Radical feminism, I’ve heard it all before.

BENJAMIN

A while back I stumbled across a fantastic gender blog called XY Online. Though written by men and with a stated focus on ‘men, masculinities and gender politics’, the blog is decidedly pro-feminist. More than that, the blog leans towards radical feminism (or ‘second-wave’ feminism) more than any other masculinity-focused publication I’ve ever read. While the posts are addressed to men, most focus on the role of male sexuality and identity in violence against women.

I read a post about a month ago, authored by regular contributor Bill Patrick, on mail order brides and sexual slavery. Reading over Patrick’s numerous points about unequal power dynamics precluding the existence of real trust, intimacy and love in a relationship, I wondered why the whole thing felt so familiar.

It reminded me of a conversation I had ages ago with a gender studies tutor of mine about the theoretical underpinnings of radical feminism. While I identify quite strongly with radical feminism and the theory behind it, my tutor felt more aligned with poststructuralist feminist thought, or to put it crudely, ‘third-wave feminism’.

She argued that radical feminism was predictable. With such hardline stances on everything from sex, gender and sexuality to violence, power and inequality, you can apply radical feminist theory in a straightforward manner and generally know how an argument is going to go.

That is, most arguments come back to unequal power relations between men and women being largely a function of global patriarchy. Inbuilt social and political structures necessitate the existence of dominant (masculine) and subordinate (feminine) classes, a hierarchical structure manifesting as ‘gender’.

In a sense my tutor was right. She felt able to predict radical feminist arguments just as the arguments I read on XY Online feel familiar every time I read a new one.

But there’s a reasons for that: patriarchy is still around, still shit, and most people still don’t seem to think it’s a massive issue.

Prominent and highly intelligent feminists are publicly ridiculed by men and women alike (for example, appalling responses to the Gail Dines Q&A episode earlier this year). Sections of our armed forces are currently being investigated for numerous instances of sexual harassment.

And the question is still being asked: ‘is feminism irrelevant?’ Of course it bloody well isn’t.

Radical feminism is predictable because patriarchy is.

And when the consequences are sexual violence, homophobia and other inequalities, I can’t see its relevance or it predictability going away any time soon.

Why Batman isn’t really a criminologist.

JAMES

I am currently playing the new Batman game, Arkham City. As ever, the Dark Knight is stoically fighting against a seemingly endless population of hardened criminals, deranged psychopaths and violent mass murderers whose deviancy and barbarism is so beyond the pale that ideals of redemption or rehabilitation are naïve and impossible; the only appropriate course of action being to kick some ass.

Despite this futility, our noble and just hero refrains from killing these inevitably recidivist miscreants and is thus forever destined to fight them, beat them, lock them up and wait for them to escape again, triggering the whole cycle once more.

In the game, as in just about every Batman game, movie, comic etc, Batman is described as, among other things, a genius, expert scientist, prodigious martial artist and most importantly, an ‘expert in all aspects of criminology’.  Now, being a criminologist myself (albeit a currently unemployed one), I admittedly find it hard to identify a single point of commonality between Batman and myself (aside from a penchant for capes).

The word ‘criminology’ in this sense is used to suggest individual criminal profiling, in other words, understanding the criminal mind, ‘know thine enemy’ and all that. This description of criminology is about as accurate as saying Arnie’s portrayal of Mr Freeze was well-rounded, convincing and deserving of an Oscar.

In actual fact criminologists are generally derisive of attempts to pathologise criminality in this way. Further, criminologists would pretty much condemn most of the things that Batman does in the name of justice. So for the sake of clarity and the reputation of criminologists everywhere, I’ve decided to compile a list of 10 things that Batman would do if he really were a criminologist:

1. Firstly, he would recognise that vigilante forms of ‘justice’ undermine the proper functioning of the legal system and the collective notion of ‘justice’ itself. Further, vigilantism is socially harmful, targeting certain groups of (perceived) offenders unfairly, resulting in informal, unregulated and draconian sentences or outcomes. Basically, he’d stop being Batman.

2. He would support and fund (remember he’s a billionaire) criminal justice reform aimed at focusing less on policing and the punishment of street-level crime, instead turning regulatory and punitive focus to the illicit actions of corporations and governments, the effects of which are many times as harmful as small-scale crime.

3. He would regulate the media’s (he either does or could own most major media institutions) representation of crime. Rates of almost all types of crime have been steadily decreasing over the last three decades, however fear of crime has seen massive increases. Studies show the majority of the public believes that there is currently more crime occurring than ever before.

