The first rule of fight club bras is that “standard” sizing is bullshit. If you paid attention to department and famous name brands that will remain nameless, you’d think there was about a four-inch range of female chest cavity sizes, and that all women could be neatly divided up into A-D cups, with a few freakish outliers wearing the dreaded DDs. Crap, just as much as the notion that “standard” “straight-size” dress sizes represent most/all women. A 30 back size is not particularly uncommon; neither is a FF cup size. Most women wear a back size that is far too large for them, and a cup that’s too small, which lets the bra move around and is a recipe for back pain, chafing, pokey underwires, worn-out straps, and the aesthetic horrors of quad boob.

Take the tastefully-lace-lined pink pill, or, if you prefer, the fierce leopard-print one, and leave all that behind.

SIZING

Ideally, fitting would be a measuring-tape-free experience. If you’re in the UK, get thee to a Bravissimo. Otherwise, I don’t really know, look for a local boutique. BOUTIQUE, not department store or giant brand name store. Get fitted – which mostly means “someone eyeballs you and brings you a pile of different sizes and styles, and tells you which fit you’re not used to is actually perfect” – and then go home and order that size and style from Brastop or Bare Necessities for a more reasonable price.

Notes on fitters: A good fitter is usually humoring you with the tape measure. It’s a prop to look clinical and objective and like they are helping you with your bra size while keeping up the pretense that neither of you are acknowledging the distasteful truth that you have breasts. Also! Sometimes people suck at their jobs, and sometimes people are dicks. If someone body-shames you in any way, or argues with you by waving a measuring tape in your face, she’s a dick; consider this your dispensation to JUST LEAVE. Don’t add to your Bra Baggage. (But, um, she isn’t responsible for the woefully limited sizing options? Or she might be new? Or she might have just closed the store like, six hours before she came back in to open even though she has been very clear about her scheduling needs for SEVERAL YEARS? So, you know, be firm about your requests, but be cool.)

That said, online ordering cold is the best option a lot of the time, and even if you are more organized than I am (you are) and will remember to send back the five out of six bras that won’t fit if you order everything and send most of them back, you still need a place to start. Chances are good that that place is not where you think it is. The rough and dirty best-guess method is:

STEP 0: Assume the position. You generally want to measure standing up, wearing your best-fitting bra. (If you need to measure sitting down, I’d advise scaling down a size, especially for your band size, though I admit I’m not entirely sure.)

STEP 1: Find your back size (band size). The number in the number/letter formulation. To do this, wrap the measuring tape straight across your back behind your breasts. Pull as tight as you can make yourself over the top of your breasts. This is, roughly, your back size. If it’s an even number, roll with that. If it’s an odd number, round up an inch.
STEP 1A: Do not add five inches. Do not add three inches. Do not multiply by the square root of pi. Do not do the hokey pokey or turn yourself around.
STEP 1B: You can do the Macarena if you want, though. It’s been long enough.

STEP 2: Cup Size. Put down the measuring tape and deal for a second. Cup size is relative to band size; our attachment to someone “BEING an X Cup” rather than “wearing an X Band Y Cup” is culturally-ingrained inept male exoticization and commodification of female reproductive orgaaaaablah blah blah, you know this. People get really hung up on this “cup size” thing that, even more than everything else in life, is meaningless without context. Let it go. Light a candle or exhale or whatever, before you measure.
STEP 2A: Measure loosely around the fullest part of your bust. Subtract your back size from that. Each inch = a cup size. A 1″ difference means you’ll probably want an A cup, 2″ is a B cup, and so forth.
STEP 2B: If you’re getting more than a 5″ difference and feeling a terror of the unknown creep through your belly, this is your moment. Stare down the existential angst, out there in the unknown territory of DD+ sizing. My boobs aren’t that big, a little voice in your mind will probably say. “Plus size” bras are only for HUGE BOOBS. I have normal-ish boobs. I probably need a C cup. C cup is normal, right? Fuck it, I’m just going to go make a grilled cheese. Quell that voice. That is the voice of Natty-lite swilling dudebros who think yelling “D CUP!!” at passers-by shows them as Stinsonesque connoseurs of the female form. That is the voice of teen magazines that convinced you, at one point in your life, that light denim frayed-hem pedal pushers were flattering. That voice is untrustworthy. Except the grilled cheese part, and even that can wait. Does the alphabet stop at the letter D? No. And neither do you, champ. Embrace it.

However, you’re going to need to be aware of the pitfalls of DD+ sizing.

As far as I can tell, DDD is not a real size. Do not trust a store that is trying to sell you or anyone else a DDD bra, or at least approach with extreme skepticism. Yeah, yeah, your mom’s BFF’s dental hygienist’s former sister-in-law swears she “is” a DDD. LET IT GO. “DDD” is lazy-retailer-speak for “most women with DD+ bazongas have never had a bra that fits anyway, so they’ll eat this shit up with a spoon.” This is an expression of the arbitrary, fictitious “D-cup”-sized chasm between “normal” and “THE GREAT BEYONDDDDDDDDD.” (Nordstrom’s may be an exception, but I remain skeptical, and in any event, if you get fitted there, you’ll have to do a little cup size conversion to shop online.)

No, you should see some letters past D. The most common sizing scale seems to go: D, DD, E, F, FF, G, GG, and so on. Letter is one size, Double Letter is the next size up, Next Letter is the next size, then Double Next Letter, except for vowels which don’t get doubled (or “I,” which sometimes gets skipped). Sometimes US retailers will call this UK sizing and UK retailers will call it US sizing. They tend to sell the same brands, though, so this is YET ANOTHER MINDFUCK. If the sizing for the bra you want doesn’t fit this pattern, look for the sizing conversion chart on the website and it’ll give you a good idea. Really, your best bet is to look at a chart for the particular bra. It’ll have letters across the top and back sizes down the sides. Then just count out the inches you calculated back in Step 2A. (If you’re bargain-basement shopping and there’s no chart, do a search for whatever the particular style name is, a la “Panache Plunge Push-Up” or “Freya Deco bra” on Figleaves or Bravissimo to check.)

All of this gets you to the starting line.

Let’s say Susie Knockers measures herself. Her Step 1 measurement is 35″ and her Step 2 measurement is 42″. Her best guess is probably going to be a 36F. Let’s be optimistic and say it usually works out for her. But in some bras, the cup fits fine, but the back is big. She needs to go down a back size, and up a cup size in order to keep the same amount of space in the cup. The cups on her 34FF bras will be roughly the same size as the cups on her 36F bras. She’ll probably have some of both sizes, which will not lead her to any bizarre boob-based identity crises, because you are not your size.

Another note: this is all in sizing I’m familiar with, that is to say, brands that are common to US and UK retailers. The principles are the same for European and Australian sizes, but obviously not in metric or…whatever the hell your weird koala shit is, Australians. This is mostly because I’m American and most familiar with that, but also because for whatever reason, UK retailers seem to have the widest size range and the best deals, and are good about shipping abroad. Practically speaking, your inch-based measurement is likely to be the most useful. Brastop has a great conversion guide for international sizing (scroll down a little).

Several online bra retailers, whatever else their issues, do an excellent virtual fitting room, and tell you how your bra should and shouldn’t fit. If you’re happier with something that’s not marketing, which is fair, check out this post by darthfox. And yes, in this case, you should listen to the experts over what you think is comfortable, because what you think is “comfortable” with a bra is actually what’s familiar, and what’s familiar, aside from being old and stretched-out, is probably the wrong size, because of the OLIGOPOLISTIC TYRANNY of fast fashion. (RIGHTEOUSNESS!!!!)

Things to check (yes, there are exceptions to all of these generalizations, but assume you’re not one):

• The band should sit straight across your back, slightly below your bust. If it pulls up a little, go down one band size (and, if your cups fit, up one cup size). If it’s really shifting and riding up your back, go down two back sizes (and up two cup sizes).
• New bras should be tight, and fit on the loosest hook. The support comes from the band, not the straps. We’re used to fattist judgment about people who are “in denial” about when it comes to any sort of numbered sizing. Always gross! But you should actively work to stomp on that line of thought while bra shopping.
• Especially as if the band of a bra is too small, you’ll know because it will FUCKING HURT, if you could even get it fastened.
• The loosest hook is the one you want because elastic stretches a bit with wear, even if you do take good care of your bras. If you have to fasten on the tighter hooks, you need a smaller band size.
• The center – “gore” – of the bra should lie more or less flat against your sternum. If it’s pushed out such that you can fit more than a finger underneath it, you need much bigger cups, and probably a smaller band size. (Technically, it should lie entirely flat, but a small bit of space can be good. If there’s any space at all, try the next cup size up, but make the judgment call between those two sizes based on comfort.)
• There should not be tissue sticking out over the cup underneath your arms. (This, after too-large back size, is the most common fitting atrocity with lingerie ads.) All of that tissue you check during your self-checks? That is BREAST TISSUE, it goes in your BRA. If it doesn’t fit in the cup, try on a bigger cup size.
• Eyeballing cup fit, fortunately, is pretty easy, aside from mental block about size. You shouldn’t have gaping or quad boob. If the material puckers but the fit is otherwise pretty good, try on the next cup size down, or a less-full style (see below). If the material puckers a lot and the gore is far away from your sternum, however, go up a couple of cup sizes, probably a few cup sizes.

