Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

1. Wrapping Paper See Through: Seriously. I want the power to see through wrapping paper to identify the gift within, not because I’m a party pooper but because giving a young person a mountain of fingerpaints right before naptime = Bad Idea Jeans. Presents are awesome. Finger paints are awesome. But that momentary dread of, “What is it and should I let a child open it now?” is one I’d like the see-through power to avoid, please.

2. Instant Caffeination: I would like to so much as look at the coffee machine and instantly boot up. It might save me from walking into the doorjam (ow).

3. Fall Back Every Night: You know spring forward and fall back? I want One More Hour Power – wherein I can stay up late and then set the clock back an hour before I go to bed. That way I get more reading time, which makes me a happy, happy Sarah.

4. No DCO: the power to avoid falling into instant lust for any article of clothing that is Dry Clean Only. Or that makes me itchy.

5. FileMaker In my Brain: the power to file, categorize and remember any and all romances I’ve read, so that my entire life isn’t one big Help a Bitch Out session wherein I toss books about on my shelf while mumbling about the blue cover that had a hero who was a spy. I think.

6. Traffic, Please: If I can’t have Fall Back power, then I want traffic control. No traffic when I need to get somewhere, lots of it when I’d like to delay arrival, and freaking TONS when I have a good book on the bus and don’t want to arrive at my destination any time soon.

See, I think any one of these minor superpowers would make for a marvelous heroine. It would certainly make me the heroine of my own day, that’s for damn sure.

Jane: Let me preface that I am a product of a Methodist and then fundamentalist upbringing.  The teaching is that my body is a temple to be used to worship God and nothing else.  I’ve strayed from that belief quite a bit but I can’t help but wonder if 18 years of strong religious upbringing doesn’t play a part. Also, I have experienced quite a bit of sexual harassment during the course of my work so maybe I am uber sensitive, but this all seems so wrong to me.

Mostly I find the idea of strangers touching my breasts in a fondling manner a bit gross.  But I did grope Candy.  I don’t mind breasts and I don’t mind if girlfriends of mine touch my breasts but I find something awful about them being exposed to strangers, particularly male strangers who are getting aroused by the random grope.

Sarah: Oh yeah, that discussion made me ill.

It was me you groped, by the way. We have a photo.

I can see the argument for electing to participate but the concept is a big skin crawler to me.

Jane: OMG - it was you, Sarah?  All this time I dreamed I had groped Candy.  Will you please wear a button, Candy?

Shoot, we should wear big green t-shirts that says “Grope Me” on the front and “I’ll Kick Your Ass” on the back.

Candy: On one hand, I can see the good-natured intention behind it. And hey, if you’re the sort of person who’s OK with having your breasts groped by total strangers, have a motherfucking ball.

On the other hand, it frustrates me that the originator of this idea didn’t really get WHY it speaks volumes that an explicit opt-out button is necessary, and why being randomly propositioned can feel violative even if you have the green button on.

And people on all sides (not just the pro-Open Source Boobs faction) don’t seem to recognize that there’s a difference between “Hey, can I grope your bazongas?” vs. “Hello. I think you’re pretty. Would you like to get coffee some time?”

I also don’t like the heavy implication (not necessarily in The Ferret’s original post, but in the ensuing comments) that if you don’t like the idea of the Open Source Boob Project or if you don’t want to opt in, you’re some sort of anti-sex prude. My attitude towards my breasts and who gets to touch them is dependent on all sorts of things, from my mood to the context to the company I’m in. Some days and in some situations, I’m OK with strangers touching my breasts. Other times, only lovers and very good friends get the privilege. Sometimes I don’t want them to be touched at all. It has to do with my intimacy boundaries. That sometimes means that yes, I’m being prudish, but most of the time, it just means I don’t want the girls to be touched.

These two articles by The Ferret ultimately make me want to smack his head: http://theferrett.livejournal.com/534169.html and http://theferrett.livejournal.com/535109.html

Good commentary on those two articles here.

