films soon
became the primary resource for
teaching sex ed in schools; to this
day, more than 100,000 films have
been made. Sex(Ed) focuses on
these films because, as film archivist Valerie Schwan points out, sex
is the quintessential reality of the
human species, and these films
provide historical documentation
of how culture has changed. The
focus moves from films about the
status of the nuclear family and

liberated teenagers in the 1950s to

ones centered on the aids crisis of
the 1980s, to current-day, primarily
abstinence-based offerings.
The film is funny at times,
referencing film strips with titles
such as Condom Sense and Would
You Kiss a Naked Man?, but it also
thoroughly examines the past and
confronts the current ways that
sex is taught outside of the home.
The film highlights the startling
statistics concerning sex edfor
instance, that only 22 states require
sex ed be taught in schools.
At the same time, Sex(Ed)
remains lighthearted, with vox
populi interviews concerning peoples own sex-ed experiences. Such
stories, from no formal sex ed to
abstinence scare tactics, not only
showcase the disparitiesy in education across age and background,
but bring out the human element
of the storythat we all, at some
point, learned about S-E-X.
Hannah Steinkopf-Fr ank
SEE IT WITH: Your high-school
friends who went through sex ed
with you.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

music
REVIEWS

ROCK OF AGES
ELLEN WILLISS DAUGHTER
DISCUSSES HER MOTHERS
LATEST ANTHOLOGY AND
ONGOING INFLUENCE
BY ALYXANDRA VESEY
ILLUSTRATION BY PERRIN

Ellen Willis committed her life to envisioning the future. As a result, many of
us are still catching up with her. As a
critic and scholar, Willis used words to
elucidate her radical, sex-positive perspective on feminism, popular culture,
and politics. Between 1968 and 1975,
she served as the New Yorkers first pop
music critic. While the work of contemporaries like Greil Marcus, Lester Bangs,
and Robert Christgau was championed
in their time, the annals of rock criticism often left Willis out.
That is, until the 2011 collection Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis
on Rock Music resulted in renewed interest in her work and recognition for her inf luence on feminist music criticism, such as the 2011
Sex, Hope & Rock n Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis conference
at NYU, which was attended by Ann Powers, Daphne Brooks, Nitsuh
Abebe, Kathleen Hanna, Irin Carmon, and Maura Johnston.

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

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music

However, Williss rock-critic career is just one chapter in a rich

biography. She wrote for an impressive number of publications and
authored several essay collections. She also worked as a professor in NYUs journalism department and headed up its Center for
Cultural Reporting and Criticism until her death in 2006. She
documented her life with prescient writing on still-relevant topics
like reproductive choice, pornography, sexual autonomy, childcare,
economic disparity, intersectionality, national identity, Judaism,
labor, and warfare. In early 2014, the University of Minnesota Press
released The Essential Ellen Willis, a comprehensive anthology of
her work.
Williss legacy also lives on in her daughter, Nona Willis Aronowitz, who edited both of Williss recent anthologies. Aronowitz is a
writer and reporter who currently covers education and poverty for
NBC News Digital. Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic, the
Nation, and Rookie, among other publications. She is the cofounder
of Tomorrow magazine and cowrote Girldrive: Criss-crossing America,
Redefining Feminism with Emma Bee Bernstein. She is currently
working on a book about millennials and the new economy. I had
the distinct pleasure of chatting with Aronowitz about honoring her
mothers legacy while forging her own path.

What did you learn about Willis in the process of putting this
collection together? Specifically, what did you learn about the
evolution of her feminism through the political history she
wrote about in comparison to editing Out of the Vinyl Deeps,
which focused on her music criticism and fandom?
Growing up, I only knew her as somebody who wrote about politics
and feminism. I didnt know her when she really had her finger on
the pulse of music. But I knew that that was something she loved.
When I first put Out of the Vinyl Deeps together and realized just
how much she thought about and cared about rock music in the
larger cultural and political conversation, that actually did really
surprise me at first. Because when I was a kid, I just thoughton
one hand my mom writes about politics and feminism, on the other,
my mom writes about rock n roll. And yes, I knew that she had
been a music writer at some point, but putting together Out of the

