stephen fry on straight cruising and slut-shaming

Breaking from fashion and goth music to address something that really, really pisses me off.

I'm a huge fan of Stephen Fry. He's absurdly intelligent and I probably quote...bits...from A Bit of Fry and Laurie every day. So seeing this interview with Stephen was quite disheartening, to say the least.

I think most straight men feel they disgust women. They find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are. For good reason. If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want. They want a boyfriend and then they want commitment.

Of course a lot of women will deny this and say, ‘Oh, no, but I love sex, I love it!’ But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?

This, very unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. He's made quite a few questionable comments before; many accused him of transphobia when, during the "Girls and Boys" episode of QI, he referred to trans women as "ladyboys." Which is indeed fucked up and COMPLETELY disrespectful--great way to delegitimize someone's gender identity. I haven't seen the episode, but I believe this was also the one that tried to justify why QI rarely has female panelists: "women don't think women are funny." I'm glad I haven't seen it (or any of the G series) because it sounds like a fuckload of misogynist, transphobic pseudo-science.

So back to the quote above. Aside from the fact that I don't want Stephen Fry telling me what I apparently think--and also, apparently in his world there are only gay men and straights, lesbians are too busy wearing combat boots or something--the notion that there should be "straight cruising" areas is ridiculous, bottom line. For one, there's a whole lot of slut-shaming going on that makes being a proud, sexual female a difficult thing to claim in public. For two, many straight men already seem to regard all public domain as a "straight cruising" area. It's not like going to a designated ~*seedy park*~ looking for a one-night stand; there's very little way to avoid it, and even the sidewalk becomes a place to try and pick up a woman. I can't wait for a bus in suburban Long Island, wearing generally ~*man repellent clothing*~ (TANGENT TIME the notion of personal style as a way to above all attract male attention is fucked up, but, y'know), without having at least three people in their cars hoot and holler at me. This too can quickly slide into dangerous territory about class, race, and socially mandated attitudes about how to approach women, although it's a good long discussion to have and, for the most part, it's not relevant to what the white, privileged Stephen Fry has to say here.

I'm not reinventing the wheel with what I have to say (and actually, my superstar friend Meg has an awesome post on similar things). But here's a disturbing anecdote: last night, after leaving the Ford Models party with Maheen (which was pretty much a sweaty, open arena for sexual harassment anyway), I get on the train to go home, leaving my wig and makeup on because I wanted to show people how awesome and unrecognizable I looked in said wig. Giving the train conductor my ticket, he looks me up and down and says, "Girl, I wish I could take your picture." Despite getting no response, when he comes to take my ticket the second time around, he persists. "Looks like you had fun tonight." He's more or less leering at me and I have to leave the train car to avoid him the rest of the ride. I'm guessing he simply assumed I was a drunken slut because I was one of few people in costume--because a reconstruction 20's dress screams I'M LOOKING FOR SOME, BOYS--but either way, not what one expects on the LIRR.

Getting dressed shouldn't be a fear. If I know I have to be somewhere late at night, I shouldn't want to make myself invisible by taking along the schlubbiest clothing I own. Unlike gay cruising areas in parks or whatnot, the sidewalk, the LIRR train, the pharmacy is not a fixed social space. While I can hold my own when catcalled, I don't want to mentally prepare myself for it any time I know I'll be in a crowded area. I don't want to keep my middle finger at full mast, because when I walk down the street or get chips from the deli, I'm not looking for sex or sexual conversation.

I'm not the most overtly sexual person. I like it fine and I'll get it when I want it, but when I was at Oberlin, I wasn't really keen on college hookup culture. There's a long list of reasons why I don't go for casual sex, but most are irrelevant. I may not be particularly promiscuous, but that doesn't mean other women are like me. We love sex, but we don't go on blathering about it or seeking it out publicly because we get vilified for it. After all, every bimbo in a miniskirt in heels is ASKING for it, isn't she? Stephen more or less says it in this interview:



"[Women don't] hang around in parks waiting for casual encounters with men. They just don't. The only ones who do it properly, they do it for money. Which proves another point--they have to be paid to do it!"