SPECIFICS:

• If you want to compress, for whatever reason, I would recommend staying away from minimizers (WHAT EVEN IS THAT) and going with the best sports bras you can afford.
• Speaking of! Good sports bras, though they don’t need underwire, will still be labeled in traditional back/cup sizes. If your only options are the S/M/L sized Target-brands, get the stiffest Ultra Maxi Runner Crane Lifter Support ones and double-bag it.
• If you really want some BLAMMO cleavage for a dress, go down a cup size in a plunge bra you like. Do this with extreme caution, though. And draw giant red X’s over the cups so you don’t go around wearing it on non-dressy days like you know you will.
• If one boob is noticeably bigger than the other, fit the bigger one. Most people will adjust the right and left straps a little bit differently, so there’s a little more cup space on one side or the other. If there’s a big difference you’re self-conscious about even under clothing, there’s nothing wrong with getting a pair of gel pads to fill in for the smaller boob. (If that’s your plan, you’re probably best off with a molded bra. See below.)

STYLE

Bras are not “padded” and “unpadded.” There are padded bras, unlined bras, and lined or molded bras. Lined bras are my favorites – they offer a little more support and a nice shape, and they’re especially good for the self-conscious because they can be made seamless and also give a little bit of nipsulation. Lined bras are SRS BSNS for people, for some reason. It’s PADDING! All that PADDING! I don’t NEED more PADDING, didn’t you just tell me to wear, like, A FF CUP? Folks, no. First of all, nobody needs padding. Bra padding has never SAVED ANYONE FROM BEARS. Sometimes people like it and sometimes they don’t. More importantly! The two-millimeter-thick lining is not what makes your hypothetical 34FF boobs look bigger when you put it on. The fact that it is a bra that fits and supports you, rather than squashing your boobs down around your waist, is what makes your boobs look different. That is a question of comfort, not vanity.

Which is not me knocking vanity! Bras should be the mostest fun if you get joy out of feminine stuff, because you have space to play that you don’t with professional wear. But the self-effacement too-cool-for-school dance is completely irrelevant to whether your bra FITS.

Common styles and suggestions:

Full-Coverage: is what it sounds like. Excellent comfort, and your tricked-out lacy matched sets will have a glam-retro look like you stepped out of a Beyonce video. But purchase with caution, because it does limit what you can wear over it, and becomes virtually useless in the summertime.

Balconet: those are the square-necked kind of bras. They tend to be cut lower than full-coverage but higher than a demi, and straight across. A balconet is a good style to try if full-coverage bras wrinkle a bit at the top of the cup but otherwise fit perfectly. They’re also great for under crew-necked shirts, or when you’d like a rounded look. Style-wise, these are the bras that, when lined and fancified up a bit, look like the bra part of a corset. BA BOOM.

Demi: sounds like “half,” means “half.” That doesn’t mean they need to be super-tiny (though if you get a super-tiny bra, GOOD ON YA). What it really means is that there’s just less of it everywhere. The gore doesn’t come up so high as the balconet, and there’s not as much material along the top as full-coverage. A well-fitting demi can be worn under pretty much anything. If you can only get one bra, you probably want it to be a plain, lined, seamless demi bra that matches your skin tone as closely as possible.

Plunge: what it says on the tin. Most push-ups will also be plunge bras. Plunge bras make the shape they do by having a lot of cup construction off to the side – this is a great bra for button-downs and V-neck shirts, but not so great for other basic necklines.

Then we ice it with colors. If you’re after a non-distracting look under light colored shirts, you want to match your skin tone as closely as possible. (If you are into bold bra colors under light shirts, YOU ARE DOING GOD’S WORK, say I. This “bras exist to hide your shame-lumps and be hidden NO EXCEPTIONS” thing drives me nuts. But if you don’t like it aesthetically or don’t want to pick that battle, the issue is about blending to your skin, not the shirt.) White bras are a waste of money for everyone except people who like the color white. And, of course, be wary of “flesh tone” or “neutral” labels, because your neutral is not necessarily the same neutral as someone else’s.

Notice my lack of concern about underwire. That’s because underwire is not usually a big deal one way or the other. It gives a little bit more support, but isn’t necessary; when people think underwire is super-uncomfortable, it’s usually because they’re wearing the wrong size and anything would be super-uncomfortable.  I wouldn’t recommend, say, a no-wire unlined bra, because then you’re down not one but two parts of the bra that help with support, though they work for some people. Wireless bras are mostly a specialty for: people who are or have recently received treatment for breast cancer (increased sensitivity), people going places where they are likely to be searched (if you’re a criminal defense attorney, or if you fly often), people who are pregnant and plan to stay that way (obviously no-wires gives a little more margin for error as your body does its fabulous thing), or teens (all of the above).

Bra Care:

• Don’t wear the same bra two days in a row, because it wears out the elastic faster. One bra will last a few months before it becomes too loose to be worthwhile; two or more bras together will last well over a year.
• Don’t wash every time you wear, this also wears out the elastic. Once a week should do. Handwashing is best. “Handwashing” doesn’t mean “get out the scrubby board AS ONCE DID THE PILGRIMS,” it just means “swirl it around a soapy sink for a little while and then rinse.” It is faster than the washing machine. If you must, on extra-delicate, with each bra clasped in the back the way you would when you’re wearing it, and in a bag.
• BIG NO on the drier.

It also helps to remember that bras are not even strictly necessary. They’re a practical necessity socially, and they’re a huge improvement in comfort for a lot of us. (Exception: sports bras are necessary if you do medium-to-high impact. You can tear a tendon in your shoulder or even break a bone.) But NO, THIS IS NOT LIFE OR DEATH. If bra shopping or retailers get you into a NEEEED frame of mind, it’s probably time for a break.

Not much good takes place at slumber parties for high school kids, and this case proves the point. [Ed note: dun dun DUN!]

you expect some CRAZY SHIT, right?

T.V., M.K. and a number of their friends had sleepovers at M.K.’s house. Prior to the first sleepover, the girls bought phallic-shaped rainbow colored lollipops. During the first sleepover, the girls took a number of photographs of themselves sucking on the lollipops. In one, three girls are pictured and M.K. added the caption “Wanna suck on my cock.”

They posted these pictures, and other similarly tasteful (GET IT?) shenanigans on Facebook, though locked for their friends. When the school year rolled around, the extracurricular sturm und drang was such that the superintendent and principal of the school felt the need to take the drastic measure of suspending them from volleyball, cheerleading, and show choir for a year. (They were later out on good behavior given the opportunity to attend counseling and reduce their punishment.) They sued and won for the violation of their constitutional rights.

At least the legal reasoning is pretty cut-and-dried here. It’s pathetic that I’m relieved when pearl-clutching does not overcome the First Amendment, but that’s the way it is. But said pearl-clutching – even by the judge, who qualified the ruling with so much disapproval you can practically see him wincing – is really revealing.

I can’t bring myself to get in on the wisdom of those party games, because it boils down to the universally-acknowledged truth that kids are, in fact, pretty dumb. These kids – tenth graders, prime dumb shit age – happen to have been dumb in a way which broke no laws and did not endanger themselves or others, which puts them ahead of most adults I know.

The fact that they posted it on Facebook and Photobucket really doesn’t change my reluctance to be bothered. I’m aware that the internet never forgets, and that girls and women who go online and share something we construct as “compromising” – BASICALLY ANYTHING THAT IS ANY FUN EVER – may face negative consequence at work or school, and will more likely than not be subject to social shaming. But at the risk of stating the blatantly obvious, the answer to that isn’t in validating the mass migration to the fainting couch by guaranteeing more punishment and shaming.

Past the counterproductive nature of punishing them, there are a lot of issues at play here which I don’t mean to trivialize. I worry that there’s some level of implied (internalized?) homophobia in the idea that their kiddie-pool simulations would definitely obviously be totally absurd and hilarious and could in no way be mistaken for actual attraction. I am more than a little disturbed and saddened by the extent to which girls are taught that their sexuality is something to be viewed by others, not experienced by themselves. Those are all serious concerns, worth addressing at every level.

Unfortunately, the school district’s argument was, in full, that THEY HAVE BROUGHT DISHONOR UPON OUR HOUSE.

…the photographs were inappropriate, and that by posing for them, and posting them on the internet, the students were reflecting discredit upon the school.

Absolutely nothing else. Nothing about laws or safety, not a mention of educational environment or even school property. Just that the fact that these girls seem to have some small knowledge of and sense of humor about sex and didn’t try to hide it. And someone had to put a stop to that nonsense!

I mean, no, this isn’t the biggest deal in the world. (Money quote: one could reasonably question the wisdom of making a federal case out of a 6-game suspension from a high school volleyball schedule. One could indeed.) But that’s the worst thing about it all, that this was solely about the school district making a statement that such a relatively innocuous thing was not only worth the upheaval it apparently caused, but necessitated them getting involved and meting out public punishment and disapproval, and spending two years in court defending their finger-wagging.

There’s something deviant, transgressive, presumptively disruptive about female sexuality meeting female humor. When it’s Alison Brie or Sarah Silverman, performers for whom comedy is the goal in and of itself, it can be dismissed as absurdity. When it’s about teens recognizing on some level the ridiculousness of the role they’re expected to play, and seizing by way of humor whatever agency it affords them – learning, as kids do, something that if they are very lucky might help them toward well-rounded adult lives – people lose their shit. Because if it’s funny, it’s less scary, and if sex gets less scary for young women, it becomes that much harder to uphold all the punishment and shaming. However embarrassing the particulars of this case might be for everyone involved, I’m not convinced it’s entirely contemptible and trivial.

Also, give it up. Those giant rainbow lollipops were probably pretty funny.