4. He would focus on crime prevention rather than relying on reactionary enforcement. Victor Fries (AKA Mr. Freeze) only commits crime in order to fund the research needed to save his terminally ill wife. As a benefactor of Gotham University, Bruce Wayne could easily fund this research indefinitely, thus removing Mr Freeze’s motivation to commit criminal acts.

5. Batman would close (or at least reform and rein in) Arkham Asylum. If Batman were a criminologist he would know that prisons don’t work; they are hostile and criminogenic environments that actually create more ‘hardened’ or ‘lifetime’ criminals. Further, the vast majority of people that enter prison are not serving life sentences and thus will re-enter the community at some stage. People with criminal records often become severely marginalised in terms of housing, employment, and welfare (especially in the U.S.).  This creates a vicious cycle of recidivism, imprisonment and (further) marginalisation.

6. He would support and fund (remember, he’s a fucking billionaire) reform for the education, welfare and healthcare systems in the U.S., the current configurations of which are major contributors to levels of criminality within communities.

7. He would rethink his traditionalist and ‘classical’ views of retributive justice and seek more conciliatory and constructive modes of justice. Who knows, maybe all the Joker needs to go legit are some IT skills from a computer course, Two-Face could do pro bono legal work for death-row inmates and Poison Ivy could get involved in environmental lobby groups. Better than prison.

8. Batman would campaign for drug law reform (as both Bruce Wayne and his symbolic alter ego) such as introducing needle exchange programs (which are currently illegal in the U.S.), especially in prisons (which are currently illegal in Australia), seek to decriminalise many illicit drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy and remove racial inequality from current drug laws.

9. Batman would be well read in Durkheim, Foucault and Garland. Thus he would recognise that crime (and its associated phenomena) is an inevitable aspect of society and in fact plays an important symbolic and social function. Batman’s actions would adhere to principles of harm minimisation, rather than punitive and draconian ideals of punishment, retribution and internal or ‘pathological’ criminality.

10. Finally, Batman would join the Occupy Wall Street movement, recognising that the inegalitarian potential of late-modern capitalism creates intractable conditions of poverty and systemic violence which in turn compound criminality in impoverished communities resulting in widespread disaffection and anomie.  Or, if it is more his style, he would beat the shit out of Wall Street stockbrokers, corporate CEOs and the Tea Party. Further he would be doing what this guy does, protecting innocent protesters from invidious police brutality.

Beasts and monsters.

JAMES

The other day at uni in the tutorials I have been running my students and I were discussing transgressive, or to borrow a Foucauldian term, ‘monstrous‘ sex. Out of the many examples discussed, the most provoking was probably bestiality— with adult consensual incest coming a close second.

The subject focuses on crime policy and I had asked whether bestiality should remain criminalised or if it is an example of the state intervening unnecessarily on our ‘liberal freedoms’? One student stated that bestiality should definitely remain illegal and further, that any sexual contact between a human and non-human animal should be considered sexual assault on the part of the person.

One of my particularly clever students, noting that by legal definition sexual assault is a crime that can only be committed against another human, asked the first student whether she thought some of the other rights we as humans take for granted, such as the right to live free from torture, from slavery and to not be murdered, should be extended to animals. The first student had enthusiastically agreed before she understood the full extent of what was implied by the question. She was essentially calling for the total criminalisation of the production, sale and consumption of meat and animal products.

I was very impressed by the second student’s ability to so quickly identify the hypocrisy inherent in many of the ways we regard and treat animals. Broadly speaking, most people would probably favour bestiality remaining criminalised and would not object to those charged with it also being charged with sexual assault. But if we grant animals the right to be free of sexual assault, isn’t it logical that they be granted the arguably more vital rights to not be enslaved, tortured and killed? For me this highlights the narrow, hypocritical and selective nature of the broad social mores we adhere to.

Foucault defines ‘monstrosity’ as existing as both impossible and forbidden; breaching both law and nature. Bestiality is considered monstrous as it is forbidden—morally shunned/repugnant—and impossible—inconceivable among ‘normal’ members of society. Though how could anyone defend an ethical position that forbids engaging in sexual acts with a certain species (motivated by both a desire to punish the actor and protect the ‘victim’) yet disregards and even advocates the large-scale enslavement, torture, slaughter and consumption of that same species.