So every sexually active woman is a prostitute, and those who aren't only put up with sex out of desperation for a long-term relationship. What Stephen sees as sex aversion isn't a reflection of desire, but of the disparity of consequences between men and women. Social stigmatization, shame, a higher likelihood of violence, unwanted pregnancy, a world that already polices female sexuality and a woman's right to choose...

And here's an excerpt from his novel The Hippopotamus, the protagonist of which seems to be a far cruder version of Stephen:

Do gay men tarting themselves up for a night in a club whine about the vile sexism which insists they must be made attractive in order to be inspected like cattle? Do they hell.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I imagine a world in which women enjoy sex: a world of heterosexual cruising areas in parks and promenades, heterosexual bars, heterosexual back rooms, heterosexual cinemas, heterosexual quarters of the town where women roam, searching for chance erotic encounters with men. Such an image is only conceivable in one's fantasising bedroom, jerked into life by an angry fist and a few spastic grunts. If women needed sex as much as men did then - duck, Ted, duck, run for cover - then there wouldn't be so many rapists around the place.

The fact that such a misogynist message is being spread by a "NATIONAL FUCKING TREASURE" makes it even worse. Many people around the internets are thankfully outraged, but just as many are justifying it because "you guys, he's soooooo cool! He's so smart and funny and I will luff him forever."

No. Fuck that. I can't quite articulate all I want to say right now, but...Stephen, however clever a comedian you may be, you are hopelessly, ignorantly naive about gender, sexual chemistry (in the scientific sense), and societal standards for women. So piss off.

thin is in: in search of the perfect male body (from the guardian)

With Men's Fashion Week running wild (I'll get a few more posts up, I promise...Paris, you did not disappoint), talk has turned to what styles or themes we'll be seeing in men's fashion come Spring 2011. But Polly Vernon, deputy editor at the Observer, instead directs her attention at what she thinks is a shocking, perhaps worrisome trend: increasingly waifish, rail-thin male models.


(l: dior homme spring 2007 | r: rick owens spring 2011)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/27/mens-health-weight

This article is problematic for a number of reasons, from the petty to the more troubling: firstly, many of her cultural "icons" she accuses of promoting a new skinny male ideal are stuck in 2006. Is Johnny Borrell relevant anymore? Does he really have the power to shift the body image zeitgeist in 2010? But seriously, her discussion takes a very heterocentric turn in her informal polling of women's male body preferences, glossing over what is an equally important question of the gay male gaze--especially noticeable since, of the 9 men quoted at the end of the article, 4 are gay. She also doesn't hide her schadenfreude at the apparent rise of destructive body obsession; after mentioning that the percentage of eating disorder sufferers who are male increased from 10 to 20-5%, while female figures (pardon the pun) have remained relatively constant, she says:

What do women think of all this? I'll be honest: we have to work hard not to cackle, and scream: "Welcome to our nightmare, suckers!" We've been subject to these kinds of pressures for centuries, expected to grow and shrink and entirely redefine our body shape depending on prevailing diktats on what is and isn't hot. You, men, have not helped us with your endless, casual objectification, your porno-lite lads' magazines and your inability not to deliver a relentless commentary on every aspect of our physical being. We've struggled between polar physical ideals for decades: between the intimidatingly severe and extremely thin architecture of the catwalk model, and the super-tanned, curvaceous obvious pulchritude of the glamour girl. Relatively, you lot are amateurs at all this.

At another point, she also refers to "manorexia," a problematic and cringe-inducing portmanteau that implies eating disorders are for women alone, that men with EDs are merely a catchy, tabloid-ready craze. She's not-so-successfully fighting off the urge to point her finger at men and go "neener neener" throughout the whole piece, applying her perverse delight to the nebulous "we" of all women. Well, as a young woman who herself has recovered from anorexia, I say no. It sucks for anyone, regardless of gender or orientation. End of story.