she was resolute. she was

incredibly lucid and revealing
of her own thought process
and her own opinions and
what was going on inside her
own head.
Vinyl Deeps really made me realize how important she thought pop
culture was to that political moment. And frankly (and I think shes
wrong about this) she might have felt that pop culture wasnt as
important to the political conversation in the last few decades of her
life. And there are so many elements of 90s and 2000s pop culture
that really keyed up so many issues, so many feminist issues, so
many political issues, that Im very surprised that she got bored of
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r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

it or that she felt like it wasnt relevant to her politics anymore, but I
think she really did feel that way.

What does it mean for you to honor Ellen Williss legacy as a

writer and as her daughter?
I think the main difference between her legacy as a writer and her legacy
as a mother is that [in] her legacy as a writer, she wasnt dogmatic but she
was sometimes polemical. She was resolute. She was incredibly lucid and
revealing of her own thought process and her own opinions and what
was going on inside her own head and her own problems and worries.
A lot of things she talked about in her life Id never even heard of [as her
daughter]. I think her legacy of using her own inner life and personal life
with her friends as a jumping-off point to talking about political questions is one of the most important things about her writing.
Yet as a mother, she was so not like that. She wasnt one of those
moms who was my best friend, told me all about her sexual experiences,
her fights with her boyfriends or friends. She didnt regale me with
stories from her exciting feminist activist days. She was very hands-off.
And sometimes that frustrated me, but other times I greatly appreciated how she was such a good listener and I could come to her with
anything. She wasnt judgmental of me and my choices. She was just
so accepting and open-minded of my opinions. I talked to her about hip
hop, I talked to her about race and relationships, and a lot of different
things. She was a real proponent of live and let live. I think thats really
her legacy as a mother. And that could have maybe been her personality,
but I think it was also pretty deliberate on her part to let me figure out
who I was rather than imposing some worldview on me.

Did you find yourself conversing or talking back to Williss writing?

I definitely disagree with her about Israel. I dont have the same
attachment to the concept of Jewish faith and I dont have the same
relationship to Judaism as she does for whatever reason. I appreciated her bringing us along on her thought process. But Im curious
to know what her position would be now that anti-Israel sentiment
has really bubbled up to the surface. I wish I could argue with her
about that. In terms of the psychoanalytic stuff, she did a tremendous
amount of research for that and I feel like I would have to know more
[about it]at this point, I kind of have to take her word on a lot of it
because Im not very well-versed in that topic.
Another thing that I have sort of criticisms ofand this isnt
anything that she wrote about explicitly, it was more an assumption
throughout her writingbut I think she really just missed a lot of
the country. She came from a place where the only places worthwhile
intellectually were New York and San Francisco. I think a lot of the
work that Ive done in quote-unquote real America is a reaction
to not only that [part of] her work but also my personal interactions
with her in my upbringing. And granted, maybe it was truer before
the Internet and before the accessibility of a lot of these ideas, because you had to physically get the paper journal or album or movie,
rather than having it all at your fingertips. But thats something that
rubs me the wrong way about her writing.

As a follow-up, how can feminists productively disagree,

misunderstand, or be challenged by one another in the
service of the movement without reinforcing its history
of intergenerational conflict?
Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

music

First of all, I think some of the intergenerational tension is manufactured. Many of my personal and professional interactions with older
feminists have been perfectly fine; theyre interested and theyre
relieved that young women call themselves feminists. I think that a
lot of editors who are finding older feminists to write hit pieces on
younger feminists are not taking into account that its the exception,
not the rule.
But I dont think theres any problem with arguing. I think when it
gets personal, thats when it gets petty and unproductive. But I dont
see any problem with arguing, especially wellthought out arguments. I tend to think that writing something substantive in response
to somebody else, whether its on your personal blog or a publication,
is better than having a 140-character argument on Twitter or a bitchy
comment section back-and-forth.

