I’m Just Not Impressed

So, a while ago, when at GameSpot looking for some new games for the Wii, in among the cartoony Marios and rampaging rabbits and sports games, I spotted one that looked like it might appeal to the part of me that was amused for a little while by Silent Hill a few years ago. It had the dark creepy cover and the description of a mystery that sort of needed to be solved and as a bonus, could be played as a two player game, so my husband could get in on the action.

And so it was that last night we decided to check out Obscure: The Aftermath. The best thing I can say about this game is that I am sure we can trade it in at our local GameStop for some credit toward MarioCart or something for the kid’s upcoming birthday. That or it might net something good on Swaptree. 

Now, I’m usually more of a non-violent adventure gamer – I love the creepy, like The Lost Crown, and absolutely adore The Longest Journey, but I have no problem with video game violence, so long as it makes sense. There is no way in which this applies to Obscure. The interface is awkward, the gameplay is so dark that it was difficult to see details even in a dark room on a large projection screen and the characters are completely unlikable and are the type of people I tried hard to avoid in college the first time around. The first “challenge” is to make your way through a long bloody hallway and then fight some beasts, after which the male character wakes up in a bathroom stall vomiting. Sexy. The second challenge involves a different couple trying to sneak into a frat party. I have no idea what happens after that, because we couldn’t take it any more.

Because, here’s the biggest issue I take with the game – I’m perfectly happy to wile away a few hours playing something vapid, just as I occasionally enjoy some truly horrible movies or train wrecks of television programs – but I quickly tire of being asked to be an active participant in “entertainment” that regularly actively insults me. It is hardly news that the video game industry is not exactly female friendly, and the fact that the female “characters” were large breasted, scantily clad and largely accessories was not entirely unexpected, but as gameplay went on, it became increasingly clear that the makers of this game have apparently given no consideration to the fact that non-male individuals might ever consider playing this game.

We hadn’t even started gameplay when I turned to my husband and noted, “Evidently women aren’t supposed to play this game,” pointing to the onscreen instructions advising that if the second player wanted to leave or join the game “he” needed to press 2 on “his” remote. Non gender neutral language FTW. As the game starts, we look around the male protagonist’s (player 1) dorm room and learn that he has lots of sex with lots of different women in his bed – one of his favorite places. His girlfriend (player 2) teases him about it, but sounds bitter at his conquests and he makes her feel better by saying she’s “the only one who stuck around”. Well, that’s flattering. It is quickly obvious that the second player is almost entirely superfluous. She – and the parts we played were always heterosexual couples with the male as the leader – follows her boyfriend around. And that’s about it. Player 2 cannot do anything without being right next to player1 and gets dragged from frame to frame at player 1’s whim. (This is a design issue – lots of “two player” games don’t have much for the second player to do, but it’s particularly salient here.)

The men’s dorm is filled with notes referencing the sexual prowess of its residents. J kept noting “It’s persistent” every time the game would reinforce it’s message that manliness is next to fucking anything that comes within a few hundred feet. The notes were even worse in the women’s dorm, which the protagonist boyfriend enters through an open window later in the game – one recounts male-on-male sexual assault as part of an apology to the perpetrator’s girlfriend. Another is a notice that reads like a flier about a lost puppy, except that the creature that was “lost” is the note writer’s girlfriend, who’s name he does not know. Charming.

The second couple we meet is a beefy athletic dude and his buxum blonde girlfriend. They want to go to a frat party. Wheee! So they try to sneak in. So they wander around until they find a big box to climb on. At which point, the girlfriend declares “You move this. You’re big and strong and I’m just a weak girl.” Slightly paraphrased, but you get the idea. That, my friends, was when I was done and we switched to Lego Batman.

I can put up with a lot in the name of entertainment. But fail to be entertaining, while being actively, seemingly intentionally offensive? Well, the name of this blog has rarely been so appropriate.