Placing a disproportionately large burden on the woman to say no, instead of on the man to not act like a jackass in the first place, seems to be a popular cultural attitude, and I find that fascinating--there seems to be a lot of anger towards women regarding the “no means no” movement, and it’s been co-opted in interesting new ways to reinforce the existing madonna/whore dichotomy.

Jane: I think what I struggle with is this:

a) a woman dresses provocatively to be attractive
b) this necessarily means she wants attention
c) aren’t we actually giving this woman what she wants by paying attention to her?

Do guys deserve to be cut a break on this?  (Even beyond The Ferret’s complete idiotic explanation)

Candy: I’d argue that the leap between a) and b) is too big, and makes all sorts of unwarranted assumptions; it also blurs the difference between the various types of attention--under this rubric, anything between “Hi, I think your dress looks great on you” to “You have an amazing body, and the dress makes it look really sexy” to “Hi, can I grab your tits?” to “Hey, I want to fuck you” are treated equally. I’m not even going into the different types of gaze and touch that can accompany the words. These types of attention do not have parity, and some types of attention are violative.

This is not to say that some women don’t deliberately engage in cockteasing or solicit aggressive sexual attention. Context can add a lot--a swinger’s party is different from a dance club is different from a costume party at a friend’s. So can the body language of the person. The thing is, why should the assumption fall to the woman-want-sexual-attention default? Why is acting by the socially acceptable standards of the situation seen as somehow a burden by these guys? Because you can practically smell the resentment from the men who think this way.

Jane: Okay, let me play devil’s advocate (better than The Ferret, I hope).  I’m just trying to see if there is a defensible position.

Men are trained to view women sexually in a certain matter.  This is reinforced when women themselves dress in provocative manner such as really short skirts or see through tops.  A project like Open Source allows men to actually deconstruct the myth of women as simply sexual creatures.  By demystifying the breast, we take away the sexual implication of the breast and see it nothing more as another body part, much like an elbow or a hand.

Like Seinfeld once said, it is simply because the breast is so often hidden that it has such allure.  In the past ages, ankles were deemed provocative.  We are simply trying to help empower women, reduce sexualization between the sexes by normalizing body parts.

Candy: That would be an excellent premise, except the Open Source Boob Project is explicitly sexual by nature and aim. It actually encourages men to see women as sexual creatures--as sexual body parts, actually. A less kindly interpretation of the project basically tells people two things, depending on gender:

It tells guys, “Hey, you guys like tits, and you want to grab them. Here’s blanket permission to ask for a grope.”

It tells women, “Hey, guys like your tits, and they want to grab them. Deal with it.”

Even with a more charitable interpretation, I think it’s pretty clear that the aim is to normalize and make explicit a certain sort of sexualization and reductionism. I’d argue that we sexualize women in that way plenty as it is; we don’t necessarily need something like this.

As some commenters on theweaselking noted, the underlying premise is kind of insulting to both men AND women.

Here’s something to ponder:

I don’t like how one-sided the project is. I love the idea of demystifying the human body and allowing people to start separating nudity from sex, and separating sex from prurience. But why focus on women, and why breasts? Why no reciprocity? Critics of this idea were talking about the Open Source Ball Project, but I’d say that’s not truly analogous to breasts. Why not the Open Source Butt Project for both men and women? (Side note: Open Source Butt Project sounds like it’s about something else entirely. Woo damn.)

I don’t think the Open Source Boob Project is a bad idea, necessarily. I just think it’s a bad idea at this point in history. Once people have calmed down a little about our fiddly bits and have gotten their heads around sex and sexuality a bit more, I imagine it’d be less skeezy in tone and execution. But arguably, once that point in history has arrived, hopefully something like the Open Source Boob Project wouldn’t be necessary.

