In the pop-cultural realm feminists are kept busy uncovering the co-opting of
our own "empowering" rhetoric to perpetrate potent sexism, looking
out for so-called Nice Guys and women who claim to be liberated but sell an
old-school lifestyle.

 

On the political side, we’re battling the anti-choice, anti-women rhetoric
coming from extremist politicians which blasts from our cable TV screens,
touting laws that would strip of our rights as individuals with agency and
morality.

So it’s  disappointing, but not shocking, when the two elements come together
and we get misogyny of the worst kind seeping right into our mainstream pop
culture–lowest-common-denominator frat boy sexism that makes no attempt to
hide its super-disrespectful, dehumanizing view of women. It’s a kind of
stereotypical high school football-team locker room (no offense to the feminist
football players out there) attitude, except it’s being exhibited by grown men
with huge public forums. In this case, it’s doubtful that anyone who espouses
such misogyny will grow out of it.

The first recent perpetrator is one of the most loathsome personas to enter the
American pop-cultural scene, Tucker Max, who has a new movie based on his blog
coming out this week. "Amurph11" a blogger on feministing’s community
blog succinctly sums up Max’s M.O:

The Boston
premiere of I Hope They Serve Beer in
Hell happened in Cambridge last night. For those of you that haven’t been
following, (and I hope this applies to most of you), it is the film adaptation
of a book, which was a based on a blog. The blog, in turn, is largely based
around the exploits of Tucker Max (and here "exploits" is exactly the
right word): getting women drunk, performing sex acts on them, and then writing
about it. Many of the encounters detailed in the blog, book, and now the film,
meet the legal definition of rape (this should come as no surprise). It is
almost unbelievably predatory, so it should also come as no surprise that it
was, for a time, very popular.

To make it
worse, Max has recently lashed out viciously at scattered protesters who have
claimed that his brand promotes rape culture (uh, you think?). Sady Doyle at Broadsheet says we should really ignore Max,
because protesting him will give him the attention and notoriety he craves more
than anything. At pandagon, Amanda Marcotte counters that the
aim of protesting shouldn’t be to change the minds of Max’s women-hating acolytes, but rather to give support
and encouragement to young women who are offended by his nasty shtick. She
suggests some funny ways to strike back. She’s 100% right–as anyone who had nascent
feminist leanings as a young woman can recall, it’s a lonely world out there
and organizing is an effective way to build lifelong feminist resistors.

And there’s a further reason to keep combating this stuff: Max isn’t the last
vestige of mega-misogynists who haven’t gotten the message that they should at
least pretend like they respect
women. Nope, he and his coterie of rape apologists are far from alone out there
calling women skanks and whores with impunity.

In fact, this week has been a particularly bad one for that. Among male
commentators reaction to the Tila Tequila/Shawn Merriman allegations (she said
he hit her, he said he was trying to restrain her from driving drunk, both
sides are sticking to their story) has been one of immediate slut-shaming, as
though Tequila’s raunchy TV personality automatically disqualifies her from all
credibility or ability to be hurt. Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss–who arguably
kicked off the entirely reprehensible dating show reality TV genre– wrote the
following, which was actually published in a major San Diego forum:

Of course, I deplore violence against women. But this particular girl is typical
of the random skanks who populate most reality TV shows (not mine, of course).

Ms. Tequila has no discernable talent, no Juliard schooling, and,
ultimately, no legitimate reason to be a star. What she does have is an ability
to chase down the spotlight like Merriman hunts down a quarterback. 

Trust me. A girl like Tila Tequila will do just about anything for
publicity. 

HBO talk
show host Bill Maher added his two cents on the subject with a vile joke:
“Stop acting surprised that someone choked Tila Tequila. The surprise is that
someone hasn’t choked this bitch sooner.”

Sigh. This kind of talk from Fleiss and Maher comes right out of the old-school
sexist playbook that says women who act a certain way should not have
rights–and yes, it sounds suspiciously like anti-choice talk: "If you
choose a lifestyle we disapprove of, you should lose the right to agency over
your body. " That playbook also feeds into a very real, very dire
problem:the campus rape epidemic, which Jaclyn Friedman discusses here.

And this is why it’s important to pay attention to hatefully,
"out-there" rhetoric: it’s not all that out there, but permeates our
culture. Max may be a fringe figure, but Maher and Fleiss are not, nor are
their audiences. In fact, Fleiss’s franchise has a major influence on the
entertainment world and Maher has one of the most important and edgy forums
around–one which even feminists like this one watch regularly.

Instead, we should use extremely hateful sexism as references–when we see less
blatantly obscene examples of sexism around us, we can note the way it echoes
Max’s brand of uber sexism as a way to hammer home the point. Promote
entertainment that is fun and humorous or and sexy without being offensive
(everyone should be going to see female-directed Bright Star and Jennifer’s
Body this weekend, for instance) as an alternative. Point out the way comments
like Maher’s feed into public policies that he himself hates and are bad for
the kind of open, sexual society many sexists would like to see. After all, misogynists like Maher and Fleiss must recognize that birth control and abortion rights are good for the kind of Hugh Hefner lifestyle they envision for American men–realizing that their careless rhetoric undermines those rights might be sobering.  Or do like
Gawker has done, and just relentlessly mock Max as unfunny.

It’s still tempting to ignore this crap. Indeed, as Amanda said, vigorously and
self-righteously attempting to get hard-core misogynists to change their minds
is indeed a losing battle, and it’s exhausting to repeat the same feminism 101
analysis over and over again (nope, even if she enjoys having sex she can still
get raped, isn’t it shocking?). But pretending they don’t exist isn’t an option
either.

More around the web:

Tucker Max Fans: The Lowest Form Of Life [Douche Du Jour]
from Jezebel

Douchebag Decree: Marketing Tucker Max from Bitch Magazine Blogs
Tucker Max hates fun from pandagon.net –
Tucker Max must die! (Or not.) from Salon: Broadsheet
If They Do Serve Beer in Hell, I Hope it’s Warm
from Feministing Community