…with love and hate and passions just like mine…(The Smiths)

It is slightly odd to me that this blog suddenly has visibility of a sort because of a dashed off post on an issue that I’ve not really thought much about – the living embodiment of ”the personal is the political” I suppose. Part of me feels slightly uncomfortable that 150 plus people have read my posts over the past week due to a post that in some ways trades on the identity and experience of an ex-boyfriend who I’ve had only the most minimal contact with in over 10 years. But it was also my experience. Part of how we dismantle privilege is by relating problems to our own experience and working past that filter and acknowledging how things are different for us as privileged persons. I can relate to the invisible nature of sexuality for the disabled because I lived it for a time as the privileged partner of a person with a disability. I’ve experienced first hand the nature of most discussions of prejudice and privilege – that my past experience as the able bodied partner of a person with a disability counts for more in these discussions than the experience of people with disabilities themselves.

One of the bigger picture results of my reinvesting myself with feminism over the past few years is a greater awareness of other intersecting issues. One of these that comes up with less frequency than you might think is ableism and disability rights. And that right there is part of the problem I see with the rhetoric around #amazonfail and the aftermath. Honestly, at this point, my issues are less with Amazon, and more with how the blogosphere, the twitterverse, the LJ-whatever and the mainstream media cast the entire issue.

Some of the most progressive venues I know – places that usually get almost everything right – completely ignored the disability angle of Amazon’s coding error, or mentioned it only in a laundry list of categories, never touching on the fact that there was a real impact of these derankings. And on the one hand, I sort of understand. Out of hundreds of books that were deranked on Amazon, a very small handful dealt with disability. The vast majority – and most of the most egregious examples of non-sexual materials – involved the queer community. That outrage is completely understandable, particularly because so much of the material was coded as sexually explicit because of its gayness – as if sex were the sole defining factor in any non-heterosexual/non-cisgendered context. What I’m no so sure about is why that is somehow an excuse for ignoring the complete erasure of the fact that people with disabilities can have sexualitywas not also worthy of commentary. It should not be a contest between oppressions – we can be outraged about and discuss both. To not even see the issue is a huge exercise in privilege.

It’s not just LGBTQ and feminist related materials. Disability and sex related materialshave also been de-ranked, it seems. 

Can’t say I’m surprised, to be honest. Some of the worst street harassment I ever encountered related to sexuality was when I was dating a male wheelchair user in college. It didn’t help that we were both visibly freaky and arguably genderbending to a degree. But openly sexual and visibly disabled people are threatening. A man in a wheelchair with an obvious girlfriend is a threat to the widespread infantalism of people with disabilities. It is a threat to the idea that appearance and visible ability is valued. The idea that a chick with big tits might be interested in a guy who can’t walk is a threat to patriarchy (I mean, can he even, like, have, you know, sex?). Likewise, the idea that an able-bodied man might be interested in a woman who is “deformed” and imperfect. If we can accept people regardless of their perceived (and easily perceivable) “flaws”, then maybe we have to accept fat people and non-white people and others that don’t fit the societal ideal of beauty and mateability.

And heavens forfend that a person with a disability dare to express any sort of non-heterosexual non-vanilla sexual desires. Even if American society can wrap it’s little brain around the idea of a nice hetero relationship involving some sort of tragic heroic sacrifice on the part of the able-bodied partner, anything beyond that is cause for collective panic.

So, yeah. Count me among the not surprised that a search for sex and disability on Amazon turns up more results about developmental disability in sex offenders than it does guides to help people with disabilities have sex lives.

I’ve been blogging elsewhere about my desire to lose weight.  At least that’s what it started out as.  Along the way, this blogging, in the best possible way, has forced me to examine in more detail my attitudes about food and size and acceptance.