Eventually, it started turning into an undeniable pattern. The creators of a particular story would be commendably thoughtful when they created female characters, on some level recognizing that traditional expectations of femininity are actually designed to squash out personality rather than make for interesting people. And I would get lulled into a false sense of security, that maybe this would be the show where I did not become an incoherent volcano of lava-hot feminist rage. But then, apparently the thundering back-patting among the writers would drown out their own words being said aloud, which resulted in the characters reveling in unchecked, unacknowledged at best and usually openly validated woman-hate. Then, sometimes, the story itself would become a fetid cesspool of misogyny, punishing those women for whatever was most fantastic about them. Or just for breathing, whatever.

Then my soul would die. I would be unable to remember why I was ever invested in the show. Then my love for the characters, usually the much-mistreated Awesome Ladies, and what is apparently my sunshiny rosy optimism, would return and I would watch a few favorite episodes, just enough for me to realize the horror of the meta-narrative. Then I’d fume about it for a week’s worth of sessions on the elliptical until I was forced to take DRASTIC MEASURES, like for example making up a word and then sitting up until 6 am ranting in a Word document. And here we are. Sorkinitis (n)., a storytelling pitfall wherein a show which began with interesting, well-rounded female characters ends up with the feminist viewer feeling like she got smacked in the face with a cold misogynist fish.

This post contains Battlestar Galactica spoilers! If you have seen Battlestar Galactica, you know why this was completely unavoidable. If you have not, I tried to keep them vague, but in any event they are contained within a section which is helpfully marked BATTLESTAR GALACTICA in big bold letters so you at least have the chance to have your heart slowly, bitterly crushed over the run of the show like the rest of us. I AM GRACIOUS LIKE THAT. (Also spoilers for: The West Wing, Angel: the Series, Chuck, and various crime procedurals, but I think most of you have seen most of these.)

Aaron Sorkin gets the dishonor of being the namesake of this disease, even though I am sorry to report he is not even the worst offender, because this really started to bother me years ago when I first watched all of The West Wing. Not to bore anyone with the obvious, but CJ Cregg is perfection. She is perfect. (Also, she is based on Dee Dee Myers, who is a real person, which is a thing you can use on terrible horrible no-good very bad days to remind yourself that the world is actually not completely bereft of awesome. You’re welcome.) Abby. Ainsley. Donna. Andy. Zoe. Ellie. Amy. All ladies who are awesome and interesting and better than anything else I had ever seen on television.

But then I started to look closer at their stories and became woefully disappointed. Other than CJ, the way to be important in the WW-verse is to be someone’s love interest or daughter. As great as they all were, they were still important because of their relationships to men; kind of a meta-Bechdel test. The women who very clearly weren’t – Mandy and, to a lesser extent Ainsley – dropped off the face of the earth no matter how little sense it made. CJ, through the overwhelming might of her awesomeness ALL SHALL LOVE HER AND DESPAIR, managed to escape this fate, but she ended up walking away from politics completely in order to pursue an inexplicable, inappropriate relationship with a Nice Guy ™ reporter who thinks professionally undermining her at every turn in front of as many of her co-workers as possible is flirting.

Ugh. But even more disturbing, Sorkin uses the show as a means by which to vent his frustrations that those mouthy bitches dare to question his Dude Feminism. The show throws down with an empowerfulized sex worker lecture Sam out of wondering if he’s unknowingly and undesirably participated in a very real, very ugly type of exploitation, and then ends with Sam congratulating himself on deciding to save her anyway. Spunky, loveable duty-minded Ainsley bravely takes a stand against (brunette, sensible-shoed, unhappy-looking, natch) women having the nerve to nicely ask that the senior staffers in the White House keep their cat-calling out of the office.

AtS has a borderline case of Sorkinitis. There are so many amazing women on AtS who differ from each other so wildly, and they really do have varied and interesting stories. But that doesn’t change the fact that the more awesome a lady is on AtS, the more likely she is to die of that foulest of black magics, pregnancy (her own or someone else’s), and given that all the ladies are awesome, they’re also ALL DEAD by the end. SERIOUSLY, THOUGH?

Chuck has terrible Sorkinitis. What the hell happened to Sarah? She used to be awesome and complicated and have emotional problems which were sad but made sense with someone who would choose her particular lifestyle. Lately her job has pretty much been to wander around puppy-eyed nagging Chuck not to go on some mission or other BECAUSE IF HE DIES, WHO WILL TEACH HER TO LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE? Retch. What the hell happened to Anna Wu? She used to be there. But, no! The Nerd Herd has to be completely composed of men who sit around venting their insecurities by sleazy and vaguely threatening ogling. How I Met Your Mother brings us the lovely Lily and the BAMF Robin, and then cannot go a single episode without body snark and/or rape jokes. Even 30 Rock is becoming this, as much as it hurts me to say. (Trigger warning on the link, kids, it’s that bad.)

Most (certainly not all but most that I can think of) crime procedurals have some mild form of Sorkinitis, but since they’re designed to avoid too much investment in ongoing storylines, it rarely gets as bad as serialized dramas. The Closer has gorgeous lovable Brenda, who is surrounded by men – seriously, she is the only woman in the main credits – who like to roll their eyes about the ex-ball-and-chain. (Of course, adding the sublime Mary McDonnell to the cast as the delightfully bitchy Sharon Raydor permanently would go a long ways toward fixing this. HEM HEM.) NCIS has more women in refrigerators than bodies in Ducky’s morgue. There’s actually a Chick Desk, for the one lady who is allowed to be alive at a time. Bones used to be an awesome showcase for quite a few awesome ladies. Remember when Bones wasn’t about BRENNAN + BOOTH 4EVA!!!!11!!? I do. It was fun. Jack McCoy had, as a rough guess, FOURTEEN THOUSAND spunky young ladies as second chair at one point or another.

Really, it’s the shows that are the most facially problematic that are least likely to suffer Sorkinitis. Mad Men is brutal to watch, but the show is consciously aware that it’s displaying widespread cultural misogyny, and does so honestly without destroying the female characters. I am aware that Dollhouse is controversial to say the least, but I love it to pieces because it tears any pretense we have of structural equality away with absolutely no hesitation, and it does so with fantastic female characters who only get more fantastic every time we see them. I don’t so much mind things being awful for great female characters as I do mind being asked to pretend that everything’s okay, because LOOK, SHE DOESN’T HAVE A BABY, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, FEMINISTS?

SORKINITIS IS A COMMON PHENOMENON, so I am fairly certain that I’ve left off shows because I haven’t seen them, or haven’t watched them consistently enough to track the progression of the issue, by all means let me know what I’ve missed. Specifically, I understand there is a recent Major Issue with Doctor Who and someone named Donna, which from what I gather seems likely to fit here; if so, please feel free to share with the class. (Also, privilege being privilege and oppression being oppression, I’d hazard a guess that something similar happens with male and female characters of color and queer characters. We could probably call it Gunn’s Disease for MOC. I’m focusing on female characters because that’s what I relate to the most, not because THIS IS THE PROOOOOOOOOOOBLEM IN MASS MEDIA, other issues are totally on topic. There are actually too few great characters with disabilities to come to a conclusion on something similar in that arena, which is similarly dispiriting.)

Battlestar Galactica has THE WORST CASE OF SORKINITIS THERE HAS EVER BEEN, particularly because it’s not just (PRETTY MUCH ALL OF THE) individual character stories that suffer from arrested development on the lady issues front, but the entire universe-building project. The rumors are true to some extent, there are so many great female characters. There are more fantastic, beautifully-drawn, complex, sympathetic female characters on Battlestar Galactica than there have been in the history of some entire networks. This show gave me my favorite character EVER, the Awesome Lady who presides with a fearsome benevolence over all Awesome Ladies and their gentleman associates, BOW BEFORE THE MIGHTY LAURA ROLSIN, and then proceeded to JIZZ ALL OVER HER FACE FOR FOUR SEASONS STRAIGHT, eventually relegating her to a miserable pod!person shell version of herself so That Man Bill Adama could wander around gibbering and drooling in Man Pain. The creation of Kara Thrace was one of those flashing beacons of brilliance that makes remakes worthwhile – the original Starbuck acted, dressed, and mainlined moonshine just like our Starbuck in every way; the one thing the re-makers altered to change the character from a derivative carbon copy of hundreds of swaggering action heroes before to something almost completely unique was to make her a woman. She is so great. Unfortunately, her story devolves from conflict to angst to UTTER PUNISHING SADISM until half of her screen time is spent crying on cue.

The fridging. Including the most appalling example of fridging I have ever seen, wherein the Man Tears were induced by the man himself boo-hooing over his own MURDERING THE FRIDGEE IN COLD BLOOD. The favoring of the stories of painfully bland men over their likeable and often fascinating spouses. Our Awesome Ladies are boned. (Also, I know I said above that I wasn’t going to focus on queer characters, but OH MY GOD, RIGHT? The gay tokenism and the awfulness of the patterns thereof in BSG are also their own post, but really, we could just change character names and move around a few words and have the basic idea.)

You should only read the following if you are braced for cold, jarring horror to seep through your soul whenever you consider the BSG universe and all of the writers and producers: these people actually thought they were creating a gender-egalitarian world. This is a similarly horrible thing about our universe: PEOPLE ACTUALLY BELIEVE THAT.

I know. There, there.

In my subversive feminist – that is to say, completely contradictory to authorial intent but fuck ‘em – reading of BSG, it’s the fascinating logical extension of our preoccupation with putting a band-aid on some forms of gender inequality while stubbornly ignoring pervasive structural sexism. All officers get called Sir! Which would be a lot more impressive if they weren’t overwhelmingly men anyway. There’s a female president! Who is never elected by THOSE INGRATES, but rather assumes power through succession and then appointment, having her presidency interrupted by three dudes (and is succeeded by a fourth dude) who take credit for her awesomeness and blame her for their fuck-ups. Men are doctors, women are nurse’s assistants who are grateful there’s someone to take the big scary operations out of their little lady-hands.

