I went to see Downfall last night, and I have to insist that everyone go out and see it right away. It is some seriously chilling stuff.



It is, as you shoud all know, the story of the last days of the Third Reich - has a fantastic lineup of history's greatest villains - and has come under fire for 'humanising' Hitler. In this review, the actor portraying Hitler makes the comment that, while he was making the film, he had come under fire for talking about Hitler without "the proper, politically correct distance." (Does anyone else see shades of He Who Must Not Be Named?) German director Wim Wenders claims that the audience walks away from the film with a "benevolent understanding" of the Nazis and of Hitler (find the quote here).

I think Wenders is wrong, but I think it's really true that the film humanises Hitler. Furthermore, I think it's a damn good thing.

Hands up who's been told Hitler was an inhuman monster? Yeah, me too. I've also been told that about Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao, as well as other characters from history whose names elude me for the moment.

Bullshit. What bullshit. Of course they're fucking human. What else might they be? (If anyone says monsters, I will organise to have you hunted for sport. Just so we're clear.)

I find this one of the most worrisome things about the history of atrocity - in fact, about the overwhelming majority of depictions of any kind of violence. Perpetrators of violence are often tagged as 'inhuman' - or, in milder cases, 'mad' or 'irrational' - and I can't help but feel that it's a cheap way of dodging the issue. By saying that the perpetrators of these actions are inhuman/irrational/whatever, what we're really saying is that these events are a complete anomaly. That the perpetrators are anomalies. That they're not US, and that they don't have anything in common with us, and we don't have anything in common with them.

In short, it's an easy way of refusing to engage with the scary issue that there's not that much difference between us ("humans") and them ("monsters").

Everyone's familiar with the work of Stanley Milgram, right? I shouldn't even have to tell you which experiment I'm talking about. It gets cited a lot when trying to explain why the rank-and-file members of the Nazi party acted as they did - and why 'we were ordered to do it' is such a completely acceptable reason. According to Milgram, between 61 and 66% of participants will administer (what they believe to be) fatal shocks to a stranger when instructed to by a mild-mannered scientist with a clipboard. Not without considerable emotional stress, but they will do it. I'm sure I don't need to point out that a guy with a gun has a little more authority than a guy with a clipboard.

Over the years, we've mostly come to terms with the fact that most of the Nazi party were just folks like you and me, doing what they were told to do. I think it does us a lot of good to come to terms with the fact that, most of the time, Hitler was just another guy. Good with kids. Likes dogs. Surely that's what's so terrifying about it all? That he was just another guy?

The film was a considerable achievement.

That said, though, it did fall into that cliched trap of diving the Nazis into two groups. Himmler? Bad Nazi. Speer? Good Nazi.

And Magda Goebbels? Freaked me way the fuck out. Do y'all realise that woman poisoned her six children rather than see them live in a world without National Socialism? The actress did an incredible job.


In other news, today I learnt something completely counter-intuitive, which is that fishnets can get holes in them. Crazy, I know, but true.

People who point out that fishermen have to mend their nets all the time can refer to to the earlier comment about what will happen to people who say things like "monster". I've read the stories about fishermen. I choose to ignore them.

And now I'm going to take the odd pain in my head off to bed. It's nose to the grindstone this weekend - I thought I had an essay to do for next Monday, but it turns out I have one to do for next Tuesday as well. Ouch.

I found my spanking article.

At nine o'clock the night before the essay is due. Life sucks.

Especially since it turns out I had the reference all along, in a book that was next to my computer. Oh, and that I only have access to the abstract of the article, because New Yorker articles aren't archived before 2001.

For the curious, it's titled 'Unlikely Obsession', by Daphne Merkin (it's an, uh, unfortunate name for a woman writing about sex ...), and was published in the New Yorker, Vol.72, No.2, Feb26-Mar4 1996.

In other news, my dad told me tonight that if I intend to have my children raised by wolves, I'd better get a move on, as while the population of wolves is on the rise now, they'll likely be extinct by the time I start breeding.

I can't quite decide if this is better or worse than my mum's comment that it's really good that I like making Christmas pudding because, you know, as my sister and brothers start to bring new people into the family, I'll have to make a lot of it.

This is why they can never see my high school yearbook in which I'm voted "Most likely to ... be that crazy old lady on the bus with the cats". They'd probably tell me that it's the best outcome I could hope for.

PS - I am head-over-heels in love with this nifty new feature I found in Word, which summarises my work for me and claims to pick out the most important bits. I love that it found the bit where I said 'Oral sex is so last century' and put that right at the top. Although I do sort of wish it had also found the bit where I said 'Bondage is the new oral sex - it's just not that kinky anymore' (find the quote here).