While it is true that fatphobia does affect men, she seems to be conflating it with the "mainstreaming" of the bone-thin, slender look always prevalent in music and fashion. She points the finger at Hedi Slimane, receiver of pointed fingers since his first collection at Dior Homme in 2001 to his step down in 2007. He's the designer most closely associated with the so-called "skinny-man movement," not least because of his idolization of youth, pin-thin tailoring, and friendship with Pete Doherty. HOWEVER, I find it important to mention that a lot of Slimane's inspiration comes from the indie rock world, from his associations with Pete Doherty to his album covers for Phoenix to his projects with These New Puritans. Hell, he even put Bryan Ferry's son Isaac on the catwalk once.

Thing is, the "gobsmackingly lean silhouette" has been the norm in the rock world for decades; you run through a list of iconic frontmen from 1970 on (okay, we're actually going to run through my own last.fm charts) and you get David Bowie, Iggy Pop, pretty much every punk ever, Peter Murphy, Jarvis Cocker as mentioned in the article, Brett Anderson--all sex symbols (in part) because of their ectomorphic silhouettes. Thin White Duke, impeccable cheekbones, stick insect, snake hips...in their medium, it's considered sexy, even when it's the ravages of drug abuse, to be lanky and thin. Yes, ever since Slimane's Dior Homme, male models have been bone-thin (it seems like they're stuck on the "alien" trend the female modeling world went through a few years back). But is this really symptomatic--or, even more extremely, a direct CAUSE--of increased male self-disgust? Probably not. Most of the quotes at the end of the article express more personal dissatisfaction than an envy of emaciated alien boys ("I was fed up with having man boobs. I could see silverback gorillas looking at me with envy," so sayeth Stephen Fry). The worlds of high fashion and rock music appeal to only a small percentage of modern men; while women are dictated how they SHOULD look across all media equally--fashion, music, Hollywood--only certain media marketed to men include similar instruction. There's a trickle-down effect from high- to low-fashion for women; I highly doubt you'll see any of Jil Sander's neons or florals in the men's equivalent of Forever 21. It's all just a different kind of body scrutiny in my eyes; just as the Victoria's Secret big boobs/tiny-everything-else combination is just as or more impossible to achieve than being rail thin, so is the gigantic, muscular shape. It ain't good where anyone's concerned, but it still seems strange to me to talk about it now when there's always been an unachievable ideal. It's just that THIS decade's fashionable ideal isn't considered acceptably "masculine," so now everyone's uncomfortable.


(jean paul gaultier | alexis mabille | rick owens)

I think, when we confine ourselves to the fashion industry, it's more symptomatic of increased androgyny in menswear, emphasis on more "unisex" clothing. Perhaps it's purely a zeitgeist thing; post-Slimane, the idea of über-sexual, predominately masculine menswear has faded away, and not just as far as model casting is concerned. You get the obvious example of Rick Owens, who uses a lot of drapery and skirting, and has definitely ushered in the trend of the "man-heel," but even the old guard has been doing it more subtly (for instance, fabric choices more typically used in womenswear. A YSL collection a few seasons ago used silk gazar, organza, crêpe de chine, etc. in garments which seemed entirely, traditionally masculine in construction until you touched them). You've got La Roux performing in a Monsieur suit at Viktor and Rolf (I dislike her, but that's besides the point), models looking like they rolled around in daisy fields at Alexis Mabille. Jean Paul Gaultier, who's always played around with varied casting, had some models who were ridiculously muscular, some you couldn't tell were boys on first glance. As far as fashion is concerned, it seems less about ushering in a new male body ideal than some designers, both emerging and established, blurring and subverting gender in clothing. From 19th-century dandyism to the 2010 waifs, it seems to be a reaction to mainstream masculinity as a whole, not just body image.