BUT BUT BUT THE COED SHOWER – not showers with doors, ONE SHOWER – surely that showcases progressiveness? Obviously not, and actually, this is the sharpest crystallization of my issue that there is. This is a society only a hair less regressive than our own, but even taken on its own merits, the constant threat of violent sexual assault under which these women live would make being forced into that position frightening enough on its own (and quite possibly traumatic for the several victims THAT WE KNOW OF floating around the main cast, edit and trigger warning, white-texted for the AWFULNESS: particularly the Athena situation, where the men who tried to assist when Thorn attempted to rape her, assuming they survived the exodus, are living on the Galactica and therefore potentially sharing those facilities; I want to heave just thinking about it end edit and warning), but the lack of alternatives is basically the admiralty saying “yeah, well SUCK IT UP.” Even if it’s just fear – and lord knows, doors do only a little to deter rapists, though a little is better than nothing – that fear is fucking real, and to disrespect it is to disrespect rape survivors, who are overwhelmingly women raped by men. To me, this looks like a thorough and valid display that is the horror show of…not invisible misogyny, but skillfully-obscured misogyny.

The misogyny lurking just under the surface of Colonial society, and the way that culture maintains the surface, is a whole other post; it’s probably its own dissertation or seven. Suffice to say, it’s there. It wasn’t consciously created, for sure, but it was built into this world and this story and the Job-like trials in store for these Awesome Ladies we all fall for so hard.

Stories are how we show our aspirations. What happens when an Awesome Lady is created, gets public attention for being as such, and then is dragged through the mud is a reflection of how we punish real-life awesome ladies. When speculative fiction, which after all is about daring to dream of other worlds, bigger and clearer and maybe even better, calls a viciously misogynist society “gender egalitarian” it’s not just an inappropriate label. It’s telling us, this is all we can hope for. That even beyond the stars, a world without misogyny is not just unlikely, but actually unimaginable.

We can say until we’re blue in the face that the right to control sexual choices – to be free from rape – is intimately tied up in the right to control one’s reproductive future.  The right to control your own body means the ability to consent or not to sex, and to give birth or not.  We can point out ad nauseum examples of people or institutions who work against reproductive freedom are also likely to tolerate or excuse sexual assault.  And, we can be very very angry and sorry when this argument is deemed too esoteric and theoretical to be convincing.  (Of course, it’s not; it’s a simple enough point that any “confusion” is generally a refusal to heed the cognitive dissonance that results from wanting to reserve power over other peoples’ bodies while not wanting to associate oneself with the ugliest results of such a social arrangement.)

But I never expected to see anti-feminists come out and say so.

It’s probably sucked into the weekend news black hole, but in case anyone’s missed it, the United States House of Representatives, with nearly all of the Republicans and a handful of Democrats, voted down the International Child Marriage Prevention Act.  Seriously.  This isn’t a wedge amendment, this isn’t an Orwellian euphemism.  The bill is exactly what it says on the tin.  The United States government stands boldly in favor of forced marriage – that is to say, the stripping of any decision-making rights before anything resembling an age of consent, denial of educational and economic opportunity, oh yes nearly-assured marital rape, and increased risk of death from pregnancy complications and HIV infection – of children.

That’s pretty fucking shameful.  Which the detractors of the bill do seem to know, because aside from the usual squawking about what amounts to a drop in the budgetary bucket, they are actually claiming “increased abortions” as an excuse for having voted against the International Child Marriage Prevention Act.  THEY VOTED AGAINST THE CHILDREN FOR THE CHILDREN, OKAY?!?!?!

It sounds completely absurd, and if you’re willing to validate that argument with a fact check, even laying aside the broader reality of higher gender equality indicators correlating with lower abortion rates, you’ll come up against the completely unsurprising truth that the bill itself never mentions abortion.  However, “abortion” is right-wing code for “anything that could conceivably break even the tiniest chip out of global patriarchy.”  Everything is abortion to these people!  Contraception?  ABORTION!  Womens’ history museum?  ABORTION!

Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you buy the lip service to the BABIEZ, but makes a whole lot more sense if you consider the right to terminate a pregnancy one of the essential elements of gender equality and therefore a fundamental human right.  Which, I sure do, and because I think women are human, I’m in favor.  It’s not particularly surprising to me when anti-feminists dodge and obfuscate around that argument.  It’s shocking when they don’t.  Whether this is because they’ve overall lost the argument over whether equality is a good thing overall, or because they’re emboldened by the popularity of thinly-veiled woman-hate, or some combination of both, I don’t pretend to know.

That’s where we get to today’s observation of International Assange Week.  If we were still in a social place where a critical mass of people openly thought it was perfectly acceptable for someone to hold someone down and forcibly rape her, or to put his dick in an unconscious person, we wouldn’t have this whole sex by surprise song and dance.  Obviously it is still an appalling level of victim-bashing and rape apologism.  But even the barest attempt to hide it?  Shows some movement towards consensus that that’s wrong.  I’m loath to say that’s good; I want to tear my hear out at how fucking insufficient that is; but the fact of the matter is that it does show some small form of change, which means that persuading people to actually be right on this issue (just like the not-total-acceptability of the YEAH, WELL, FUCK ‘EM root attitude of the the pro-forced-marriage Congressmembers)  is not actually impossible.  Some days that’s more than I ever expect to be able to think.

In this case, though, it’s not “abortion” that’s the stand-in for womens’ sexual autonomy, it’s “condoms.”  It’s a giant red herring meant to play on fears of loss of control over others.  The lies with the most traction aren’t those old chestnuts that she was asking for it, or was drunk, or even that it didn’t happen, but that it’s about condoms, which is apparently is as much a magic charm to cause complete shut-down of rational thought as the word “abortion.”  Because the fundamental right to minimize as best as possible the risks of STIs and unwanted pregnancy is just as fundamental an element of basic human dignity as is the right to refuse sex, or the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

If anything, “abortion” has stronger non-sexual connotations for people who think there should be “consequences” (read:  “punishment”) for sex, in the form of economic and social penalties that come with motherhood, especially unwed motherhood.  Condoms?  Condoms happen before/during sex.  Having condoms on hand means premeditated sex.  Garden-variety male condoms imply not just consent, but actual sharing of risk-reduction.  They swing just a little more strongly in the direction of openly negotiated consent.  It’s true that rapists use condoms, I’m not saying contraception is the same as consent, just that they’re more of an option in safe, equitable relationships.

There’s no “just” refusal to use a condom.  Contraception sabotage is a form of sexual violence, and a signal of an abusive relationship.  Conscious failure to use condoms when they’ve been agreed on is a way of violating someone’s consent boundaries and seizing power over someone else’s body.  The idea that that condoms are a hassle and an impediment to sex, and that dudes are entitled to the awesomest sex possible and can disregard them, isn’t actually that far off from the idea that sexual desire is just so powerful that men can’t help but rape.  And enough people really do have this subconsciously figured out, even if not in so many words, which is why the “broken condoms are illegal in Sweden” lie has spread.

Like abortion, condoms are just sex-and-autonomy-related enough to be a plausible, titillating distraction from issues of consent.  This isn’t just rape apologism and denialism.  It’s about chipping away at progress in sexual freedom, pushing social boundaries of consent as well as individual ones, associating steps towards equality with pain and suffering, and about making affirmative consent that much more of an inaccessible topic.

It’s nihilist.  It’s scruffy.  It’s not enjoying anything.  It’s glamorized even though it’s not particularly glamorous.

It’s depression drag.

I don’t, generally speaking, disapprove of drag on principle.  I’m actually a huge fan of queer drag and the way it interrogates gender and sexuality with its performativeness clearly marked as over the top by sheer talent and hugeness and presence.  But this isn’t thoughtful, useful drag rooted in half in social commentary and half in unabashed exuberance for a part of peformers’ selves that they’re usually forced to deny.  It’s a socially conformist affectation of some people’s social and psychological realities.  And that wouldn’t be such a big deal, except it’s a reality that is decidedly not fun, or socially rewarding, or in any way actually desirable.

I don’t know, maybe this is a region-specific thing.  But where I am, at least, it’s this subcultural contest to see who can roll one’s eyes the hardest, in an effort to show laconic disillusionment with entertainment phenomena – but such disillusionment comes with the detailed knowledge that takes active engagement with (and thus, presumably, enjoyment of) said entertainment.  It’s not about legitimate social criticism, either, though your average hipster with a conscience will couch a few good eyerolls in talking points they read on Salon.com.  There’s nothing wrong with legitimate criticism, even especially of stuff you enjoy.  I do it all the time.  But appropriating the language of genuine social criticism without actual intellectual work or engagement is a shit move, no doubt about it.  This is false detachment from things that are meant to be fun is something that depressed people can’t escape.

The constant and rapid change of favorite music and then refusal to let on that you’re enjoying them – it looks like the boredom that never ends.

Whatever.  It’s okay.  Not as good as I expected.

That’s code for hipsters, in-talk for fantastic, and terrible, and everything in between .  It’s real life for some of us.

Hipsters and hipster apologists – and I am sure a few people that really do enjoy the aesthetic – claim it’s about good stuff.  It’s about not giving a shit about a proscribed fashion script.  Except the scruffy IDGAF look is clearly not, as people who have for realsies not given a fuck for extended periods of time can attest, the actual result of not giving a fuck.  It’s a result of paying close attention to what the folks around you are doing, and going one step away from them, farther into distancing glasses and ever-more-drab shades of black and brown.