Also, everyone must go read this immediately.

I've been hot for Zaphod Beeblebrox ever since I first read HHGTTG, and as a result, I can never see the HHGTTG movie that I've been looking forward to for about a year.

This may be even more painful than never being able to see the Inspector Gadget movie.

Why, why would they give Zaphod one head that appears to be over the top of the other? How totally Men In Black (which, you know, has its place, but that place is not in British humour). And how duuuullllllll. And, for that matter, completely illiterate. The book clearly states that Zaphod has two heads next to each other. The heads converse. Wittily. Sexily. How can the heads converse when one is small, misshapen, and inside the other?

No, wait, don't tell me. I don't think I want to know.

America, land of the free

A student at a Minnesota high school is facing expulsion for wearing a button which reads 'I [heart] my vagina'.

The student began to wear the pin after seeing The Vagina Monologues as a way to raise awareness of women's rights and violence against women. As she states on her website, she wore the button for almost a month before she was informed that she was not welcome in the school whilever she continued to wear the button, and is now in danger of failing to graduate as a result of her stand. You can read more about it here.

This is a story which will continue to unfold. The American Civil Liberties Union is involved, and the story is getting a lot of coverage in some high-traffic online communities.

Register your disgust by writing to the school principal here, or the dean of students here.

And in the meantime, why not visit some of these vagina-positive websites?

All About My Vagina
Susie Bright: When Prudes Attack
Violet Blue
Good Vibrations magazine


And Zak? This one's for you.


PS - Oh, how I hope this is a joke ...

An Appeal for Violence in the Media

I have to write a case study on violence in the media for one of my classes - pick an article and discuss the discourses that are being deployed around the depiction of violence within it.

This sounds like fun. I even had an article picked out - problem is, I can't find it. I read it online, it was in a major American newspaper, and it was about a woman who liked to be spanked. As I recall it, she eventually managed to find a loving man who was willing to entertain that fantasy; they got married, started a family, and then she became concerned that the bedroom power play was sliding into their everyday life, and they broke up. I know I sent the link to a few people, so if anyone remembers it, please let me know. (Other suggestions for articles are always welcome).

In the meantime, since I can't find that article, I'm starting to work on this one. I actually found it linked through this blog, written by a Seattle-based professional dominatrix, and I'm intending to talk a little about fringe publishing and the freedoms and limits that imposes. The blog is really worth a look: well-written, humorous, a little bit sexy - and as a well-seasoned kinkster in both her personal and professional lives, the author's comments about the article, Education of a Sadomasochist, really are insightful and valuable.

Preparations for Deviancy Week continue apace. It is going to happen, but maybe not so 'soon' as you may have been led to believe. Uni is slightly insane right now, so I'm a little pressed for time in which to pursue big plans.

Anyway, I'm off to bed with On Killing - a little bit of light reading for a Wednesday night.

I have my reputation to think of, here

About a year ago, a friend of mine came back from six months in the States, and one of the first things she said to me was, "Beck, have you been writing erotica and publishing it on the web?" Apparently she read a story entitled "Leather and whips and chains, oh my!" and immediately thought of me. I guess it's a compliment - and in all fairness, if I was going to write a bondage story, it's not entirely inconceivable that I'd title it something like that. Or maybe a bondage musical ...

I would flog and whip and beat you
From the moment that I met you
If I onlyyyyy had a whip - du du, du du, du du.

I'd use pegs, ropes, pins and paddles
I would hit you til you're addled
If I onlyyyyy had a whip - du du, du du, du du.

I'd wear heels and I'd wear leather
Latex clothes in any weather
If I onlyyyyyy had a whip - du du, du du, du du.

Yeah, I can sort of see that working. Actually, I can sort of see it as a duet - the hot, leather-clad mistress-y type (no gingham for my Dorothy) and the grovelling submissive type (a bit of a Cowardly lion):

I would like you to castrate me
Take my balls, humiliate me
If you onlyyyyy had a whip - du du, du du, du du

Expect to see updates to this as inspiration continues to strike.

Anyhow, this comes up because last night I got on the phone to a friend and, as tends to happen, we talked about a wide variety of things, from whether or not I should offer a paper to the gender studies seminar series this year, to treating cabs as confessionals, to how to cook sponge cake, and eventually to sex work. We got to talking about this place which offers apprenticeships, and how that kind of structured learning would work in that kind of industry.

Five minutes of musing later, she turns around and says to me "Oh! That reminds me, you were in my dream yesterday!"

"Oh, really?"