Jane: I would argue that if you are to demystify the human body, you don’t start with the collarbone or the elbow or the knee.  You start with a part of the body that is deemed forbidden else the mystic element is not ever going to be ameliorated.  We’ll be stuck groping the calloused elbow and any growth or understanding is halted halfway to the heart of the endeavor.  (If you don’t mind the body metaphor).  The breast is a protrudence and therefore because it exists away from the body it is less offensive to touch it as opposed to say a thigh part.  A thigh is so close to the clitoris which is a sexual entity that even the most careful of touches might impinge upon someone’s sexual boundaries.  The breast, though, is out there.  It’s almost invading space of another’s.  In the way that it is created, it virtually asks, as much as an inanimate object can, to be touched.  Thus because the breast is a mystical part of the female body and because it is virtually existential, it is the right part with which to begin such a demystification product.

There is no corollary for men.  In part because there is very little of the male body that is not out there.  Men routinely walk around without shirts or shirts unbuttoned.  Their legs, knees, ankles and feet are also regularly exposed.  If there is any mystique to the male body it is centered around their sex organ.  Further, I would argue that in our patriarchical society, the male sex organ has no mystique.  It is discussed at great length in books, in popular culture.  There are a host of jokes about it.  Men are so intimate with their organ that it is frequently named, like a pet.

The problem with waiting until there is less hysteria about the woman’s body is a chicken/egg argument.  How does one reduce hysteria without first de-sexualizing nudity? Nudity and sexuality are so intertwined at this point that even the casual brush of an arm across the breast is deemed a come-on or an assault.  If there is no starting point at which we become more accepting of nudity and separating it from sexuality there will be no enlightenment.  There will be no progress in the demystification of the woman’s body and thus, no progress in reducing objectification.  If not now, when?  If not the breast, what?

Candy: Actually, if you’re talking about demystifying the human body, you DO start with the collarbone, elbow and knee. That’s what the flappers did in the 20s. In fact, that’s how we’ve progressed--small and medium-sized steps followed by the occasional big lunge.

Female breasts are almost definitely going to be the next body part to be demystified--it already has been in huge parts of Europe. In America, public breastfeeding brought a lot of attention to this issue, as did Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction.

I’m not arguing against demystifying the boob; I’m just saying the Open Source Boob Project is a pretty silly way to do it. Groping a boob is different from demystifying a breast as another body part to be accepted and loved. The Open Source Boob Project’s explicit aim and intent was sexual and reductionist. That tends to raise a lot of people’s hackles up in the wrong way. If you want to raise hackles the right way, try organizing a topless march or a topless bike ride--thumb your nose at nonsensical and unjust public obscenity laws that make it OK for men to be shirtless in public but not women. That sort of gesture doesn’t just avoid the peer pressures and weirdness of the Open Source Boob Project, it also pinpoints existing inequities instead of reinforcing them, and it’s not explicitly sexual in intent even as it brings attention to the inappropriate sexualization of a body part.

But maybe I’m just a bitch for civil disobedience.

And frankly, I think the Open Source Butt Project is a viable alternative to the Boob Project. Men and women can both participate and the butt is every bit as sexualized for men as it is women. Now if only we can get enough gay and bisexual men to attend these cons to make the table-turning worthwhile....

Jane:If the flappers began demystifying the body with collarbone, elbow and knee, we women in the 21st Century need to move beyond that. It is interesting that you returned to the statements and position of The Ferret.  Would your response to the OSBP be different if it had not been presented in the sexualized manner it was?

Candy I’m not necessarily opposed to the Open Source Boob Project, per se. Mostly, I think it was poorly implemented in some ways, and I wish the organizers had been more honest about their intent--they tried hard to sell the “We want to demystify breasts! And be sex-positive! And be feminist! If you don’t support it, you must be some kind of sex-negative freak!” angle, but mostly, the vibe I got was “Holy shit, dudes! Boobs! We can haz them!” “Hey, let’s demystify the human body and reclaim sex as clean and healthy” seemed like more of a side-effect.

I was also exasperated by their inability to see how certain types of sexual attention and objectification, even without spilling over into insistence or harassment, can constitute a violation. I was also tired of how the other side--a very shrill feminist side--was attempting to insist that ALL types of unsolicited sexual attention are necessarily violative. Plenty of stupidity cakes to go around for everybuddy!