It’s about challenging gender roles, I keep hearing, except it doesn’t really.  It’s a passive acquiescence to them.  The hyper-thin aesthetic is the same as it’s been for our whole lifetimes.  That’s what the white, bone-thin beauty expectations are about – denying the reality of the physical body.  Not rejecting gender, but pretending it doesn’t exist.  And if that would lead to an actual rejection of harmful gender expectations, nobody would be more excited than I.  But it’s not that.  It’s deciding you can’t (won’t) fight it, and flying under the radar.

I mean.  American fucking Apparel.  People wouldn’t cop to liking their clothes – and in that case, I’m less inclined to blame them, because I am ashamed that I wore similar shit in a dance recital when I was eight years old and didn’t have a choice – so they pretended it was because it was socially responsible.  You know, for those poor developing world victimy victims.  Labor standards!  Responsible capitalism!  Except, no.  Deliberately misleading advertising, blatantly discriminatory hiring practices, outright sexual harassment and abuse.  That’s the opposite of corporate responsibility.  Refusal to know otherwise, when Gawker can figure that shit out, is just gross.

Whatever.  We can’t be bothered to care about discrimination when it’s right in front of us.  Suck it up.  It doesn’t matter anyway.

It’s about the pretense of wasting youth, when you can financially and emotionally afford to spend weekends in concerts and bars.

That’s what this irony bullshit is actually about.  ‘Cause, haha, it has nothing to do with the actual meaning of irony.  Oh, I don’t actually think [insert current, and often talented, artist here] is cool, I’m appropriately ashamed of what you’re presuming is my enjoyment, I’m listening to it ironically.  It’s practically pathetic.  In a lot of ways, the depression drag analysis of hipsterism is the meta-hipster bigotry.  ‘Cause, if you don’t really mean it, what’s the harm? As long as you mean it ironically.

There’s harm when it’s blatant bigotry, and there’s harm with the depression-drag angle of it.  You wanna front like the world sucks?  You’re not interested in anything?  You can’t be bothered to think about what you wear or say?  That’s nice.  Some people can’t take it off at the end of the day.  Or the end of the month, or for their whole fucking lives.  This isn’t drag as celebration or criticism or commentary.  It’s lazily appropriating, and glamorizing, the shit reality of other people’s lives.

The post isn’t particularly incisive.  The author doesn’t share any new insights into feminism, porn, or human sexuality.  But what struck me about it – what clued me in to the specifics of some of my (extremely muddled) feelings about the Porn Issue – is the extent to which it mirrors right-wing rhetoric.  The article utilizes narratives familiar to the authoritarian theocratic right in order to contextualize the development of her feelings toward pornography and argue against anti-porn feminists.  Though she’s making an argument associated with left-wing feminism, she’s utilizing the bad-faith thought processes of the radical right in order to do so.

And if you’ve got to argue like them…I’m not sure you have a good argument.

NOTE:  I am NOT saying you are a bad feminist or a bad person if you like porn or loathe it.  I don’t care if you are rubbing one out right now.  This is about people who mischaracterize the concerns of some feminists about porn in order to dismiss them out of hand, rather than engage in difficult and potentially painful questions about mainstream depictions of sexuality, particularly those which are prevalent in mainstream pornography, and the wide-ranging impact they have on sexuality and gender inequality.   This post isn’t even about my feelings about porn (which, for the curious, are mixed) or people who enjoy/don’t enjoy porn (because, IDGAF).  It’s about wanting to have an intellectually honest discussion of the issue.  I understand that there are lots of places where folks have to defend their enjoyment of porn, their discomfort with porn or both, but this isn’t one of them.

Trivialization:

She starts off explaining that she has “sympathy” for anti-porn feminists.  This is extremely condescending language.  Anti-porn feminists aren’t just wrong, having a philosophy and logic of their own by which they have created informed opinions; rather, they’re foolish, misguided, silly unliberated women who are pawns in the grips of their own oppression, in need of sympathy rather than condemnation.  I utterly loathe seeing this kind of language thrown at women of any stripe, since it’s usually followed by unconscionable dismissal of women’s arguments based on our realities.  You know, decide something for us over our objections for our own good.

Do I even need to say how this is a page out of the playbook of socially backwards rhetoric?  Women have just been deceived by profiteering abortion doctors, or misled by a “fetish” for a fair income.  Gay people aren’t evil, they’re just sick and need to be helped.  A reliable social safety net is demeaning to the poor, and they’ve been duped into thinking they need social security.  People who are uncomfortable with porn just don’t know what they’re about.  Poor deceived lady-fools *head pat.*

Actually, most if not all feminists who critique porn – which in practice seems to mean feminists whose main concern with pornography is actually with seriously objectionable bullshit in mainstream porn, and if that doesn’t mean you then I don’t know what the fuck to say to you (and yeah, there are “sex-positive” people who love their denial about that shit) – are usually looking at the social phenomenon of porn in the aggregate, and interrogating (not assuming, asking) how it may or may not reflect and/or influence society.  These are perfectly reasonable questions to ask.  These are important questions to ask.  These are questions we need to ask if we’re going to have a genuinely sex-positive society.

But, I can hear you say, maybe she doesn’t mean people who are asking questions about porn!  She just means people who are policers and shamers and haters!

I admire your optimism.

The Conversion Story:

This one’ll be familiar if you’ve paid attention to mainstream Republican politicians over the last decade.  She used to be Wrong, like the folks she is addressing.  But since then, she’s become enlightened, and now that she Knows Better, she is better, and other folks should endeavor to be more like her.

She once was lost, but now she’s found.  And you don’t get to take your sweet old time and get found on your own terms.  Do it right now, dumbass sucker bad feminist.

It’s the typical American Christian-for-votes conversion/reborn in Christ story, only, well, about the awesomeness of porn.  (She actually does go on to compare her sympathy for anti-porn feminists with “sympathy for the devil.”  I would love to be making this up.)

Of course, she was never actually like the un-Elect.  She conflates “anti-porn” with “uncomfortable with and uneasy about” porn – two very different things.  Analogy time!  I dislike seafood, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti-anyone eating fish fillet ever.  I am, however, vehemently anti-people who ignore my nausea face, wave it under my nose, and tell me I’m a retrograde dupe for not scarfing it down.  HOW IN THE SHIT-FILLED HELL IS THIS HARD?

Blah blah, accepted it but didn’t love it, blah blah one boyfriend lied and hid his secret turn-on of rape porn, she had a reaction she wouldn’t have today, blah blah blah.

Again.  This doesn’t make someone anti-porn.  She was never anti-porn.  She just wasn’t always wild about it, particularly while she was working through the bullshit that gets dumped on young women about sexuality, and it was part of what was uncomfortable about what was already a dishonest, fucked-up relationship.  Being emotionally unsure about a sexual component of one questionable relationship is NOT what anti-porn (which seems to include porn-ambivalent) feminism is about.  If you don’t agree with her, you’re just emotional.  She understands.  She was like you once.  YOU POOR THING.

Seriously?  Not everyone likes any given sex act, tool, or toy.  That is OKAY.  There are certain things that I’m not comfortable doing sexually, and if a hypothetical partner was really into them, I’d want to know because we’d probably be better off going our own separate ways or not being exclusive.  That is not shaming.  That is not anti-sex.  That is being mature and pragmatic about sexual compatibility, which I think is way more necessary to sex positivity than being someone who totally gets off to porn.

And yeah.  If someone feels uncomfortable, or is still working through their feelings about any sex act, aid, or toy, it is gross to pressure them into gleefully and publicly embracing it.  THAT INCLUDES PORN.

She extrapolates her (in her judgment) bad reaction to all folks who are uncomfortable with the idea of pornography, and then lumps together all anti-porn folks.  That’s right.  Feminists who are like “hey there is actually some chance that the group of straight men who get off to no-means-yes rape culture porn in some way overlaps with the same men who go out and rape again and again and again and that is a phenomenon worth interrogating, so that someday more people can actually be sex-positive in a safe and healthy way” are JUST LIKE Christine fucking O’Donnell.  A great deal of this argument is enabled by that perennial favorite of the anti-feminist right, the Straw Second-Waver.

The Straw Second-Waver:

I actually don’t know a lot of, if any, feminists who actually lump all porn together, or feel that it should be censored.  Okay.  Fine.  Catherine MacKinnon.  (Though when someone is willing to write off her dozens of other contributions to feminist philosophy and jurisprudence based on this particular issue, I have to admit that I do experience a hint of doubting that they’re legit in it for the feminism and not for the nekkid boobies.  There’s nothing wrong with liking nekkid boobies.  There is something wrong with deciding the availability thereof is the most important thing evar, decades of anti-rape activism be damned.)  Gail Dines, whoever the fuck she is, making her name off the PORN!/NO PORN! controversy.  But most of the more outspoken and well-known feminist thinkers of today, online and off, not so much.

This is textbook silencing.  Basing an argument against an entire group of people based on rare extremist outliers is a way to ignore legitimate critiques.  Sure, it’s cathartic.  But it’s not productive.  Which is why right-wingers LOVE the straw second-waver!  LOVE HER.  People who question MY sexual status quo are ugly hairy-legged wet blankets who are just NO FUN, therefore their arguments MUST be without merit!

If we don’t accept it from anti-feminists, we accept it from feminists….why, exactly?