It seems that my raised eyebrows carry over into my voice, as she says "Noooooo, Beck, it wasn't like that."

"Well, what was it like?"

"Well, you know I was reading about the dominatrices yesterday - and then last night, I had this dream that I'd opened a dungeon, and I was doing all mistress-y things, which is odd, because you know I don't like to top, but I guess dreams are like that, and anyhow, I dreamt that you were there."

(And you, and you, Aunty Em - see, Wizard of Oz really is some kinky shit).

The point is, though, that I've somehow picked up this odd, and fairly unfounded reputation. I'm yet to publish any erotica on the web - much less the fairly comprehensive ouevre that my friend (flatteringly) credited me with. I didn't even make that sci-fi porno I (half) scripted. And, okay, so I know some fun things to do with pegs - but I'm certainly not the person to turn to for sex advice when you're in actual relationships. All I'll do is tell you to talk to your partner - and then tell everyone I know what you asked me (even publish it on the web, for the whole world to see - 'Beck, it really is a purely physical relationship ... but is it just me, or is he no good in bed?"). At least I can rest assured that I don't know more about porn that my straight engo mates with broadband internet connections ... even if we do swap links sometimes.

RIP

Andrea Dworkin died on Sunday.

I've come to find that I have a great deal of respect for her as a thinker. She had the courage of her convictions, and while I don't necessarily agree with her hardline stances on pornography, prostitution and sexuality, I have nothing but admiration for the way in which she constructed and defended those stances.

You may have guessed this is a new stance for me. As a teen, I didn't read her work but had heard the gist of it somewhere; I thought it was fantastic. Later, I rethought that, and decided that the ideas were simplistic, too black-and-white, too negative.

About a month ago, I actually read some of her work. I nearly bought her book 'Pornography' last week, and I think I will next time I'm at a bookstore. I find her arguments constructive, courageous and convincing, as well as enjoyable to read ... although I'm still not sure I agree with her basic premise.

I'm giving a presentation on one of her articles for a class next week, an article in which she discusses her grief at the way pornography treats women. I had a few ideas about opening a space to discuss the article using the True Porn Clerk Stories (who knew that the author can still be found online here?) or perhaps this article by Annie Sprinkle.

Now, after reading Susie Bright's elegy for Andrea, I'm wondering how I can best incorporate this. She raises some interesting points that I'll certainly be pondering in the days to come. I like the idea of Andrea Dworkin as the inspiration for the new wave of women's porn. (If you have time, I'd recommend finding Susie's elegy for Hunter S. Thompson, too.)

Andrea Dworkin, you got me thinking. Thank you.

PS. This is not Deviancy Week.

I'm done for today, I swear

UPDATE 3: It occurred to me (unprompted!) that I hadn't fixed the writing over on the Reading List. And so now I have. The fixing of things is now over.

"Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."

Although suggestions as to how to stop Safari caching the site are more than welcome (as are volunteers to implement those suggestions. Did I mention that the fixing of things is now over?). I think it's slightly absurd that I can't see what I put on my own blog.

Coming up soon* on Theory Slut - Deviancy Week!

*Please note that the term 'soon' refers to some indefinite future date.

---------------------

UPDATE 2: I fixed the rest of the writing. The process was still unpleasant. Now let us never speak of this again.

---------------------

UPDATE: I fixed some of the writing, and the process was unpleasant. And it's still pretty tiny. Thus, I'm feeling disinclined to fix any more.

I hate computers.

---------------------

Read this.

Pondering rape and consent

I read an article this afternoon, and it had what is quite possibly the coolest title for an academic paper I've ever seen - It's Only A Penis: Rape, Feminism and Difference (Christine Helliwell, 2000, in Signs, Spring 2000, V.23 i3, p.789).

It's based on Helliwell's experience as an anthropologist in Indonesia (Kalimantan Barat / West Borneo, for the non-Bahasa-speakers), where she lived for a time in a remote Dayak community of Gerai.

"One night in September 1985," says Helliwell, "a man of the village climbed through a window into the freestanding house where a widow lived with her elderly mother, younger (unmarried) sister, and young children. The widow awoke, in darkness, to feel the man inside her mosquito net, gripping her shoulder while he climbed under the blanket that covered her and her youngest child as they slept (her older children slept on mattresses nearby). He was whispering, "be quiet, be quiet!" She responded by sitting up in bed and pushing him violently, so that he stumbled backward, became entangled with her mosquito net, and then, finally free, moved across the floor toward the window. In the meantime, the woman climbed from her bed and pursued him, shouting his name several times as she did so. His hurried exit through the window, with his clothes now in considerable disarray, was accompanied by a stream of abuse from the woman and by excited interrogations from wakened neighbors in adjoining houses.