My Open Source Butt Project was suggested as a less gender-biased alternative to the Open Source Boob Project. It still suffers from many of the same issues (reductionism, objectification), but I think that by opening these gung-ho “sex positive” men to the same sort of potentially unwelcome and unwanted sexual attention, they’d finally get why this sort of idea skeeves some of us out thoroughly (which is why I think it’d work only if the gay/bi male population for that experiment were roughly equal to the straight male population, and that the men knew it).

Sarah: As I fall solidly under the IANAL camp, I only have the following rebuttal (HA! BUTT!)

Jane said: “I would argue that in our patriarchical society, the male sex organ has no mystique.  It is discussed at great length in books, in popular culture.  There are a host of jokes about it.  Men are so intimate with their organ that it is frequently named, like a pet.  “

I disagree. First, the male sex organ’s appearance in popular media has, until now, been the unofficial border for an NC-17/hard core rating. Playboy Channel? Boobs and shaved vaginas. Skinemax After Dark? Boobs. Maybe a stray vag. But the erect or even flaccid penis? Porn city, folks. The penis is objectified almost into celebrity status, in a way that boobs and vaginas are not. For something that’s “hanging out there,” the penis is often the last remaining sex organ hiding under the fig leaf when everyone else in the soft-core movie has played bad hands of strip poker.

Which is part of what makes the newest Apatow movie reviews so interesting: Apatow goes for full frontal male nudity as a humor device, shocking in it’s full flaccid humiliating glory in much the same way as “There’s Something About Mary” and the zipper scene. And that wasn’t even a full penis. That was just parts of one (painful parts, I might add).

Consider, also, the weight given to the “big reveal” when the hero finally drops trou in a romance novel sex scene - most authors take deliberate steps to acknowledge The Mighty Wang with as much aplomb as my GPS when it announces, “You have Arrived!” So there’s mighty flaw in your argument that the penis has no mystique. In my opinion, it has the most mystique of all the sex organs.

The new law extends the state court’s jurisdiction to allow for rulings that international court judgments against New York authors and publishers are unenforceable if the court decides that the libel law of the pursuing country’s judicial system is at odds with U.S. protections of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

The law came to the NY State Senate when “the state’s laws did not protect Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American author, from a possible bid by a Saudi Arabian businessman to enforce a summary judgment issued by the High Court in London.”

From the Times UK Online:

Dr Ehrenfeld claimed her book, Funding Evil, in which she makes a series of allegations about the charitable activities of wealthy Saudi businessman Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, was protected under the freedom of speech section of the US constitution.

But in a 17-page ruling by Judge Ciparick in December, the New York Court of Appeals in Albany ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over Mr Mahfouz as they found he had not carried out any business in the state.

The Sheikh has always vehemently denied any link with terrorism, or terrorist support or funding, and claimed that the book was defamatory in suggesting that he supported al-Qaeda and terrorism either directly or indirectly.

Amid proclamations from state senators that “New York is the free speech capital of the world” (which prompts me to add, “Yeah?! I GOT YER FREE SPEECH RIGHT HERE!” because I am immature) Senator Martin Golden explained that “writers and journalists would have foreign defamation suits declared unenforceable in New York unless the foreign law provides the same free speech protections guaranteed under our Constitution.”

Dr. Ehrenfeld has described Mr. Mahfouz as a “serial libel tourist.” He’s scored several victories against other authors in the UK who have published similar allegations about his financial activities, and Cambridge University Press withdrew all copies of a book entitled Alms for Jihad by J. Millard Burr and Robert O.Collins.

Currently there’s one copy of Alms for Jihad on Ebay US, and the starting/buy it now price: $150.00. Some American libraries have “refused to withdraw the book from their shelves.” Searches of the New York Public Library catalog reveal two copies, both of which are listed as “lost.”

What I find most curious is how a court in New York will evaluate another country’s libel laws against the US protections of freedom of speech and of press so as to allow a potential suit to be declared unenforceable.

While I’m not sure this has direct links to romance, per se, despite the prevalence of sheikhs in each month’s category issues, I’m fascinated by the New York State ruling - particularly since many, if not most, major publishing houses are located in Manhattan.