=:o
the question reminds me of Imperial Teen lyrics:
I've got a can of shit
can you open it?
I always make my bed
Please pick on her instead
Rather than having a fundamental disagreement over boxes, you've illustrated my point. Your perception of newness and uniqueness depends on the existence of boxes (categories, etc). If you eliminated those categories, etc., would the joy of the new and unique be there to be discovered? =:o
(in sociology we talk about individuation (not Jung's version!). Individuation (the exp. of being a unique individual) depends on a complex society. Society makes us individuals! In this context, individualism becomes our religion: We are not merely _allowed_ to be individuals, we _must_ be individuals. To suggest otherwise would probably land you in the nearest psych ward!)
You can think of these boxes in another way, perhaps: People make sex/sexuality/gender, but not in any way they please.
In the article this is revealed in at least a couple places:
"This school of bois tends to adhere to almost cartoonishly unreconstructed fifties gender roles, but, obviously, they _REPOSITION_ (emph. added) themselves as the ones who wear the pants."
and "Is there something subversive about playing the role of the doting wife when your husband is a _WOMAN_ (emphasis added)?"
I don't know if I want to stamp it with the sexy, kewl "subversive," but clearly there is something different and not just b/c the boi doesn't have a cock to be sucked.
The boi, even if she wore a cock and two balls on a necklace would not automatically get a bigger paycheck. :) It may be that the power differential that results from very different incomes is eliminated, which certainly changes the dynamics.
Compare with the YUP school district my son attends where 98% are married couples. The median income for men is $65k, for women it is 31K, just 2K more than it is for women in the poorest neighborhood in this county. A doting wife in YUPville is going to experience her dotage in a rather different way, I suspect, than a woman doting on a woman who makes a similar income. (Again, no one's saying this = liberation.)
As Deb said early on, "except she's a boi" watching a stripper. (Again, no one's saying this = liberation.)
An example: I know a FTM who once she started taking testosterone, was amazed at the amount of male privilege she experienced. She hadn't been much of a feminist before, but she's becoming one really fast. And one thing that she found incredibly liberating (_I'm_ not saying this = liberation!) was that she could go to a sports bar for lunch (she's a sales rep for a liquor company), sit at the bar, eat lunch, talk sports and no one propositioned her, looked at her like she doesn't belong, looked her up and down checking her out. What an entirely different experience!
My point about Justin's/a hypothetical lurker's fantasy of your beauty and about Sex and the City had to do with your claim that the objectification took place on the ground of an already existing mutual attraction.
Charlotte's character did not, initially, desire Harry in the way he desired her. She refused to recognize his full desire, giving him only sex.
Similarly, in your dancing, you refuse to recognize the gaze of a desiring (lecherous) subject, you aren't aroused by it, you aren't flattered by it. This, btw, is how M goes about her work as a stripper and this is what she finds empowering about it. (_I'm_ not saying this = liberation!)
So my question about Justin's/ a lurker's gaze was a concrete experience I know you've had. I mean, obviously, you've been somewhere, minding your own business, when all of a sudden, you look up and see someone gazing at you in a way you know indicates her/his arousal. That gaze may just ignite an interest where it hadn't existed before. With someone you don't even "know" -- you don't yet have the ability to say that you desire the entirety of his or her subjectivity. You are responding to his or her desire.
Or, you might not, so you refuse to return the gaze, refusing consent to your objectification.
As Deb said, strippers may enjoy inviting the gaze of men who they do not know and don't care to know. That's certainly the case for my friend, M. As Deb pointed out, she's not necessarily a victim who views the desiring gaze as unwelcome.
M, for instance, enjoys being desired with no expectation that she return the desirous gaze. She controls the situation--with the help of the club with its bouncers and rules and laws regulating what goes on between strippers and patrons. She enjoys dancing even more because she doesn't _have to_ desire them and, if she does anything that indicates that she might, she views herself as giving a gift to those particular men who she thinks have earned it. Earned it, interestingly enough, outside of the cash nexus.
M is withholding, not her sexual attractiveness, but her _desire_, her recognition of the Other as desiring subject. Is that objectifying them? What is it when you refuse to recognize the Other's desire? Conventionally, a woman is called a cocktease. And yet, you aren't one in a strip club because the rule is, already, that you aren't expected to give sex in exchange for the desiring gaze. Het men who withhold their commitment (maybe Bryan can speak to the phenom among Gays) are called bachelors. heh! My mom calls them drive by romancers.
And this is also interesting because it is connected to the way that _some_ of the bois appropriate a masculinist gender presentation: ho's down, bro's up. They are bois who are desired by other women but who withhold their desire (various levels of commitment) and seem to get off on it. (Remember, no one says that any of this IS liberation.) Do hetmen get off on withholding their commitment? Do they articulate it in quite this way?
In grad school, our dept. chair supervised the Sr. thesis of soc majors. Among them was a brilliant, very attractive woman from a well-to-do family. She was curious about (and offended, threatened, disgusted by) her fiance's interest strip clubs. One day, she tagged along with the frat boys to see what the fuss was about. She ended up writing her thesis on it, as a participant-observation, and also became a stripper.
What she saw when she went to the club was something she perceived as empowering for her. As a beautiful woman, she frequently had to deal with the desirous gaze of men, but in public spaces where she didn't control (or felt she didn't control) the scene:
--she would be whistled at, propositioned, leered at, etc when she wasn't
inviting the behavior. --when propositioned by people she didn't desire back she didn't reciprocate,
she was called "ice queen" "bitch" "stuck up". --she often felt pressured to indicate at least appreciation for the desirous
gazes she rec'd from men, that somehow she must please them by recognizing
their desire or else be less of a woman. --she sometimes felt that she had to disavow her sexuality and attractiveness
in order to avoid these situations.
etc.
Stripping, she said, was a way for her to be sexual and attractive, but without having to desire them back. She could actually enjoy and display her sexuality and beauty in the club and didn't have to deal with anyone touching her or engaging in anything more unless she allowed it to happen.
SATC. I was using that scene to explore the way Charlotte's character has power in a similar sort of way, only she has chosen to return the desire of a man she didn't originally desire. Yet, her character is aware of this as a kind of gift--Charlotte is an r-rated version of the male fantasy of being desired by a woman more beautiful than they are. And yet, what this particular scene in SATC revealed was that Charlotte's character expects appreciation for her gift: she expected that Harry appreciate her returning his desire. There is an imbalance of power in what appears to be a ground of mutual attraction. Harry had believed she didn't think like that. when a dispute arose, however, Charlotte revealed that she did.
Charlotte's character, though, wants to imagine she's giving Harry a gift. But, Harry can't perceive it as a gift because to do so would mean that he'd have to acknowledge the power differential.
(I would go on to argue that all relationships can be understood as a kind of gift giving that depends on and is shaped by the larger society's boxes. The most intense arguments and usually what precipitates the dissolution of a relationship is when the gifts that each person gives are not experienced as gifts. That's another post.)
I was thinking this for a lot of different reasons, but one was trying to think through the way the withholding bachelor bois are unlike hetmen, even though it appears that they are simply acting out.
Hetmen who withhold their commitment sometimes (often?) point to what they believe is a power differential: since women have the power to give or not give them sex, they see women as having more power; they see themselves victimized by having to exchange things they don't want to give in order to get the sex.
Is this what's going on for the bachelor bois?
Another thing, of course, is that bachelor bois disrupt the explanation for this supposed power differential: men naturally want more sex than women.
Kelley