"I awoke the following morning to raucous laughter on the longhouse verandah outside my apartment where a group of elderly women gathered regularly to thresh, winnow, and pound rice. They were recounting this tale loudly, and with enormous enjoyment, to all in the immediate vicinity. As I came out of my door, one was engaged in mimicking the man climbing out the window, sarong falling down, genitals askew. Those others working or lounging near her on the verandah -- both men and women -- shrieked with laughter."

Helliwell got indignant. How could this be a laughing matter? This woman had been assaulted - what punishment would be inflicted on the man for this instance of attempted rape? Her indignation was met with puzzlement on the part of the villagers. What was the big deal? As the "victim" put it - "It's only a penis ... how could a penis hurt you?"

As the story unfolded, it came to be understood that, in this community, sexual assualt was simply a non-event. The villagers couldn't conceive of rape in the terms that Helliwell did - which is to say, as a fate at least tantamount to death, if not worse. Helliwell understands this as symptomatic of their ideas of gender difference, or rather the lack thereof - I won't go into all the gruesome detail (you have enough information to find the article if you wish).

Anyhow, this article got me thinking about my own understandings of rape, sexual assualt, violence and consensuality - all things which I find it easy to become preoccupied with.

Historically, in the West, rape has been seen as akin to property crime - the woman is always the property either of her father, or of her husband, and so unsanctioned sexual acts (note that I'm not saying non-consensual acts here - there was quite a difference) are read as a kind of theft. The perceived/imposed vulnerability of women and the accepted roles for women (the virgin-whore dichotomy or the triphasal maiden-mother-hag progression) led to the construction of a value system which placed sexual purity in a highly privileged position. As a result, rape came to be seen as a theft of a woman's soul - which is to say, a taking away from her, as well as from her husband-owner.

Needless to say, the theft of a woman's soul is serious business, and it's in this construction of rape-as-theft that the current Western idea of rape-as-death has its roots.

Now, I'll be honest - I find it problematic to read rape-as-death. I'm concerned that it oversimplifies a complex matter, and while I've read first-person accounts of stranger-rape that make comments like "I felt like I had died and the world had gone on without me", I wonder if those accounts don't fall into the (somewhat understandable) trap of being melodramatic.

I suppose I should contextualise my comments here; while I've spoken extensively to other women who've experienced date rape and sexual assault by known perpetrators, I don't know anyone personally who has been a victim of stranger-rape - or at least no-one who's talking about it. I do understand that clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder are natural, even expected, responses to these kinds of events. I understand, too, that both depression and PTSD can manifest as a feeling of being stuck, or trapped.

I'm prepared to accept that violent, pulled-into-a-dark-alley, knife-to-the-throat rape is an extraordinarily traumatic experience. What I'm disinclined to accept is the premise that that trauma is akin to death, because as I see it, it's simply not the case.

This is not intended to be an anti-feminist argument - far from it. I feel that readings of rape, both in academic discourse and the mass media, have come a long, long way from the time when a Queensland judge ruled that a woman who was raped was "asking for it" by wearing jeans. But I also feel that this reading of rape as the horror-of-horrors causes as many problems as it solves.

Hands up who remembers the case last year when a girl who alleged that she was gang-raped on a school trip overseas was depicted in the media as a slut who fabricated the allegations to cover up a consensual gang-bang after curfew? Do you remember the furore over the publication of images of this girl, out with her girlfriends, wearing a short skirt in a bar? And the accompanying text suggesting that this girl, in a short skirt, was exactly the kind of girl who would fabricate these kinds of allegations? "Look at her - she's not traumatised - she's not mutilating herself or isolating herself - she's not perpetually in tears - for god's sake, she's wearing a SHORT SKIRT - CLEARLY she's made it all up, as if she REALLY had been raped, she'd be a COMPLETE WRECK."

Yeah, right. I have nothing but sympathy for that girl trying to have a normal night out. Her life was turned upside down, first by the rape, then by the persecution of her school, then by a media circus. The expectation/requirement that she be reduced to a non-functioning emotional mess by a rape is as oppressive as the idea that a sexually active teen is a slut. Why should she not be able to function in normal, age-appropriate ways in society, even soon after a rape? I do and did. I know other women who do and did.