Libertarianism:

This is really my main issue with the “if you don’t heart porn, lick my clit” coalition.  Their arguments usually, and often exclusively, focus on the awesomeness of a particular opportunity for a small, select group of privileged people.  It minimizes the deeply damaging effect of the status quo – that is, the mainstream experience for most people – and does so with the implication that the large number of folks who are suffering are doing so not because of systemic kyriarchal injustices, but out of ignorance, foolishness, or lack of moral fiber, and that people who abuse their privilege in this context would be just as evil in the same way no damn matter what so there is no sense in even trying.

In the case of economic and social libertarianism, of course, I’d be referring to the substantial effects of poverty; to the imbalance built into our economy to all but ensure a largely impenetrable upper-class and upper-middle-class being ignored in favor of a bootstraps ideology.  When it’s about porn, it’s about the vastly unequal, and gut-wrenchingly deep, hurt caused by sex shame.  Traditional economic libertarianism and porn libertarianism (pornitarianism?  Libertogrophy?) are about blithely claiming this mythical pure human state from back before Everything Went Wrong and was fucked up by the state/sex shame, and claiming that it is not only excusable but desirable to pretend such conditions actually exist, despite all rational evidence demonstrating that they do.  Hey, if a few people give it credit for making them rich/getting them off, IT IS ALL WORTH IT, and fuck everyone who gets left behind.  It’s their fault for letting the state/sex shame get them down.

It’s important to contextualize this in the context of libertarianism, because there’s an awful lot of important anti-capitalist shit that gets ignored by people who, though they’re genuinely in favor of dealing with sexual inequality, get sidetracked into making “anti-porn” feminists into shaming baddies.

There’s no way to say “most porn that most people use.”  It is impossible to track down all the porn in the world and categorize it as feminist/questionable/misogynist.  Can’t be done, and even if it can, I don’t wanna.  But you can look at the concept that most people have of most porn most of the time, and what their reactions to it is likely to be.  Alt porn, which is invariably held up as proof of the general awesomeness of porn, is alternative for a reason.  Even if in raw numbers most porn is alt porn – and I’d doubt that – the social construct of porn, that is, what large numbers of people are most likely to be exposed to, engage with, and base opinions on, is more in the vein of the GGW dub-con empire.  This has a real impact on many people and they do not deserve to have their feelings invalidated.  And the reason the GGW-esque crap is so successful is that it is easy to market, and easy to sell.  It is part and parcel of the anti-sex beauty myth which turns deep and desperate self-loathing into a for-profit industry.  That is in the way of people having the energy and self-esteem to stand up for themselves.  It is in the way of cultural body diversity.  It is in the way of moving from a rape culture to a yes-means-yes culture.  It is in the way of people exploring and enjoying their sexuality to the fullest.

Those of us who want to try to understand and change this cultural phenomenon are not dupes.  We are not anti-sex worker or anti-sex.  We are not anti-feminist.  We are not even necessarily anti-porn.  We’re in favor of a straw-free, rigorous, intellectually honest examination of how we can have healthy, accessible sexuality for all.  That’s not the end of the world for someone who is actually sex-positive.

It’s only the beginning.

*This was actually 80% finished a few weeks ago.  I got bored.

Trusting women is supporting each other’s decisions.

Trusting women means trusting ourselves and, when possible, each other.  I’m not a fan of the navel-gaze-y “call to action” because “we” have been Bad Liberals lately.  This is a celebration of the pro-choice movement. We organize. We tell our stories. We support with resources and with care. We stand with and behind providers of real health care services, and we name the liars for what they are.  We come together to rally, and we sit alone at our laptops and we reach out to the world with our morals and our thoughts and our stories.  We will continue on, and we will grow better and stronger.

Say what? I hear you asking. Summer! Eliza! Amy! Dichen! They thought Miracle was “heavy,” for fuck’s sake! And that’s true, but it’s not all there is to it. Both in-universe dialogue and authorial intent point firmly towards not just discontent with but outright derision of the narrow range of acceptable bodies in popular American culture, and extreme skepticism about the lies that we tell ourselves in order to choke back the poison more easily.

(cut for discussions of disordered eating, please read with self-care in mind)

The most obvious thing is the Mellie/Paul relationship. It’s true that Miracle Laurie’s presence on television, sadly, challenges what is an acceptable size for a female body to be, even if she is at most average-sized. (We don’t really guess at numbers around these parts, but seriously, she is not “heavy” or “plus-sized” by any rational definition of the terms. It’s just that, as the show knows, we’re not really working in rationality.) But there’s way, way more to it than that. Mellie is sent to Paul as a spy, who’s supposed to get close to him. She’s a femme fatale. She is purposely built to be Paul’s dream girl. What does that mean? It means a Tahmoh Penikett-lookin’ motherfucker, who undoubtedly displays all the alpha male characteristics which are supposed to cause him to want only the “hottest” – that is, most status-worthy, which in our society means thinnest – lady. But while building Paul’s dream girl from scratch, the Dollhouse thought to send November specifically, with all the more gender-conforming female Dolls around. This means that either (a) Paul has a distinguishable “type” he finds hot and consistently dates women who look like November, or (b), the Dollhouse was so confident in November’s beauty that they didn’t bother to worry that she doesn’t fit what passes for a beauty standard in LA. Either of those possibilities contains a surprisingly body-positive message.

It’s worth pointing out here that the show’s original plan for November was that she would be a Doll more often sent out on romantic engagements (rather than just the one long-term romantic engagement she ended up sent on), freeing Echo up to be action-girl. This storyline was dropped somewhere along the way, but it’s a sadly missed opportunity for an exploration of the differences between sexual attraction for its own sake, and sexualized desire based on social status. More than once, we see Echo used as a trophy date, intriguing for her sexual skills but crucial for her ability to impress bros. Women who are average-sized and of a particular shape, not unlike November (though again, to keep some semblance of reality in this conversation, she is still smaller than average, which is completely okay but important to keep in mind), are an object of bizarre fascination – reviled for not being Morally Pure, By Which We Mean Thin, but also apparently too fucking sexy to show in prime time. This only makes sense if you consider the vast discomfort we feel at a lack of sexual conformity – the idea that people should get to enjoy consensual sexual pleasure for its own sake, not to show off heterosexuality and wealth, and that therefore different folks will find a wide variety of bodies to be sexually attractive. Given that the interplay of attraction, wealth, gender, and power underpins the entire Dollhouse enterprise, this would have been an interesting comparison, and I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to see it.

However, what we ended up with was Mellie/Paul relationship, which did its own work to paint a harsh and realistic picture of the way women are expected to relate to food. A lot of viewers groaned when Mellie was always turning up with full pans of baked treats for Paul. But compare the food Mellie makes to the food Mellie actually eats. When Mellie bakes for Paul, she shows up with food she hasn’t eaten at all. It’s strictly about him, and about trying to convince him to be attracted to her. If she doesn’t do her job of being attractive to the right dude, then as far as we can tell, she doesn’t get any food. But when she’s doing it right, with Paul, she gets take-out: that is, food someone else makes, that she and Paul enjoy together. Even when she’s lying in his bed, wondering if he’ll still love her tomorrow, she languidly commands that he “fetch [her] spring rolls.” Which Paul does that night, and then cheerfully tries (fails, but tries) to make her breakfast the next morning, as a sign of care. Good, gender-conforming, accomplished women get to eat. Unsuccessful women get to cook for others. The Dollhouse, during their exploitation of November, wires her to believe that food isn’t something she gets on her own as fuel, but as a reward for a sexual job well done.

But! There is more! Mellie, how I love you so, especially when you explicitly tell the audience that this standard for women’s bodies is the evil love child of male privilege and capitalism!

Mellie: Mm-hmm. He said he didn’t see me as “a long-term investment.” Said he wanted to, uh, “dump the stock before it went public.” He talks like that. He works at a doughnut shop.

Paul: What a rick.

Mellie: Yeah. Hey, I get that I’m not the gold standard in L.A.

Paul: Please, you’re gorgeous.

It’s funny, because the doughnut shop guy is a total rick! But it’s also a glimpse into the way the writer (and this is MotS, so it’s from Joss himself) views expectations of impossible thinness from women. Rick (it doesn’t matter if he’s real or if he’s a false memory planted by the Dollhouse) is a tool for not seeing Mellie’s hotness. He talks in terms of investment – Mellie isn’t valuable for herself as an emotional and sexual being, but for her monetary potential. (Not much of a stretch to wonder if this is a commentary on the numbers on actresses’ pay scales being related to the numbers on their, erm, scales.) He wants to get rid of her before he goes public, because it’s not about actual attraction or sexual chemistry, but about social status, about what it looks like to be a dude trying to make it in the world with a girlfriend (or cast member) whose body doesn’t quite conform to Anglo upper-class thinness.

Mellie herself takes this comparison and runs with it, but in a more positive direction. She says she’s “not the gold standard in LA.” She’s acknowledging that the scale on which we gauge female beauty is situational, and that she’s in a place (specifically, the place most closely associated with the entertainment industry) where female beauty is defined as striking thinness. And she does so by referring to the gold standard, an economic concept whose time is past, suggesting either observance of or hope for positive change.

Because please. She’s gorgeous.

On this level, this little exchange couldn’t be more clearly tied into the horror of the Dollhouse as a whole – a place where people’s internal lives and histories don’t matter, just how well their bodies sell, and what the stock value of those bodies is to the rich looking for playthings. The sexual exploitation of the Dollhouse can’t happen without it.