I should note here that I write this as someone who does eat meat. Although for me this highlights how self-interested and selective our ‘morality’ really is, even if we pretend or claim it is for the betterment or protection of others. The outlawing of bestiality does not cost us anything; the outlawing of the enslavement, torture and murder of animals would deprive us of several commonplace consumable resources. Although despite such obvious conflict, these moral contradictions sit happily side-by-side in most of us.

15th century digital Tuscan utopia.

BENJAMIN

I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed II lately. The bestselling 2009 video game sees you take the role of Ezio, a 15th century Florentine assassin. The plot is predictably cheesy, but the game’s real drawcard is the freedom to explore the streets and monuments of Renaissance Florence and Venice.

In order to fund Ezio’s clandestine jaunts, the player must invest in the assassin’s Tuscan villa—the more money you put in to the villa and the village it overlooks, the more income you receive. Village infrastructure takes the form of a list of utilities the player can purchase from: a well, a mine, a church and others.

When it came time for me to start investing, my decision became informed by a complex array of political factors. Of course, a well seemed an obvious investment, but what about a mine? I decided eventually that the employment the mine would provide should outweigh the negatives of possible environmental damage.

How about a brothel? I didn’t want my village to become a place where men felt justified in abusing women; but then, these women would be more at risk if they were forced into street prostitution—a brothel would be safer. But would my earlier decision to invest in a mine leave them open to abuse from the miners? Eventually I decided prostitution would probably happen regardless, so I should give the women the safety of a brothel at least.

A church was out of the question—I wanted to run a secular village, and with the new brothel, I didn’t want any priests shaming the prostitutes. And I hadn’t even started thinking about a barracks.

I should really point out that none of these decisions has any impact on gameplay. These utilities are merely fixed-price investments that offer a given return. So, I don’t need to think about the ethical consequences of my decisions one bit.

Talking to James, it turns out similar thoughts went through his head when he played the game back around its release date. We could both think of similar times when our politics had dictated gameplay decisions even though they were completely irrelevant.

I would be lying if I said this implied disjunct between gamer political awareness and the political inconsequence of game design was universal. I’m sure most players didn’t think about this while they played Assassin’s Creed II, and some games have surprisingly nuanced politics.

However, it remains that while the goal in my mind for my villa was perhaps political equity, victory in the vast majority of games rely on the player’s accumulation of power, not a redistribution of power. We usually ‘win’ by gaining military, political, financial, physical or even intellectual power. I would love to see game design shift to take the consequences of the accumulation of power into account.

The obvious place to see that would be the society simulator, a genre that has existed in video games for a long time, beginning with SimCity way back in 1989, and continuing into the Civilisation series.

But even there, the measures of player success are usually economic or military power. In Civilisation, the more abstract goals of diplomatic and cultural victory exist, but each is still driven by growth, and judged by the extent to which the player has achieved more than rival civilisations.

Maybe this is just the way it has to be. Perhaps ‘victory-based’ gameplay needs to be assessed as a competition for power. Or maybe it will change in the future, and we’ll see society games where diversity and equity drive the player to succeed rather than power and domination.

Until that happens, I’ll retire to my 15th century Tuscan villa, where at least I know my prostitutes have decent healthcare access and freedom from religious persecution.

Love is the drug (literally).

JAMES

It’s a difficult thing to choose between two men. It’s even harder when ‘prolonged oral contact’ with one of them is likely to produce a hallucinogenic reaction in you (LSD-style) and with the other may result in one or both of you going into anaphylactic shock and dying…

This is the tricky position I find myself in right now. In case you haven’t clicked yet, my two suitors are both aliens. They are characters from Mass Effect 2, an RPG/shooter I’m playing at the moment.

The euphoria-inducing former —Thane, a member of a lizard-like species called Drell—is a quiet, meditative assassin who follows an alien religion similar to Buddhism. He is dark, fatalistic and has a very deep, very husky voice. The hyper-allergenic latter, a Turian named Garrus, is a fiercely loyal half-bird, half-crab, 6’5 tall, metallic exoskeletal-carapace covered ex-cop-turned-vigilante with hot facial scars who plays by his own rules. *sigh*. What’s a woman (my character) to do…?

