Urge to (in for the) kill.... rising

[katstevens]

Oh dear, La Roux gets feminism wrong AGAIN

First it was 'girls look a bit stupid playing guitars', now this:

What's your stance on the way that female musicians either choose to or are forced to use a sexuality that's essentially just designed to appeal to men?

"It's really patronising to women. I know that there's far more ways to be sexy than to dress in a miniskirt and a tank top. If you're a real woman you can turn someone on in a plastic bag just by looking at them. That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes. I think you attract a certain kind of man by dressing like that. Women wonder why they get beaten up, or having relationships with arsehole men. Because you attracted one, you tw4t. It's a funny culture, it's definitely a funny culture. Those women are just insecure, but they'll turn round to me and say 'you're just jealous 'cos you want a tan and you want big boobs, stupid boy-looking girl'. You can't win, they wouldn't believe me for a second."

Jebus, is she *actually* saying that by dressing in a certain way, women are inviting men to abuse them? I think she is. Sigh.

Comments

[cis.livejournal.com]

Is an idiot or incapable of thinking beyond the questions he had written down or-- somehow doesn't think it's his place to make her develop or refine her statements?

Like-- her statement could have been reformulated into something that didn't make her sound like an idiot, about the entire concept of "a sexuality that's essentially just designed to appeal to men" and the danger of believing that that limited definition is the only possible sexuality (incl. that there's only one sexual appeal that men recognise), that if women think that the one thing they've got going for them is their conventional male-focused sexual appeal then they can be forced into terrible positions to maintain the role of being sexually-appealing sexually-available. It's totally possible that she wasn't planning to play blame the victim! She could be trying to say something about a culture that privileges a certain image of male desire and therefore isn't capable of criticising abusive male behaviour that bears some superficial resemblance to that conventional image of male desire. But we can't know, cos dude never bothered to get it out of her.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. She isn't protesting about the fact of a conventionalised sexuality designed to appeal to men, she's complaining that we have the wrong one - and, I would be prepared to bet, she thinks the right one would be a better fit for what she likes about herself. Saying "you twat" to the women who get beaten up is far from what you're saying, surely? I'm sure she'd have backed off from that position had someone pushed at her pointing out that she was blaming the victim (at least giving them a substantial share in it - nothing she says actually excuses the men involved), but she has expressed her own views there. I can't remotely imagine ever saying anything like that. I get particularly angry at things like this, because claiming that the women brought it on themselves is THE classic abuser's tactic, and it's the mental damage that that kind of thing does that is hardest to undo for survivors of abuse.

There is some value in suggesting that there is a problem in a society that assigns value to women based on their appeal to men. There is value in attacking the idea that the fact that many women end up basing a lot of their sense of worth on that. There is value in suggesting that we should encourage other measures of self-worth. There is no value in attacking the worth of people who do not resist socially encouraged norms that are not in themselves at all harmful or immoral, and that is what she was doing.

Incidentally, this ties in to the common idea that abused women seek out other men to abuse them. This is nonsense - there is plenty of evidence that it is abusive men who recognise women who have had their sense of self-worth beaten out of them.

Sorry - I can get ranty on this. I dare say I have mentioned before that my ex was a nationally-recognised expert on domestic violence against women, and I learned a lot from her, including huge anger about it.

[cis.livejournal.com]

i think what she's saying is more: my sexuality is the kind of sexuality that attracts the right kind of men, I am happy not having a tan and big tits and other such sex-appeal markers because that attracts the kind of men who turn into arseholes and abusers. Which really makes no sense but I can see how she's fallen into it. It's a media cliche that sexy romcom women go "oh why do i always go out with arseholes" and then go out with more arseholes, and that this is a problem with women and their judgement. I think she's internalised it, and assumed there's a connection between that sort of sex-appeal and becoming a victim of abuse (as if it's only glamorous sex-appeal type women who get abused!). And that there's a sort of gradated line from "arsehole in a relationship" to "wifebeater", which in itself is highly suspect. I also don't think she was thinking super hard when she said "you twat", and might have meant it only to apply to women who go out with arseholes?

Frankly, you know, I don't care what she really thinks: I just want the interviewer to be capable of making her modulate her ideas into something that's not so flatly wrong and dangerously worded.