And that’s appropriate, because even the way the Dolls speak and are treated in the Dollhouse is a quiet but constant series of stabs at diet culture. The Dolls’ platitudes cover a multitude of heartbreaking thought patterns the Dollhouse wants to keep them chained to. The most prevalent of these, of course, is “I try to be my best.” The Dolls mostly use it when they are doing the two things the House wants them to do – go on engagements, and stay marketably hot.

But what the hell does that even mean? Echo asks Sierra, and doesn’t get any sort of answer.

Fortunately, we do.  In Omega, Victor asks Saunders how he can be his best now.  The only lasting harm to Victor, who has already forgotten the attack, is the set of scars on his face. And Claire looks away, and tells him that his best is behind him, because people will look at him with pity and fear instead of desire. Granted, Claire’s a bit harsh at this point because she’s just figured out her own Activehood, but her point stands. The language of “I try to be my best,” when it comes down to it, is just as empty as “I’m doing this for me,” or “I’m taking control,” or “I’m treating myself to this yogurt.”

It’s all about appearances, about the mindless pursuit of an impossible goal. The Dolls cannot actually be their best, because any potential they had to be their genuine self-actualized best has been ripped out of their brains, and replaced with a vague, unanswerable disconcertion that they are not quite yet their best. But maybe they can be. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow they’ll be their best. But tomorrow never comes.

And who is it, among the main characters, to openly express the opinion that what’s on the outside should matter? Only the unquestionable villains. Alpha, in the midst of a murder spree. Boyd, as he straps Echo down to suck out her spine. Clyde, as he fights to bring about Rossum’s apocalypse. Judging people based on their appearances – the way we so clearly do in American society, and particularly in the entertainment industry – is, in the Dollverse, one of the very few traits consistently associated with unambiguous evil.

The vapidness of “being one’s best” as a cover for physical and psychological control extends to the Dolls’ attitude about food in general, which is disturbingly similar to that of a huge number of people, far more likely to be women. The Actives chat about food without having control over it, and this isn’t just part of their exploitation, it’s an actual cover for it. This is in storytelling terms a surprisingly accurate picture of what it’s like to live in the grips of, if not a full-blown eating disorder, then disordered attitudes towards bodies and food, and it’s a powerful metaphor for body policing as a means of social control of women in our world.

Food is, in more than one way, a means of controlling the dolls. They talk about food to fill the human hunger for connection, to create the lie for themselves (and their keepers) that they’re friends who are nice to each other. If you’ve ever worked in an environment with a lot of women who otherwise have little in common, you’re probably familiar with the body-bashing cant that fills the time in place of female bonding. I’d imagine there’s a similar masculine counterpart concerning weights and protein shakes, even if it’s les explicitly self-hating.

And because it’s such an important part of their day – the only constant they legitimately remember, the only thing they can look to in their pasts and futures, more assured than even a treatment – Dolls, compared to other subjects, know quite a bit about food. Crucially, however, they have no control over it. They could be deprived of food and not even remember it. Even the lush healthfulness of the Actives’ meals is, as we see in the DC Dollhouse, a mere side benefit of Adelle’s guilty conscience. They do not choose their mealtimes, or what they will eat. They do not get to have preferences, just placid liking for pancakes (which by amusing accident is what tips off a newly awakened Tony that “we’re all gonna die” in Needs) and salad. But they think about food. It’s what their Stepford smiling day care providers tell them every morning, and what they talk to each other about, and one of the few activities during which they can talk to each other. Food is desperately important to life in the House, but it’s a symbol of their exploitation and vulnerability.

That is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of what it’s like to live inside a head that’s disordered about food. Note, I’m not talking about someone who eats exactly what the Dolls eat, enjoys it, and then merrily rolls along to their self-actualized day, but about what it’s like to have a brain that’s just wrong about food. It’s all you can think about, even if you can’t bring yourself to eat a bite without some arbitrary “permission,” or at all. It’s not in your control. The meals you’re going to have to attend, even if they mean nothing to you, become the benchmarks of your day. And from the outside, this might look okay. People do walk into the Dollhouse and, seeing the spa-like atmosphere the Actives inhabit, and interpret it as a place of well-being and contentment. The Actives do have access to safe and varied exercise, and a healthy variety of foods, and the show doesn’t suggest that there’s anything wrong about those things – but there is something deeply sinister about a life in a world where you can’t imagine another choice.

This stuff fits the darkness of the show, but it’s heartbreakingly relevant. Disordered eating, whether it’s clinically diagnosed or thinly masked by the newest Cosmo diet, is terrible enough on its own because of the amount of suffering it causes, but the vast and unchecked scale of it makes it also a very real impediment to women’s social, political, and economic equality. “Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is an easily tractable one,” Naomi Wolf said fifteen years ago in The Beauty Myth, and she remains perhaps more right than ever to this day. The social function of dieting is to make real, live women into Actives, not physically, but mentally. We’re meant to be pliant and overly trusting, even in the face of inequality, exploitation, and abuse. We’re convinced to give up our personal agency into the hands of someone who claims to know better, even if they can’t possibly have our best interests at heart. Because, after all, we try to be our best.

Notes:

[1] Language check!  I do not mean “diet” as in considerations an individual must take into when making decisions about hir general food intake, such as “I eat a well-balanced diet” or “I watch my diet because I don’t want to exacerbate an unpleasant medical condition” or “I choose a vegetarian diet because it is best for the planet.”  This essay could not be less about those things, so please don’t derail.  What this is about is the broad-based body hatred fostered by the multi-million dollar weight loss industry under the banner of “dieting.”

[2] It’s not really relevant to the discussion of the story as it happened, but Joss has stated that he wanted to have diverse bodies in the Dollhouse, because people do after all have different fantasies, but this idea was shot down by the network.  Without sounding like a “trust Joss”-bot, this is probably a fairly reliable statement, given that FOX is not really a beacon of body-positivity on any level.

[3] Perhaps most heartwarmingly, because after all she’s the one at the center of this, is the activism of Miracle Laurie herself.  I would not blame her for all the world if she told every reporter who asked her a question about her body to fuck off – my thoughts here are quite similar to Sady Doyle’s discussion of everyone’s fascination with Christina Hendricks’ knockers – but to her great credit, Miracle has taken the opportunity granted by November’s sex symbol status to engage with body positivity as a personal cause.  While that’s not exactly my style of HAES or size acceptance, particularly given the ableism of some of her statements, it’s a laudable thing for anyone, and especially for an actress, whose career basically depends on her being hot and not calling anyone in the industry out on anything.

Which is cool.  I have no issue with that – in fact, it’s at least as important for men to see shows which feature feminist politics and characters as it is for women.  Stories, perhaps fictional more than biographical, are the way we learn how to empathize with people who aren’t like us, and can help us examine our own privilege in a way that’s far more accessible than academic texts.  And I’ve actually largely been quite pleasantly surprised by the intelligence on feminist issues shown by these reviewers.

But sometimes, and this is the exact wording I keep seeing, is praise of a character or character’s storyline which recognizes that a female character has expressed a feminist thought within the context of her greater storyline by saying that said character isn’t “reduced to being solely feminist” or “just about feminism” or other minimizing language.  And this is really problematic.  It is an incorrect interpretation of what feminism is.  On a philosophical level, this is a misunderstanding of feminist storytelling.  And when this language is used by men, even men who seem to be explicitly politically feminist, it comes across as an exercise of privilege which trivializes women’s lives and concerns.

There’s no such thing as a story that is “just” a feminist story – a story which is ONLY about a particular inequality faced by women – and has no other redeeming characteristics.  A feminist person can tell a story about a female charcter badly, for sure.  Such a story is the province of after-school specials.  But a female character who is informed by feminist creators must be more than a vehicle for telling a simple Aesop, because it is a crucial goal of feminist media to create female characters who are interesting, well-rounded, relatable people.

Even if you were, hypothetically, to say that you were going to fictionalize the struggle for, say, equal pay, and do so with two-dimensional characters, but tell the story honestly, you’re still exploring some very deep themes which are more than enough to support a story.  The thousand and one times you bite your lip and don’t say anything about the tiny indignities as well as the utter bravery it takes to say something just once, the times you doubt yourself; the cruel indifference or just plain cruelty of people making the discriminatory decision; the folks you’re fighting with and for turning against you; the very real conflict that hasn’t ended yet – these are compelling things.  In a story about a man, they’d be universal human truths.  In a story about a woman, they’re “reduced” to feminism.  That is straight-up sexism.

But more often, when someone says they don’t want to see a character “reduced” to feminism, they mean that the deliberate espousal of a feminist viewpoint is so strange, it overpowers the rest of a character’s story and presentation.  And that’s an interesting phenomenon on its own, but if reviewers are to be intellectually thorough, they should note that this is not because of poor characterization or some debasement of the feminist character, but rather, but the unfortunate fact that feminist ideals are rare in media overall, and outright taboo in some ouvres.  When I hear a character state my own personal philosophical convictions, which I have held for years, which are a huge part of my life, I still experience a jolt of surprise, no matter what else is going on in the narrative, because it is just so rare.  Unfortunately, this rarity means that characters who are feminists, or whose storylines are informed by feminism, stand out as exceptions, and feminism sticks out as the characters’ or storylines’ sole defining trait, and then because women and feminism are devalued, this is somehow a “debasement” of the character, something for her to overcome, to prove that she’s still worth our time, even if she’s a *gulp* feminist.

But that’s not how feminism works.  Feminism is the means by which female characters become three-dimensional, rather than being requisite sex object hetero-proving trophies.  When a character is explicitly a feminist, even if that is one of the most important things about her (CJ Cregg; Will in Huge), it tells the viewer things about her – she is willing to espouse an unpopular philosophy out loud; she is probably on some level critically examining her relationships to male characters; she has some philosophical scale by which to weigh the power inequalities we’re watching play out on the screen.