Aside from the potential physical pros and cons (getting high vs. dying scarlet, swollen and frothing at the mouth) I’m not sure which one to pick. The brooding and dangerous assassin is tempting at first but really, the whole dark and dour thing gets old pretty quickly. However this could be easily countered by the fact that he is essentially an illicit substance on tap. On the other hand the race of aliens Garrus belongs to is known for its militarism and hard-edged sense of duty, in other words, vanilla as.

I should note that my choice will not effect the main outcome of the game and is essentially just me over-analysing a fairly minor part. Regardless the decision is an important one for me, thus any advice would be welcome…

Single, sane and savage.

JAMES

The other day I was catching up on Dan Savage’s Savage LoveCast for research for the subject I’m tutoring at Uni (last week’s topic was the state regulation of transgressive or problematic sex). I know some people (in the queer community) aren’t big fans of Dan. I know that Ben used to listen but found him too dismissive and often patronising, which I can see.

The reason I like him is and think what he does is so important is because he calls shit for what it is. He does this at both a broader, social level in terms of his writing and broadcasting but also at an individual level with those that call or write in. Let me elaborate.

One podcast I listened to the other day involved a young, gay guy who was 22 and was about six months into his first relationship. His boyfriend had become increasingly obsessed with his sexual history and it had gotten to the stage that he (the boyfriend) was making the caller write essays with in-depth descriptions of his past sexual encounters.

Dan’s advice in his trademark catchphrase: “Dump the motherfucker”. He went on stating the boyfriend’s behaviour is abusive, that he and it won’t change, it will only get worse and to get out while the caller was still 22 and pretty.

I can’t imagine another sex or relationship advice columnist giving such honest and directive advice. To be honest I don’t read a whole lot of it but other relationship and sex advice media seems to insist on people staying in a relationship until it becomes utterly untenable. The perpetuation of this idea that relationships are sacred and should only be left behind in the direst of circumstances is potentially quite harmful.

In his column he responded to a 16-year-old girl who was about to begin having sex with her boyfriend but he didn’t want to use condoms and was also opposed to abortion. She was very sure in her mind that if she became pregnant she would want an abortion but was unsure if her boyfriend would ‘let’ her get one. Again, same advice.

It seems to me that often there is this pressure to not only always give the benefit of the doubt and second chances but to put your own health and well-being in jeopardy for the sake of the relationship’s continuation.

Dan claims to be the only sex/relationships advice columnist that admits some people do end up alone and that this is ok. Further, he claims that it is better to be single by choice than stuck in a shitty, abusive or even just boring relationship. Admittedly in the sentence above I initially wrote ‘alone’ and then changed it to ‘single’.  ‘Alone’ in this sense implies that a committed (read: monogamous) relationship is the sole, or at the very least, the most important source of companionship, connection and happiness that we have access to.

This is a common belief in our society that I, and most people I know, can’t help but adhere to. I’m not saying that people should wait around until the perfect relationship comes along, or that successful relationships don’t require some sacrifices or concessions, but don’t put up with a shit one just because you can’t see a better one on the horizon.

Lads for dads.

BENJAMIN & JAMES

The other day Ben was waiting for James outside a hipster greengrocer in Fitzroy when, in the space of 60 seconds, three hot dads walked past. One in particular was an absolute stud.

His tight jeans traced a nice bum, no doubt toned from all that pram pushing. His maintained yet manly beard was surely the result of a morning ritual that left the kids mystified and his wife grumpy at the bathroom’s occupation. His fatherly stride seemed to say wholesome, authoritative and responsible.

When James emerged with an armful of kale and gluten-free sourdough, Ben shared his mystifying experience.

James responded at once that he was actually in the market for a gay dad—someone rugged and friendly, as at ease with a pre-dawn rimjob as he was with packing a school lunchbox.

This realisation at our shared fetish raised the question: why would we be sexually attracted to a normative heterosexual ideal like fatherhood?

This is far from the only such ideal often fetishised by gay men. A friend recently told James he should give a guy he’d been on a decidedly dull date with a second chance because: ‘He’s got a job. Like, a proper one.’

It isn’t hard to make the leap from there to ‘the forbidden’ as the root of the fetish. Do we fetishise these heterosexual ideals precisely because we aren’t sure we can ever have them? Does our exclusion from heteronormative society cause the sexual idolatry of anything representing what men are ‘supposed’ to be?

We realised our conversation had gone from titillating to depressing in a very short space of time. Putting our dubious desires down for the moment to products of heteronormativity, we stopped gaping at daddies and turned for our respective homes.