While I certainly applaud the concept of fat acceptance, I’ve always been more of the “it is okay for other people, but I still need to loose 20 lbs” school of thought.  But one of the things that trying to blog consistently about diet and exercise has helped me realize is that I do feel measurably better – both physically and mentally – if I engage in regular moderate exercise.  I may have exercise specific aches and pains, but I have fewer headaches and less back and knee pain and just feel better than I do when I’m sluggish.  Likewise, I do feel better when I try to make “better choices” in the “have a grapefruit instead of a piece of cheese” vein.   But you know what turns me into a cranky screaming harpy?  Tracking my damn food intake and feeling guilty about eating things that I enjoy.

So, I say no.  I refuse to feel guilty about food.  I refuse to think constantly about what I “can” or “should” eat.  I would rather have to buy whole new wardrobes in sizes 16 and 18 and beyond than to keep beating myself up about the fact that I want to eat dessert or am sick of Lean Cuisines and turkey.  Do I want to eat food that is good for me?  Absolutely.  Should we be having less McDonald’s and pizza at my house?  Absolutely.  But I refuse to feel guilty for liking a cheeseburger better than a grilled chicken sandwich or worse.  I refuse to talk about having a cookie as “being bad.”  I refuse to feign sheepish guilt at getting the damn onion rings.  I refuse to turn away the dessert menu just because I had a fruity cocktail before dinner.

Forget the new year’s resolution to lose weight.  I will eat what I want and I will keep exercising.  If the scale moves or the waist shrinks, great.  If it doesn’t, great too.  

*Title inspired in part by this post by fillyjonk at Shapely Prose.

Yes, still here.  Just…well, mostly just dealing with the holidays and letting my brain go a little after the election.  Busy both at home and at work doesn’t leave much time for online blathering.

There is stuff in my mental pipeline and tons of things I could rehash about the past couple of months.  But instead, I’ll just say Happy New Year.  Let’s start fresh.

There are days we wish for and days we dream.
All we hold in our hands like pearls.
There are lines that we ponder and lines we scream.
All we hold in our hands like jewels.
There are places we visit and places we live.
All we hold in our hands like gold.
There are dreams that we savor and dreams that we fear.
All we hold in our hands like silver.
All we hold in our hands forever.

So, I just found out about Write to Marry Day while reading Shakesville, which is a blog I clearly should have been reading for ages, but there you go.

Anyway.  Gay marriage.  Some might wonder why a woman in a monogamous heterosexual marriage even cares that much about the right of women to marry other women and men to marry other men.  After all, I can do what I want to do, clearly.

But, of course, nothing ever is, nor should it be that simple.  First off, marriage – I never thought I would get married.  Well, yes, when I was little I’m sure I did, but I don’t really remember having the stereotypical little-girl-fluffy-white-dress sort of fantasies that supposedly all little wannabe princesses have as wee bairns.  From a pretty early age I figured I would be the happy old maiden aunt who could be really awesomely cool with my step-siblings kids and then could go off to my fantastic artsy loft apartment with my fantastic artsy friends.  I was about 15 I think when women started appearing in the relationship part of those fantasies with almost the same regularity as men.  So, wonderful marriage to a man aside, I also know that but for the chance of meeting him before I met a wonderful woman, I could be directly affected.

But I still partake of and engage in and have oodles of heterosexual privilege, regardless of which onscreen personalities make me short of breath and there is something that smacks of simple platitudes for someone so publicly heterosexual to try to empathize with the situation of couples who have wanted what I have for decades.

Which brings me to another thought, which is about the term “marriage” itself.  Now there is a train of thought – which I’ve flirted with from time to time myself – which is the idea of “why not just civil unions?”   And in theory, I could support the idea of marriage as a solely religious term and civil union as the term for what we now think of as a civil marriage ceremony but for the fact is that words have power and meaning beyond what the dictionary definition might be.

“Marriage” as a concept in U.S. culture is loaded with social meaning that transcends the religious meaning for many people. I understand that the religious aspect of being “joined before god” is very important to many religions and that the concept of mated partnership is a vital part of many world religions. And while the concept of marriage may have begun as a religious ceremony (something which I doubt, personally, but I don’t have enough background in ancient cultures to really know for sure), as soon as it became something recognized and enforced by the state, it ceased to be something purely religious.

The importance of my marriage – of being joined to my husband as family, with all of the legal and social recognitions – is not remotely lessened to me because the ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace in a secular castle. My commitment to my husband of 11 years is not less because we do not believe that we were joined by “god”.

I’m completely fine with marriage meaning different things to different people – and goodness knows, I completely understand why some people do not want to be married/otherwise-legally-unioned because of what the term means to them. But I don’t want to cede the term “marriage” to bigots.

I remember a rousing debate engagement twelve years ago when we announced our engagement in an on line community that my husband and I frequented at the time in which someone I had considered something of a good friend had an extraordinarily difficult time understanding why I would want to enter into a legally binding socially endorsed relationship like a marriage, particularly at my then relatively tender age.

It’s because marriage has meaning.  A marriage becomes something larger than just the individuals involved.  And there is absolutely no justification I can think of for why any adult who wants to should not be able to marry any other adult who wishes to enter into that relationship.

I can think of a multitude of legal reasons why not acknowledging same sex marriages is a violation of the U.S. Constitution – starting with the Equal Protection and Full Faith and Credit clauses.  But really, what it comes down to is basic human rights – the right of people to love whomever they love and to freely enter into whatever relationships meet their needs.

Thanks to a discussion elsewhere on-line, I’ve been thinking on The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolfe, which has gotten me thinking on my relationship to and evolution within feminism.

I first read this book in 1992 – what must have been the first paperback edition – for an introductory Women’s Studies class at the University of Illinois.  I confess that at the time, I was not too keen on the book.  It – like much of what was taught in that particular class – felt too didactic.  Too much like victimization.  I had been raised in a home where feminism was almost taken for granted.  I liked sex (or the idea of it, anyway).  I liked black eyeliner and coloring my hair and wearing lipstick the color of a bruise.  I liked using a fake id to get into bars and clubs wearing clothing that would barely cause an eye raise in today’s youth culture, but which felt daring at the time.  I liked playing with standards of beauty and subverting them to my will.  Arguably, I’m still at it, but not in quite the same way.

I left what I thought of as “mainstream feminism” for a long while because I felt judged by the young women in that particular class and I felt silenced by a teaching assistant who I didn’t think appreciated my “difference”.  Looking back on my mindset at the time, it was I who was being closeminded and chafing at being required to look at the world through a more critical lens.  I felt personally attacked where really, there was the need to acknowledge that the world was larger than my experience.

Likewise, as time went on, I felt stifled, even betrayed, by a campus “feminism” that I wanted to be more flexible and critical in its dicta.  I cringed as WS majors declared that the subject of a diary of life in feudal Japanshould have left her husband – completely ignoring the social strictures of the culture and the time.  By the time I was in law school, I felt stuck between the second and third waves, both of which held appeal,  but neither of which I felt I could relate to.  I held on to “feminist” as a label – I never cottoned to the idea of “womanist” or * “I believe in equality but don’t call myself a feminist”.  But I definitely fell off the awareness wagon for a time.

But back to The Beauty Myth.  To paraphrase the overall message of the book as I recall it and as discussed in the community that prompted this, the activities that comprise beauty ritual are not the problem.  It is the compulsion to participate in those rituals whether women want to or not, whether we do so even to our detriment because we feel our place in society depends on them, whether the ideals of a beautiful exterior take the place of loving who we are, instead of highlighting the best of what we love about ourselves.   I expect I will be returning to this

I still have the copy I read for class and I want to re-read it.  Susan Faludi’s Backlash, too.  There’s a lot out there that I need to refresh my memory on. 

* Edited belatedly to correct my misconception that “womanist” was a general term used to replace feminism. I was woefully ignorant of the origins and actual use of “Womanist” as a term to describe the experiences of women of color which are often at odds with the privileged position of mainstream feminism. Which I neatly illustrated there.