And a character doesn’t have to identify as a feminist to be telling a feminist story.  Take Betty Draper.  Betty Draper would not call herself a feminist, nor do contemporary feminists claim her as one of our own.  But feminism is the intellectual means by which her creators took a two-dimensional Donna Reed type character and respected her personal dignity and agency enough to interrogate what her life was really like, how she really felt.  Betty is The Feminine Mystique, distilled into one three-dimensional character whose actions and feelings – admirable and otherwise – are respected as that of an individual.  Feminist philosophy adds to a character.  Without feminism, even the best writers create at least a few of their characters (women) as flat, stereotype-laden plot devices.

Gender imbalances, whether or not they are called out by characters on the screen, or even recognized at all by the creators behind the scenes, are always present.  You cannot “reduce” a character or a storyline to feminism, any more than you can “reduce” a cup of tea to Assam leaves.  If they were there during the making, the water is changed forever.  And if not…it’s just dull.

Similarly, a story can be feminist even if it shows women in bad circumstances caused by patriarchy, as long as it acknowledges that those circumstances are structural inequalities.  Dollhouse, for example, is about the least empowered women imaginable, and in a couple dozen episodes it explored themes like rape culture, domestic violence, forced institutionalization, motherhood, body image, and reproductive choice, and came down firmly on the side of collective action for freedom for the disempowered every time.  Is Echo a feminist character?  It doesn’t matter.  Feminism was in the Dollhouse water.

And I don’t blame male reviewers for not getting these intellectual distinctions – they’re big ones, and well, dudes don’t have a whole lot of self-interested reason to put the time into learning them (even if they are honest to Bronte good guys who care and want to know).  But to use trivializing language about feminism – to imply that a character whose feminism is front and center – is to trivialize real life feminists, specifically because we are vocal about the oppression of women.  And that while that is not ever okay, it especially makes me wince coming from a guy, because then it’s not just an insult to an issue at the core my sense of morality and justice, but it’s also a reminder of how easily, still, even while discussing those comparatively few bits of art and culture explicitly containing reminders that women are people, folks are willing to dismiss a value system that fights back against those core injustices.

It isn’t “just” feminism.  If you can say that, you’ve proven my point.

This opinion is good news on a lot of levels.  For those curious, the opinion is available here; this other copy is neat because it has hyperlinks to all relevant sources (thanks @sesmithwrites on ou’s twitter feed) but it loads weirdly if at all, so, fair warning.

Even if all it dealt with was the equal parts basic and terrible dehumanization of CA LGBTQ people caused by Prop 8, this would still be a really exciting decision.  The amazing jaebi-lit has written extensively on her activism against Prop 8, and has beautifully crystallized the human rights issue:

This decision was a ruling on our humanity, on our dignity and our worth as equal human beings, and it affirmed that we are indeed people, who have the right to live and love in public. For once, we weren’t told that we had to wait a little longer–the importance of our demands was acknowledged and they were treated as a serious question of law.

I know when I’m beat, and I can’t top that.  So check that shit out.

But there is more.  This is so exciting.

Something that’s really striking to me – nnaylime and girfromjersey, I would love to hear your thoughts on this – is just how ridiculously careful a decision this is.  I mean, this is a short novel of an opinion.  Walker cautiously details his reasoning for each of his (dozens and dozens of pages of) findings of fact (to which an appeals court is bound – in lay terms, no court reviewing this decision can say that gay parents are bad for children, because of Judge Walker’s factual finding that gay parents are just as good as straight parents; common fucking sense now has to prevail in court) with detailed citations to procedural rules and case law.

Take the beautiful smackdown – gleefully highlighted by no less than Our Lady of MSNBC, Maddow Herself – of one of the two witnesses the State bothered to produce in favor of Prop 8.  Walker doesn’t just ignore Blankenship (which he might have reasonably suspected would be found to be an abuse of his discretion), he eviscerates the homophobe.  Even if you’re not a law nerd, I really recommend taking a look through the opinion if only for the sheer joy of watching bigots be stripped of all the unearned social deference they usually get when they cloak their hatred with claims of religious mandates.

It’s really telling that the state of CA didn’t really bother to put on a decent case.  Remember, though pro-bigotry groups intervened, this was basically the state being forced to defend something contrary to the judgment of the state legislature, judiciary, and attorney general.  I’m well aware that there’s no argument against equal marriage rights that could actually withstand a logical interrogation, but I also really don’t feel like defense counsel exactly worked themselves to the bone on this one.  And, I mean, if it was you worked for the state of CA and it was your job to defend Prop 8?  Would you do the same?  Or would you peace out and maybe leave a true believer to actually try, and verbally trash gay Californians in the process?  Punting a case, especially one this high-profile, isn’t something any lawyer is ever going to admit to (not least on pain of professional sanction), but it’s also…not completely philosophically indefensible here.

The walk through the legal history of marriage in CA is thorough and well-written.  There’s fairly little to say about interracial marriage bans – while I’m respectful of the thorniness of making comparisons between the social experience of being black and being gay (though in the interests of non-erasure, I’ve spoken to and read gay black folks who have been quite open about having felt commonalities between different oppressive systems), it’s really quite striking to read Loving v. VA and consider the similarities between the wild ravings of anti-equality assholes then and now.

I’m very impressed with and excited by the fact that Judge Walker is very clear on the sexist roots of traditional marriage as well as their lack of place in modern society.  (In fact, “California has eliminated all legally-mandated gender roles except the requirement that a marriage consist of one man and one woman.”  (at p 124)).  I don’t think anyone actually doubts that the freak-out over gay marriage – as far as gender essentialists are concerned, a true marriage of equals – is related to the raging misogyny of the sexphobic modern right wing.

It’s worth saying that the wonderful sentence from the ruling that’s been quoted all over town, that “[a]nimus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women…is not a proper basis on which to legislate,” isn’t even the logical outgrowth of gay rights cases which have made it up to the high court, but is barely even a paraphrase of the two crucial gay rights SCOTUS cases, Romer vs Evans and Lawrence v Texas.

And what really makes me just want to throw my arms around this decision and squeeze it tight is that it completely breaks this ridiculous charade we keep upholding, which is that “marriage” is somehow a magic word that exempts an entire legal institution from logic, reason, and constitutionality.  Decisions in favor of gay rights, which draw a fair and compelling picture of the second-class status suffered by LGB individuals (trans* folks, unfortunately, have a different and widely-ignored set of legal issues), have an unfortunate tendency to separate marriage from other basic constitutional rights.

This, though, is not supported by reason.  In fact, gay marriage bans are, in all salient respects, precisely the same as the type of law struck down in Romer, but more abhorrent.  It is a broad-based imposition on many of the ways the law touches individual lives (marriage affects visitation, inheritance, taxation, child custody) but narrowly targeted towards LGBTQ folk out of bigotry.  It’s worse because – check out p. 109 – marriage is actually a fundamental constitutional right in the US, and there’s no reason for that not to include same-sex couples.  As Boies said in this interview where he buried the FUCK out of Perkins from the FRC, you can’t just say these things any more, you have to actually support them with facts under rational and searching cross-examination – and you fucking can’t.

Another interesting thing – and this is not necessary to the holding, and I’d be shocked if it stood up on review, but it’d be PHENOM if it did, is Walker’s assertion that “gays and lesbians are the type of minority strict scrutiny was designed to protect” – this is HUGE.  This strict scrutiny EPC analysis is what lets courts strike down with swift and mighty prejudice laws targeting people based on race or ethnicity.  As he reinforces throughout the decision, there’s no need for this particular finding, as anti-gay laws are based in plain old meanness and therefore don’t even pass rational basis review (this is a really low burden for the government), but it’s an important recognition nonetheless that LGBTQ  people face social and legal discrimination, and fingers crossed, a useful tool against it somewhere down the line.

Another issue that’s really interesting is the combination of this ruling with the pair of decisions from a few weeks back which found DOMA unconstitutional.  A federal judge in MA found that because marriage is a state issue, DOMA is an overreach of federal power because it forces states to discriminate against their own citizens.  Rather than impeding marriage equality, as naysayers claimed they would, these decisions and the recent Prop 8 decision actually highlight the injustice of both marriage bans and in particular DOMA.  The reading of gay marriage bans as unconstitutional, combined with DOMA, means that the federal government is not only forcing states to act irrationally in discriminating between citizens, but forcing states (and federal agencies, like the INS) to violate fundamental constitutional rights.

There’s also a lot of talk about if or how gay marriage would harm straight couples.  Now, it’s perfectly reasonable for marriage equality advocates to do so – there’s an embarrassingly pervasive attitude of “I got mine, and you can’t have it” among what passes for “moderate” political thinkers in the US, and they’re the people who are going to have to be convinced in order to ensure that gay rights are socially, culturally, and legally respected across the board – but I find it really disappointing.  Because sometimes, equality does hurt privileged people, in that they have slightly less privilege.  To use a slightly more accessible analogy* wage equality and affordable child care, for example, do mean that somewhere, someone is making slightly less profit, but that doesn’t mean those things are wrong.  Even if it did hurt straight couples’ relationships in a few cases that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right (and make no mistake, this ruling is absolutely sound, and if it is overturned it will be based in bigotry and not in the US Constitution) to marry, that would absolutely not be an acceptable reason to continue the marriage bans.

This decision isn’t the end of the legal and political fight for LGBTQ equality.  Not by far.  But it’s a damned fine start.

CONCLUSION

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Links of general interest: