Women in media? Destroy the Joint misses the point
Anyone who knows me even a little makes sure to avoid the topic of gender in my company. My ideas about gender come more from Judith Butler than they do from, say, Growing Pains. An express route to my trousers is to talk about the seams that join Freud to Marx. My relationship with feminism is long, ardent and difficult.
Feminism. It keeps me awake at night. Yeah, I got problems. But not so many, I’d venture, as an Australian feminism that produces twaddle like this. For International Women’s Day, here is a piece that considers the special qualities women might bring as leaders of professional media.
WHAT? What? WHAT?
Are women better media leaders?
Rebekah Brooks is the answer. Marissa Mayer is the answer. Gina Rinehart is the answer. Fucking NO is the answer.
That professed feminists can think that women have “special” qualities that they might bring to enterprise is fucking beyond me. Women are not nicer. Women are not a civilising influence. Women are just as capable of avarice and stupidity as anyone.
This “if only women ruled the world” shit has no place outside the Hallmark Corporation. Ascribing a Marian grace to my gender might work in the Catholic Church but it really shouldn’t have any function for those who do not worship the Blessed Virgin.
Women are not gifted, either socially or biologically, of anything special. If we believe that they are, then we must also accept the possibility that the gender could be marked with unpleasant characteristics. If we believe that women are “better negotiators” or “great multitaskers”, we can also easily believe they are “not very good with money”.
I find any work that even considers the idea that privileged white women do things in any way that is markedly superior or different to the things done by privileged white men so ineffably deluded I want to take ALL of the Alanis Morissette CDs purchased in the 1990s and make a sculpture of an enormous plastic masturbating woman and win the Turner Prize with a piece I have called “Enormous Plastic Masturbating Woman Wins the Turner Prize”.
Anyhow. The writing. One of many pieces of crap I saw today. I know little of its author Jenna Price. However, I certainly do know how to Google and, as a Media Professional, could easily pretend I have been aware of the lady’s work as an activist and academic for some time. And, in a way, I have as she is one of the architects of the local “movement” known as “Destroy the Joint”.
No. Destroy the Joint is not a competitive league of doobie smokers, nor is it the work of those who especially like to eat spring lamb. It is, in fact, the locus for much feminist “action” and so a good site for inquiry.
Look. If you don’t know about it, read this hagiography. In short, the campaign sought to reignite feminism through a social media critique of traditional media.
“I know the Labor Party deludes itself that the electorate can be nudged to good by marginal lies and marketing. Don’t make the same mistake.”
For mine, Destroy the Joint began, very quickly, to Destroy the Point. As a fairly rash user of social media myself, I made the view known to tens of followers that I found the exercise distastefully onanistic. The fast cycles of uncritical rage that greeted a number of purportedly “misogynist” incidents — the average comedy of Daniel Tosh, the dressing of children in inappropriate clothing, the naming of a racehorse as a woman — brought to mind the usual pace of my own visits to RedTube.
We sit in front of screens and we suspend our thought to enhance our desire and then we mash our own genitals to the point they explode in a brief but ecstatic frenzy of nothing especially productive. It’s a sad little ragegasm we need to repeat seven times a day in the absence of genuine congress.
I do not mind a good wank but I have little patience for a bad one and this mean and dessicated DTJ masturbation must, at some point, cease. The expense of this libidinal energy cannot be calculated. We are spending our climaxes in tiny online moments when, really, they are due elsewhere to fuck the system.
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Categories: MEDIA, People & Ideas
You are welcome to my copies of Jagged Little Pill and Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Do you realise guys I was born in 1974?
by Jonathan Maddox on Mar 11, 2013 at 12:59 pm
The Duchamp ‘ready made’ comment was the clincher. Great piece.
by Joshua Granath on Mar 11, 2013 at 1:27 pm
It is so easy to be a contrarian rather than actually take part in any real action. And by real action I do mean things like writing to advertisers on 2GB and boycotting and naming sexist attitudes.
Razer says we should be fighting the fight against “masculinised violence and feminised poverty” well I would be happy to join her in the front lines if she could just let me know where. But that is the point isn’t it because reading ‘some macroeconomic texts bitches’ (I love the Felicia Day bitches hook especially)is not going to change the world.
So while I am waiting for the big fight to begin, and it may some day and I will be there, I spend my time like many other women, doing what I can when I can. Oh and because some of this takes place on social media then women who have access to my stuff, and to my daughter’s stuff and who were not politically active, are now becoming so.
by matthews chris on Mar 11, 2013 at 2:11 pm
What I find most intriguing about ardent feminists is the way they seem so bent on treating men the way they have taken exception to being treated by men.
by klewso on Mar 11, 2013 at 2:43 pm
‘Women are not gifted, either socially or biologically, of anything special.’
That’s mere opinion. According to a doco on SBS last week about the sinking of the ‘Titanic’, women survive longer in icy water.
by zut alors on Mar 11, 2013 at 2:56 pm
I find myself trying to be peacemaker, an unusual role, and say we are on the same tracks. I have some concerns that tackling sexist incidents and language etc will be confused with making serious change to power and influence. My definition of feminism is wider than Helen’s, i.e. change gender based power and values that benefits masculinity(including in women) and revalue those good skills, tasks and responsibilities that are assumed to be feminine.That is radical but i agree that women are just as good and evil as men, but our more social upbringing and responsibilities give us different viewpoints that are needed.
by Eva Cox on Mar 11, 2013 at 4:38 pm
Helen extols us to look to the bigger picture or the more important issues.. truth is we need people who can do the small and those who can do the big.. its not an all or nothing deal Helen.. So lets applaud all the people who are reaching out and making a difference in the way their world allows..rather than diminishing or criticizing their contribution… in doing this the ripples of change continue one change at a time … Feminists come in all shapes and sizes, colors, political persuasions and yes even different senses of humor!
by Buddy on Mar 11, 2013 at 5:08 pm
Brilliant. Certainly sparkling and enjoyable and useful in providing that summary “masculined violence and feminised poverty” as the core of what feminism is against.
After living with women enjoyably for many years and hearing their views (and they are much more observant than I am) about male and female differences and the likelihood that they are from nature rather than nurture (except those built on environmental adaptations to nature in the form of being physically weaker and capable of child bearing, and the ability perhaps to be more verbally adroit) I might go a little beyond Eva Cox and Zut Alors.
That is because I have also paid attention to some reports of differences in brain structure - more white matter may have it seems something to do with better communication skills and interest in people - and the a priori likelihood that evolution would have produced some systematic average differences between large males and small, weaker, females who had to nurture helpless children - and have good enough hearing to hear their cries in the night. Not have billions of sperm which could spread one’s genes around at a much greater rate than on shot at it every nine months would have to provide scope for natural selection to get a look in also. On the whole it doesn’t seem likely that women would end up with brains which were as likely to show off with crazy brave belligerence as those of young men can produce…..
by Warren Joffe on Mar 11, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Well Helen there is certainly room for you to engage people in ongoing action even if it is limited. Sometimes you just have to start somewhere. Swearing and mouthing off insults doesn’t actually achieve anything whereas there are certainly some businesses in Australia that are sorry that they have misappropriated women’s images or have put women down or have encouraged rape and violence. There is certainly room for women to be encouraged to act in their own interests and in your foul mouthed diatribe you suggest nothing positive. In fact you are looking a little like someone who is doing very nicely in the patriachy thank you and let’s not upset the fellas who are paying the bills. I find it hard to believe you are a feminist at all. How do you propose that women drag themselves out of poverty if they are constantly undermined by other women and men? Destroy the Joint has done more to get action to better society for women than any other organisation I can recall for a long time. Far from Destroying the Point it looks like they are making it.
by Tom Jones on Mar 11, 2013 at 5:57 pm
Thanks for publishing Razer. I (almost) always enjoy it when you do.
by Patrick Bowman on Mar 11, 2013 at 8:22 pm
This is such a self-indulgent and intellectually dishonest piece. The article Razer links to says not one thing about the alleged special qualities of women. I’m sure she could’ve found any number of articles which did trumpet special female qualities, but that wouldn’t have been such a nice segue into the real point, to spew some more vitriol at Destroy the Joint. If someone wants to reach this kind of ‘ragegasm’ on their own blog then more power to them, but that’s where it should’ve stayed.
by Bronwyn on Mar 11, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Well I could have written that.
But it would have been written off as misogynist hate speech.
Of course you are right Ms Razer. I am more of a feminist than most feminists, because I insist on seeing women as equals rather than as ‘special’ creatures.
Until the feminist movement moves to that point there will be limited gains. Equality will come when we are considered equally, not when we are considered ‘differently special’.
Clarity is a terrible scourge, you wear it well.
by Dogs breakfast on Mar 11, 2013 at 10:32 pm
Interesting thing about Price’s response is that it seemed to be more concerned with maintaining the integrity of WTJ than addressing some of the issue Razer raises. Which are, as has been pointed out, big issues. Which should be the ones always at the front, especially feminist issues. Yes, this is cantankerous and has a whiff of personality clash, but Razer is pointing at the real core Feminism and not the ephemera which has, as far as I can see, become the MSM version thereof. And there’s a few passages here I want to quote in future.
(I’m disagreeing about Duchamp’s readymades, though. I refer to Billy Childish’s “Is It Art Or Is It Arse?” for further edification.).
by Andrew McIntosh on Mar 12, 2013 at 12:01 am
Whatever legitimate reservations and feelings Razer has about certain expressions of feminism in the media, Jenna Price clearly has the better of this exchange.
by Will on Mar 12, 2013 at 10:40 am
I love WTJ BUT I have realised through while bringing up my daughter, the people that have made her life most unbearable are other woman. The mental intimidation, the snide remarks about her looks and weight have ALL come from other woman (even though my daughter is a highly intelligent, motivated, confident and good looking young girl these comments cut deep).
Men have to realise that any type of physical violence is totally unacceptable, woman have to appreciate that men are unarmed and totally lacking the verbal skills to defend themselves so verbal passive aggressive is also violence.
Look at MOST woman’s magazines and they are full of the commentary and pictures that they have chided men for.
by Mark out West on Mar 12, 2013 at 3:55 pm
thank you
by Malcolm Harrison on Mar 12, 2013 at 7:22 pm