Until we find the dad of our dreams, we can always settle for the occasional role-play, and pictures of someone else’s kids in our wallets.

Žižek and adaptive patriarchy.

JAMES

Monday night’s Q&A was a shit-storm of interesting ideas, crazy hand gestures, journalistic, political and sociological powerhouses, and a NewsCorp journalist who was predictably ‘big L’ Liberal. Before I became entirely hypnotised by Kate Adie’s Maggie Smith-esque regality, Jon Ronson’s Ben Elton-style cheekiness, Mona Elatahawy’s swearing and Slavoj Žižek’s apoplectic presence I did manage to catch a little of what was being said.

A small comment by Žižek in response to the first question asked was inevitably lost in the maddening cacophony that followed. The question regarded the increasing prevalence of ‘polyamory’ occurring in an ever-more ‘sexually liberated’ modern social context. Most of other panellists, save Greg Sheridan, responded with standard ‘as long as you’re honest and not out to hurt anyone it’s fine’ answers but Žižek, capricious as ever, responded saying that where once people were ashamed and wary of sexual desire, which was highly regulated and treated almost as a necessary evil, now people experience the opposite shame, that they are not sexually ‘liberated’ enough. Where once a stern and overbearing morality oversaw the proper conditions and expressions of sex, it is now amorality—characterised ostensibly by a near total lack of regulation—that appears to be the governing rule.

What I think Žižek aptly identifies here was firstly, the corrective power of shame, particularly in relation to sex, and secondly, perhaps inadvertently, the adaptive nature of patriarchy.  That is, once the morally rigid standards (regarding the family, monogamy and women’s roles etc.) that regulated sexual expression favoured the sexualities of heterosexual men, subjugated the sexualities of women and sought to either dismiss or violently destroy non-normative sexualities. (I should note that I am talking specifically about the 20^th century here, there is a lot of writing on the falsely perceived sexual conservatism believed to characterise the Victorian era). In the wake of phenomena such as the second-wave feminist movement, increased social liberalism, neo-liberal capitalism and a move away from ‘communities-of-fate’ toward ‘communities-of-choice’ (just to name a few), conservative forms of sexual regulation were no longer relevant nor binding—legally or morally—in the modern era. Thus new and extraneous forms of sex and sexual expression are born and are to an extent normalised, creating a cumulative social net shift toward more liberal sexual and social ideologies. Somewhat cynically I would claim that patriarchy, rather than being tossed into the junk pile with the other archaic standards and norms, instead recognises these shifts and adapts to a model of social liberalism where choice, sexual freedom and permissiveness are valued over explicitly moral or regulatory discourses.

Patriarchy adapts to and arguably manipulates this (constantly) revised set of social norms in a way that ensures the broader social system continues to favour it. With sexual freedom and choice currently highly valued, the ‘pornification’ of sexuality and the rise of ‘raunch culture’ become the new mediums through which patriarchy asserts itself and remains the consistently favoured and adhered to set of social and sexual norms. Thus, 50 years ago an individual may have felt shame at the prospect of unrestrained or unregulated sexual expression.  Today an individual may feel similar shame for not embracing (and thus conforming to new patriarchal norms) ostensibly unregulated and ‘liberated’ forms of sexuality that, in the disguise of ‘freedom’, continue to favour heterosexuality and men, subjugate women and dismiss non-heterosexuals. I can’t be sure whether Žižek would necessarily agree with my analysis but either way, I’d love to see him talk about it.

Women, the ADF, and nothing to say here.

BENJAMIN

As you’ve probably heard, women in the Australian Defence Force are allowed to take on all combat roles now. The move has been handled well by the ADF, and official comments and interviews have all come across as measured and logical. After all, it makes sense. I wouldn’t have thought there was much to say about the issue.

But apparently there is. Retired Major General Jim Molan has ranted to anyone who will listen (generally that means the ABC) about how women killing people in hand-to-hand combat represents a strategic x-factor that could result in the collapse of the military.

With about as little sense, academic and author Clive Hamilton published a piece in The Age about ‘the rotting corpse of feminism’, and how the fight for equality leads to women subjugating themselves to patriarchy. At least, that’s what he says, before proceeding to talk about women’s strengths as homemakers.

These attacks put the ADF spokespeople in the bizarre position of having to defend a perfectly straightforward decision against accusations they are radical lefties bent on undermining the social order. As much as I enjoy the irony, it’s hard not to get a bit down about old white men proclaiming the death of feminism.