As a feminist media scholar, I was especially struck by Williss commitment to recognizing the range of pleasures found in media
consumption and sexual practice rather than resorting to easy
vilification, especially in Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution,
Lust Horizons, Sisters under the Skin?, Radical Feminism and
Feminist Radicalism, Villains and Victims, and Tis a Pity Hes
a Whore. At the very least, it made me wonder what Willis would
say about recent commentary surrounding Beyoncs representation. What conversations and debates do you think she would
enter into about sex in politics and popular culture?
She might have something to say about Beyonc. I dont think she would
engage in the issue of whether Beyonc was a feminist. I think she
understood that celebrities are ultimately not going to be the leader of a
grassroots movement and we shouldnt pin so much hope on them. She
wasnt wading into everyday feminist issues by the time she died. She
was more interested in larger, straightforward political questions on the
national level. Besides The Sopranos maybe [Our Mobsters, Ourselves],
I cant think of any other pop culturerelated pieces that she wrote in
the 2000s. The pop culture she would be commenting onrepresentations of feminism in pop cultureI honestly do think she would have
done a lot more [on] t v, because she loved The Sopranos so much and it
was the iceberg in terms of the golden age of t v that we are currently
living in. She could very well have written something on Orange Is the
New Black or Mad Men. But I dont think shed be arguing about semantics. I think she would have been terribly bored by that.

In your introduction to the anthology, you explore Williss use

of the term transcendent, which you explain as a code word
for a portal into political and emotional freedom, a description
for an idea, large or small, that helps us plod through the inertia
and our endless rationalizing about the forces that govern us and
the decisions we make about our lives. What did transcendence
mean for you during the editing process for this anthology?
I titled the introduction Transcendence not just because she used
that word, but also because I curated the anthology [and] picked pieces
that transcended their era, transcended their particular historical
moment, transcended their particular conversation that they fit into at
that time. And there were so many cuts that I needed to make, so I did
keep that concept in mind. Transcendence helps us wade through
the bullshit of some of our current conversations around these issues,
not only about feminism but about the economy and about politics.

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

She tended to take a real birds-eye view on these issues rather than
reacting to something small and finite, and I really kept that in mind
when I picked these pieces. I wanted the pieces to take you on a journey, to place these issues on a larger continuum, and transcend that
conversation about minutiae. And transcending that ending point
where we just get exhausted and feel like nothing can really change. I
think thats what it really comes down to for me. Shes one of the few
writers that goes past that moment where we get politically exhausted
and where we just get depressed and says, Well, you know, we can
actually change things.

As a follow-up, what does transcendence open up as a possibility

for you for feminism in the present day?
Well, just all of the ideas and wistful wishes that we bring up in
pop-fueled conversations with our friends. Like a big thing that Ive
been thinking about a lot is ways we can live communally, which
would solve a conf luence of issues ranging from childcare and the
isolation of the nuclear family to the economics of owning your own
home and the impossibility of real estate. I feel like we always have
these conversations of How can we make this better?especially
as millennials. The economy sucks for us, these work/life balance
choices are impossible and a catch-22. Then we think, We should
all live in a house together. It would be so awesome. And then we
kind of forget about it the next day. Thats just one example of something that, when I was putting together my moms book, I thought
for a moment, Well, why do we just laugh it off? Why do we stop at
complaining? We could really envision something different for ourselves. Ive only just begun to, in the last few years, really think past
some of these everyday grievances that we have. But I just wish more
people felt like it was possible.

Much of the reception of The Essential Ellen Willis (both within

the book and in its reviews) focuses on Williss prescience as a
feminist critic, particularly in her writings about the sex wars,
reproductive choice, and intersectionality. What interventions
do you hope this anthology makes in contemporary discourse?
I have noticed that, and I think its partly because were grappling
with the same feminist issues that we were decades ago. So you could
say that Ellen Willis was prescient, but you could also say that theres
been a lot of fits and starts in the feminist movement. But to answer
to your question, I really feel that shes the type of writer who puts the
conversation forward in an affirmative way, saying what women want
rather than what theyre against. She laid out a vision of true sexual
liberation, a vision of true equality, of a society that sort of didnt put
people in little boxes and really, truly let them be their most interesting, pleasure-seeking selves. And you see that so little with feminist
personalities. You see a lot of outrage. You see a lot of reaction to bad
things happening. And I think my moms writing is a good antidote
to thatits a good model for saying what youre for and not just what
youre against.

Alyxandra Vesey is a PhD candidate in Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She studies gender, music,
and labor. She frequently writes about such topics on her blog, Feminist Music Geek. She also volunteers for Girls Rock Camp Madison
and deejays at WSUM.
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cry is for the flies

Le Butcherettes
{Nadie Sound Inc.}

COMET, COME TO ME
Meshell Ndegeocello
{Nave}

Im not the first person to proclaim that Meshell Ndegeocello

is criminally underrated and
ought to be astronomically more
famous than she is. Nor will I be
the lastso if youre one of those
people who is not familiar with
her brand of eclectic and defiantly nonconformist sound and
is curious to check out what her
fans have been enjoying for years,
her newest album Comet, Come
to Me is a great introduction into
the Haus of Ndegeocello.
The opening track, a cover of
Whodinis 80s hit Friends,
instantly hooked me in a way
that no other album opener has
done this year. Its an inventive
and modern take on the song and
while its sonically different
darker and featuring rapthan
anything else on Comet, Come to
Me, I doubt that anyone will mind
much as there is plenty here to
keep the listener entertained.
Theres the r & b sound on
the end of the romantic Tom,
which wouldnt be out of place
on an Al Green album; Modern
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Time and Forget My Name are

infused with reggae; Good Day
Bad is dutifully folk; Conviction, the fantastic lead single,
makes me yearn for a Ndegeocello/Van Hunt duet immediately.
And lets not forget the hypnotic
and spacey title track, which
combines dub and some jazzy
elements into a funky sound that
I wish was more incorporated
throughout the album, but that is
a small complaint. What matters
most is that this album is just
another example of what Ndegeocello has done throughout her
20-year career: create a tapestry
of musical genres and styles that
is both exciting and challenging
to listen to.
Still, as intriguing as Comet
is, be warned that for the most
part, it is a decidedly downtempo collection of music. Being
down-tempo isnt a negative, but
I find that listening to this album is most suitable for a night
in. P h o e b e R o b i n s o n
EXTRA EXTRA: Read Bitch
Medias interview with Ndegeocello at bit.ly/meshellcomet.

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

These days, raucous frontwoman Teri Gender Bender (ne

Surez), notorious for shocker
public statements like gracing
the stage covered in pigs blood
or urinating in front of a crowd,
is making a different kind of
scene with Cry Is for the Flies, an
album thats garnering attention
with or without the spectacle. The
Mexican-American singer put
her band Le Butcherettes on the
back burner for a handful of years
while collaborating with Omar
Rodrguez-Lpez (The Mars Volta,
At the Drive-In) in art-rock group
Bosnian Rainbows, and the experimentation has certainly pushed
her in a fresh direction. For the
bands latest effort, RodrguezLpez returned as bassist and producer, crafting a sound that is less
rough around the edges than the
groups last effort but still every
bit as anxiously blunt. With oddly
punctuated vocals reminiscent of
early Jack White, Demon Stuck
in Your Eye is one of the albums
grittier tracks, while Your Weakness Gives Me Life takes a page
out of the Bosnian Rainbows
progressive playbook. Noteworthy
admirer Henry Rollins contributes the spoken-word Moment of
Guilt and Shirley Manson pipes
in on Shame, Youre All Ive Got,
a roomy, keys-driven experimental
track thats a welcome juxtaposition to the otherwise harder-hitting material. Throughout Flies,
Le Butcherettes feminist message
is as clear as ever but delivered
this time around via a more
sophisticated songwriting style
that may just propel them from
their current cult status to major
recognition. C l a i r e A s h t o n
LISTEN UP: If you can only afford
one track, download Boulders
Love Over Layers of Rock for
the killer synth and anything-butladylike message.

BODIES AND CONTROL

AND MONEY AND
POWER
Priests

{Don Giovanni/Sister Polygon}

Washington, D.C.based Priests
are bursting with rage. Its an
obvious frustration that may
seem like the norm for any
punk band, but in their case, it
translates into being one of the
most exciting sounds from 2014.
Their new ep is like jumping into
your first mosh pit. The growing
orchestra of screams and protests
may seem overwhelming, but its
one hell of a ride, worth hopping
on over and over.
The album starts off with the
wildly infectious Design Within
Reach, a rowdy anthem reminiscent of original 90s riot grrrl.
Loaded with primal riffs and
hypnotic chants, the desperate
and defiant track questions how
so many are willing to conform
to everyday norms. Katie Alice
Greers wails are so pierced and
deafening, you fear shell lose her
vocals right at the intro, yet she successfully marches along the way.
In Doctor, a track reminescent of B-movie idolizers The
Cramps, Greer rants, You put
your fingers in other peoples
mouths all day, the melody
stripped to nothing more than
G.L. Jaguars entrancing guitar
strumming and Daniele Danieles steady drumming.
Think those are Priests best
gems? Head straight to the dangerously catchy Right Wing,
where the band addresses that
other D.C. group. You know,
the enemy looking to clip their
wings. The revelation of worshipping false idols will trigger you
to grab the nearest hammer and
attack the golden calf.
But the most powerful track of
all is the finisher, And Breeding, where everyone is fed up
with playing nice. Greers boisterous roars will make you weak in
the knees, and shes not taking

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

music

any prisoners. Barack Obama

killed something in me/ And Im
gonna get him for it, she declares
over and over. Never-ending
student loans? Lack of jobs? Or
the expectation to procreate as
a woman? Sorry Mr. President,
Priests is pulling out every major
f law from politics and wants to
smear it in your face.
In short, you need Bodies and
Control and Money and Power.
Words cant stress the importance of having a collection of
sounds urging you to fight for
somethinganything. We can
only pray this is just the beginning for Priests.
Stephanie Nolasco
LISTEN IF: You wished you were
around during the height of the
90s riot grrrl movement.

LP1
FKA twigs

{Young Turks}
British dancerturnedtrip hop/
r & b singer FKA twigs is notable
as an artist in large part because
she uses more than a cult of
personality in the creation of her

art. FKA twigs, whose full name

is Tahliah Barnett, began her
career as a backup dancer, and
released her first ep, EP1, at the
end of 2012. The understanding
Barnett seems to have gleaned
from her past workbeing part
of a larger whole, contributing
without demanding spotlightis
a major asset to every FKA twigs
album. The music on her first
full-length, LP1, is almost overwhelmingly sensuous, which
makes it either the kind of delicious headphones music that will
lend a full-body soundtrack to
your whole walk to work, or the
kind of room-filling record that
will transform your apartment
into a moody boudoir club at 8
p.m. on a Wednesday. Breathy
vocals are layered as thick as
an icebox cake over beats that
overlap and loop and tug the
tone of the record from trippy
to sexy to glitchy to smooth-assilk r&b, sometimes within the
course of a single song. Barnetts
vocals are appealing and attention grabbing, and her lyrics are
surprisingly poignant (When I
trust you/ We can do it with the
lights on from Lights On), but

Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive.

they never outshine any other

single musical component. FKA
twigs has an incredibly inventive
visual aesthetic, as evidenced
by her album artwork and in
her plentiful videos, but she has
wisely set herself up to be associated first and foremost with
impeccable production values,
which are the real star of LP1.
Music this interesting and multifaceted clearly comes from someone interested in growing the
game, not growing a franchise.
K at i e P r e s l e y
WHATS IN A NAME: FKA twigs
started as twigs, because her
joints crack easily. The FKA
stands for formerly known as,
and was added when another artist called Twigs objected to there
being too many branches on the
nomenclature tree.

APARaTO!
Aparato!

{E.L.E. Records}
Aparato! is a vessel that takes
listeners to another level of
consciousness, a collaborative
machine working to enlighten
a world of injustices and bring
a voice to the voiceless, fusing
dualities of Chicano culture
through their mixture of jaranas
and electric beats. The duo of
Cat Mendez and Alexandro D.
Hernndez Guitrrez transcends
borders with their post-punk
electric beats and what they
call Indigenous instruments
of mass descent, whose songs
raise awareness of immigrant
politics and feminist issues.
Estrellitas is dedicated to
AB 540 undocumented students
fighting for a higher education
and citizenship while living
under the threat of deportation.
Like many of Aparato!s songs,
it looks at the in between condition and invisibility of people
who are systematically rejected
by mainstream American society

yet incapable of returning to

their home country. Another
track, Kriminal, speaks to
the severity of the manner in
which undocumented people are
considered illegal simply by
beingand are therefore prosecuted as criminals. The line
I am not murderer I am not
thief references how the only
crime of many people is risking
their lives to cross an invisible
line. Murolismo (a play on the
word muralismo/muralism) was
inspired by the women behind
the activist cultural center La
Casa de Cultura in Del Rio,
Texas, the hometown of Hernndez Guitrrez near the Mexican
border. When these women were
notified that a fence would be
built to divide people residing
on either side of the line, they
organized protesters from both
sides of the border, and lay down
on the bridge crossing from
Del Rio to Acua, Coahuila,
and blocked traffic as an act of
civil disobedience, shouting No
muro, no wall!
Aparato!s music fights for
human dignity in hope of reaching a greater audience that will
become inspired to be active
within their communities and
create positive change.
But they dont just talk the
talk, they are politically active
in organizations like the Korean
Cort Guitar Workers ACTION!,
the Anti-Mall, the DREAM Act,
and local chapters of Ladyfest
and the Rock n Roll Camp for
Girls. They are without a doubt
a one-of-a-kind duo that keeps
your soul grounded but uplifts
your mind to other realms.
Abeni Moreno
MAJOR INFLUENCES: Aparato!
has been influenced by names like
Gloria Anzalda, Neil deGrasse
Tyson, Martha Gonzlez, DREAMers, Dr. Cornel West, Wombyn
Liberationists around the world,
and Caf Tacvba.
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Cursed to
See the Future
represents
the internal strength
needed to
survive and,
more importantly, fight
for what you
want and
what you
need. And
for Mortals,
they convey
it through
some serious
blackened
metal.
CURSED TO SEE THE
FUTURE
Mortals

{Relapse Records}
The debut full-length from Brooklyn trio Mortals has a certain
soundone I associate with fellow Brooklyn-based bands such as
Tombs and Black Anvila feeling
that can only come out of living in
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bitch f e m i n i s t

this city and, more specifically, a

borough where its hard to carve
out a niche for yourself.
Cursed to See the Future is bleak,
dark, and cynical, but it is also exciting, imparting to the listener the
everyday struggle of making ends
meet. It also represents the internal strength needed to survive and,
more important, fight for what you
want and what you need. And for
Mortals, they convey it through
some serious blackened extreme
metal with a nod to 80s alternative, Joy Divisionesque rock.
Vocalist/bassist Lesley Wolfs
vocals are incredibly forceful
and frighteningly inhumanoff
the gate in View From a Tower
and in The Summoning, the
albums standout track. Guitarist
Elizabeth Cline is also impressive,
laying down some heavy riffs in
the opener, and providing a meaty
intro to Epochryphal Gloom.
Drummer Caryn Havlik provides
trademark blackened signatures
in her blast beats and double-kick
bass, but theres enough diversity
to her playing to show that this is
no copycat black metal band. She
mixes a variety of genres into her
playing, most notably some swing
and groove within The Summoning, and some straight-up
Motrhead trashy galloping
on Devilspell.
While Cursed to See the Future
consists of only six tracks, the
band obviously adheres to the adage of quality over quantity. What
saves the four-to-nine minute
tracks from meandering is the
musical dexterity within songs
that are f lexed by rapid time
changes and Wolfs vocal pronunciations, which bring some
much-needed texture, especially
to the closing track, Anchored in
Time. As a metal nerd, I felt the
slightly f lat production mix could
have brought out Wolfs bass a bit
more, but overall this is a stellar
album, one that will transition
those who might have eschewed

r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

extreme black/blackened metal

in the past to take a listen.
L a i n a Daw e s
LISTEN TO IF YOU LIKE: High
on Fire, Motrhead, Darkthrone
(post 2005), Tombs.

YESWAY
Yesway

{self released}
Listening to the self-titled debut
album from San Francisco duo
Yesway is like soaring above the
coast of Northern California with
two folk-singing celestial beings
in perfect sync with each other.
The sun sets, and shadows cast
along mountain ridges and the
ocean deep. Emily Ritz and Kacey
Johansings voices melt together,
and their close friendship offstage allows them to write lovely,
darkly rich, intimate songs. On
first listen, the album as a whole
is so soothing that it can be
almost sleepy, but with further
listens, the layers shine out, and
you will find yourself humming
the melodies hours later.
Ritz and Johansings harmonization is clearly the driving force
behind their music. However,
their guitar picking, bells, light
percussion, and occasional shimmering electronic pings cushion
their vocals and often serve as
the third harmonizer. The album
begins with Whoacean, and the
tracks vocal abstractionsohs,
ahs, and whoasserve as a nice
primer for whats to come. Ritz
and Johansing mix in just the

right amount of low, mournful

moans, strange guttural sounds,
and sputtering percussive noise
to signal that this isnt just
straitlaced folk, but something
somewhat stranger.
The highlight of the album is
Howlin Face, with a melody so
lovely itll make you want to sing
along from the opening words:
If the howling dogs should cry
out/ Quake is coming, quake
is coming/ If the tallest trees
should fall down/ Lightning is
striking, lightning is striking/
But oh how my body howls/ The
tallest trees in sight fall down.
With reverbing bells, powerfully
soaring vocals, and well-placed
keyboards, the smartly chosen
single is a true gem and has hit
written all over it.
With odd time signatures and
several tonal shifts within single
songs, the album has been compared to early Grizzly Bear, or to
fellow pastoral rock folk group
CocoRosie. Its also easy to imagine classic r & b/soul variations
for several tracks like Let Go,
Heart Does Not Lie, and Winter Willing. Overall, Yesway is a
consistently enjoyable journey of
ascending vocals and a wilderness of quiet surprises. a l l e y
Pezanoski-Browne
BUSY LADIES: Johansing just
released her solo lp Grand
Ghosts and lends her talents to
the project Geographer. Ritz is a
member of the band DRMS. They
both are a part of the experimental folk ensemble Honeycomb.

Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization.

music

Ellis Bell
The Cold and Lovely
{self released}

Career musicians, bassist Nicole

Fiorentino (the Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt) and producer
and multi-instrumentalist Meghan
Toohey (the Weepies, Lenka), took
a recent reprieve from their daily
grind to concentrate on a second
release for side-project the Cold
and Lovely. The result is a spellbinding, fluid six-song ep thats
every bit the sum of its creators.
Toohey channeled both the pivotal My Bloody Valentines album
Loveless and PJ Harveys expansive
musical catalog to craft songs
reminiscent of 90s indie shoegazer rockalbeit with a cleaner,
more contemporary radio-friendly
sound. The talented twosome are a
well-matched pair whose vocals are
so complementary that its a shame
they havent collaborated for ages.
Ellis Bell is quite the achievement
from the start, hitting the ground
running with lush, dreamy harmonies (Doll and Bring It) before
heading in a more anthematic
direction (Ellis Bell). Thematically speaking, we can all relate to
the notion of watching something
unravel before our very eyes, be
it a relationship, career, or whatever comes in between. The duo
impresses most by chronicling this
universal feeling so perfectly in the
tender, sparse standout-track Red
Eye. For a sophomore effort, listeners really couldnt ask for more,
except for perhaps an lp the next
time around. C . A .
BANG ON: The duos rotating
cast of drummers includes Patty
Schemel (Hole) and Dani Buncher
(TeamMate).

YELLOW MEMORIES
Fatima

{Eglo Records}
New Yorkbased Fatimas debut
album Yellow Memories starts with

an ambiguous resolution. On the

opening track, Do Better, it is
unclear whether Fatima, born
Fatima Bramme Sey, is being
self-deprecating (as if she herself
should be doing better) or stating that she deserves better than
the situation she is in. Either
way, amid a sea of 70s orchestral
horns and roaming bass riffs,
the mantra is clear, and overall it
seems like Fatima is doing pretty
well for herself. The Swedish-born
singer has been making waves
in the London music scene since
moving there in 2006 and putting
together the highly anticipated
Yellow Memorieswith local London
and international djs and producers, such as fLako and Oh No.
With influences ranging from
r&b to soul to electro, what carries
through on the release is Fatimas
halting vocals. She has a classicsoul sound, inspired at times by
both Diana Rosss girl-group harmonies and newcomer Janelle
Mones snappy lyrics, but unlike
these influences, Fatimas vocals
are cool and understated, like on
the reggae-inspired Family. She
complements instead of overpowers the enduring lush horns, handclaps, and catchy electronic rhythm
sections of Eglo Records and
regular collaborator and producer
Floating Points. The moments
when her voice really shines, such
as on the soulful and moving
Talk, create some of the strongest
songs of the album, but it still
seems like she is holding back.
Fatima has what it takes to be
the next big sensation, but for
now her music is much more
fitted for a summer rooftop party
in Brooklyn than Top 40 radio.
No song onYellow Memoriesis
a standout, but it is a solid collection of pop gems, from La
Neta, on which Fatima raps/
sings, to the electronic-meetsr & b Circle. Fatima does not fit
into one moniker, be it soul star
or indie queen, but thats not

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a bad thing. She f lows effortlessly from one genre to another

through modern production that
is not stuck in 70s Soul Train.
Where she will land musically
is not clear, but she has as
many options as there are songs
onYellow Memories. H a n n a h
Steinkonpf-Frank
GIVE THIS RECORD TO: Your
cool aunt whose record collection
includes Diana Ross, Nina Simone,
and Missy Elliott.

NATION
Katie Kate

{Self Released}
Kate Finn, a.k.a. Katie Kate, is
a Seattle-based artist and selfproclaimed frontier of future
pop. Her training as a classical
musician and an electronic composer makes for compelling oscillations and musical collisions.
Kate does her own rapid-fire
rapping, occasional spoken-word
and sylph-style singing over an
amalgam of vintage analog synth,
live elements, and syncopated yet
perfectly melodious beats that
wont quit. Nation provides many
moments of pure honest-to-goodness head-bobbing music despite
its moments of incompatibility
within itself (while hip hop,
electronic, and pop have mingled
before, it is a rare occasion where
it is all mostly doneand mostly
done well, by one person).
Katie Kate exhibits all of the
braggadocio and ambition necessary for an emcee combined

with the vulnerability and self

awareness of a solo artist. She
manifests themes of figurative
walls and fences throughout
in Visions, Rushmore, and
Razorblade Fences. Silky synth
choruses and hip hop layered
over danceable beats remain her
signature style throughout the
album, with the exception of
Sadie Hawkins, in which she
delves into a surf-rock throwback
style which, although dissimilar
to the rest of her album, works
well. She repeats Im gonna Sadie Hawkins you so hard over a
twangy analog guitar that makes
me want to crash a DeLorean like
a tweaked-out Christopher Lloyd
(in a good way).
Katie Kate completes Nation with Razorblade Fences,
singing Thank you for hearing
me, look for me at the end of the
Penrose Trianglethe Penrose
Triangle being an impossible object that only exists in conceptual
geometry, a triangle where each
of the three sides appears to always be ahead of the other sides.
This image speaks volumes to
Kates precocious musical style,
forward-thinking talent, and selfawareness. Like the Penrose Triangle, you will find Nation and
Katie Kate sometimes impossible
but mostly captivating.
Robyn Caster
FACT(S): The album comes with a
60-page book of original art and
writings by Kate who also does
her own guitar, vocals, rap, beats,
and songwriting.
fa l l . 1 4

issue no.64

bitch | 79

adventures in feministory by Jess Fink

80 |

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r e s p o n s e t o p o p c u lt u r e

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