Reading rape-as-death becomes, to me, a way of blaming the victim for the act, when the victim responds in ways other than the socially-sanctioned response of mourning what is lost. Actually, I should rephrase that. Many victims of crime, violent, sexual or otherwise, may move through a period of mourning their innocence, their safety, whatever they perceive to be lost. However, I don't believe that rape should be read as death, or mourned in that way. There is a finality to death which is not present in rape. It is possible to move beyond that act, and to define yourself as a person outside the context of that act. The public insistence that rape is a defining moment in life is as oppressive as the memory of the rape. That memory is an idea we have to live with. What we do with it is up to us. We don't have to live with the ideas of the public, or of the mass media. We shouldn't be made to.

In a quiet rage, I once told someone that "I have no interest whatsoever in being a project, a resource, a victim or, in this case, an excuse for your paranoid behaviour." What I should have added to that was that I have no interest in being told what to do, feel, or say - a stubborn sentiment of independence that dates, according to my mum, from the time I was able to 'say' anything - not from That Night in high school.

Rape may change your life, but it sure doesn't end it.

EDITED 10/4/05

Zak told me the writing on this site was tiny, and I told him that it was the same size as a book, and that he was hallucinating, and various other hyperbolic things.

On my old computer, the one affectionately known as 'the heap of junk', the writing was indeed the size of the writing in a book. This was because, for reasons unknown to technically-incompetent me, the heap of junk defaulted to having enormous writing, mostly on web pages. I never tried to track down the problem more than half-heartedly, as I'm a disorganised ADD chick who never knows where her glasses are (either pair - so much for having a second pair solving the problem ...), and my life was made easier by large-print web-pages.

But here I am, in possession of a shiny new(ish) iBook (it's so pretty), and I can only say that Zak was wrong when he said the writing here was tiny.

It's fucking miniscule.

It's not the same size as any book I've ever seen. It's even smaller than the writing in my copy of War and Peace (something I never thought I'd say!), which was published in paperback in some obscure region of the former USSR where paper must be heavily rationed, as they've managed to cut the book down to a mere 1038 pages by printing it in about size 2 font. They should provide the damn thing with a magnifying glass (there's sand in the former USSR, right? Glass would be cheap there?). If I ever meet the publishers of that book, I'm going to club them to death with it. The summer I read War and Peace was boring and painful enough without having to squint to read every boring word -- but that's a story for another day.

Please note that when I say 'former USSR', in this case I think I might mean Britain. But I'm not going to go get the book and check, and former USSR has far more dramatic impact anyway, so let's leave it at that.

Anyhow, I do intend to change the size of the writing here back to something I can read, but maybe not til the weekend.

Until then, hang tight, and perhaps consider investing in Yugoslavian magnifying glasses.

'It was frightening. And excellent.'

I went to see Cake last night at the Enmore, which for those not in the know is a small theatre not so very far from my place. It was a night that I didn't expect a great deal from, and as is often the way, it turned out to be incredibly awesome.

First and foremost, it gave me a chance to go out wearing some spanking new leather gear, which made me feel all hardcore and cool (yeah, laugh it up. I am).

The theatre itself rocked. I'd never been there before, and was pleasantly surprised to see moulded plaster ceilings, directions to the 'Gents' and the 'Powder Room', and mega-cool iron light fittings. I could see it as a totally rocking burlesque venue ... but in these conservative times, it is instead a totally rocking live music venue, and knowing that it's cool makes me wish even more that I had laid out my ten-bazillion dollars last year to see the Stones play there.

But what really blew me away was just how good the band was. They were just sensational. Right up there with the Dresden Dolls gig last year -- although that was a pub gig, and so maybe not comparable.

Their trumpeter must think he's all that. Every damn time that he played so much as a note -- hell, every time he so much as reached for the trumpet -- the crowd went wild.

It is my belief that the guy up front of the band was hammered. No, wait, let me rephrase: it is my fervent hope that the guy up front of the band was hammered. He launched off into these mad segues, conducted the crowd in singing the choruses of the songs (over and over and over - I think we sang one of them for about ten minutes - first one section, then the next, the men, then the women, the tall, then the short), and at one point stopped in the middle of a song to treat us to a seven-minute spiel on the biological differences between men and women, and how this relates to methods of communication. The natural precursor to having us sing the chorus for ten minutes, no?

My favourite part, though, was the spiel about what a wonderful place Sydney is. I thought he'd forgotten the name of the place -- natural assumption after twenty minutes or so of talk about the 'powerful, uninhibited voices of, uhhhh, this wonderful city!' Anyhow, he eventually figured it out, or something, because he came out with this gem:

"Thank you for having me in your ... Sydney. It's a beautiful city. I had the opportunity today to walk in ... your park ... and I saw giant bats. It was frightening. And excellent."

Frightening. And excellent.

Ayup.