Why We Don't Need More Feminism Tests

Over the past couple days, this Daily Dot article about a proposed alternative to the famous Bechdel test has been getting a lot of airtime. For clarification, here's the definitions of both.

Bechdel Test:
1) Two named female characters
2) who talk to each other
3) about something other than a man

Mako Mori Test:

1) At least one female character 

2) Who gets her own narrative arc

3) That is not about supporting a man’s story

While it's obviously well-intentioned, I think the Mako Mori test is missing the point.

The Bechdel test was immortalized in a comic that pointed out a serious problem using a memorable little catchphrase. It was never meant as the be and all and end all of feminism in movies. It was a clever way of making a larger statement.

A movie is not lady-friendly because it passes the Bechdel test. A movie is not lady-unfriendly because it fails the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test isn't a test at all. It's just commentary.

We need commentary. We need people to notice that Hollywood is an unfriendly environment for female characters. What we don't need are any more ways to make feminism divisive. I think we've got that covered.

Twilight and Tom Clancy

Everybody's talking about Stephenie Meyer's Variety interview. I've seen a range of reactions from relief that she doesn't intend on continuing the series, to people upset that she's distancing herself from the franchise that brought her such success. Here's the relevant part:

DM: What about a return to “Twilight?”SM: I get further away every day. I am so over it. For me, it’s not a happy place to be.
DM: Is the door completely closed on that?SM: Not completely. What I would probably do is three paragraphs on my blog saying which of the characters died. I’m interested in spending time in other worlds, like Middle-Earth.

I can't find it within myself to be surprised at this, personally. Maybe I'm a little surprised that it didn't come sooner.

For all intents and purposes, Stephenie Meyer has been held up as a cultural pariah, a herald of ZE END TIMES, because she wrote a book about teen vampire love that got super super popular. From a Sundance 2013 interview:

SM: There are a lot of people who think that the Twilight books should have never been written. I even saw something with Doctor Who going back in time to stop me.

There's no denying that the world hasn't treated Stephenie Meyer with respect. This is what Robert Pattinson - the guy who owes his worldwide fame and approximately twelve gazillion dollars to Twilight - had to say about the books and the woman who wrote them:

"...when I read [Twilight], it seemed like... I was convinced Stephenie was convinced she was Bella and it was like it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published. It was like reading her sexual fantasy, especially when she said it was based on a dream and it was like, 'Oh I've had this dream about this really sexy guy,' and she just writes this book about it. Some things about Edward are so specific, I was just convinced - I was like, 'This woman is mad. She's completely mad and she's in love with her own fictional creation.'"

 Classy!

I've never been a Twilight fan - I'm not a paranormal romance fan in general, particularly for YA. The whole Angel thing didn't work for me in Buffy, and it doesn't work for me now. And there are definitely some problematic elements to Twilight, particularly in the way that Bella allows herself to be treated and how she seems to derive all of her self-worth from being with Edward.

But on the other hand, those are issues I see a lot of other places as well. I certainly don't think we should condone the issues in Twilight, but holding up Stephenie Meyer as the Harbringer of All Literary Doom rather than as a symptom of a larger problem seems disingenuous at best.

Although the majority of consumers loved Twilight enough to make Stephenie Meyer rich many times over (and enough to make a whooooole lot of people rich off her coattails), anyone in any sort of position of power uniformly mocked it: talk show hosts, film critics, other writers. Twilight might not be a masterpiece of philosophical thought, but it's about as realistic and well-written as your average Tom Clancy or Clive Cussler novel. The only difference is, Twilight is an example of the consumer power of women and young girls who like romance rather than of men who like books about international nuclear threats.

I can think of a lot of reasons that Stephenie Meyer would want to leave behind the memory of being universally mocked for the sin of writing a romance that got too popular.

Lenore Houston, International Woman of Mystery (In All the Wrong Ways)

Every so often, the FBI will do a "Celebrating Women's History" post where they talk about the three first female special agents. Two of them were hired in the early 1920s and promptly "resigned" when a new FBI Director took office. But in 1924, at the repeated urging of Congressman Graham of Pennsylvania, 45-year-old Lenore Hoover was promoted from "special employee" (aka investigative assistant) to "special agent".

This is the FBI's standard blurb about her:

In November 1924, Lenore Houston, an employee in Philadelphia, became the first and only female special agent hired by Director Hoover. While serving in the Philadelphia office, Miss Houston received excellent performance ratings and was earning $3,100 a year by April 1927. She resigned in 1928, shortly after being transferred to the Washington Field Office.

And then... nothing.

It's almost impossible to find any information about any one of the three early female FBI hires online. Where did they come from? What happened after they "retired"? Nobody seems to know, or care.

Lenore intrigued me because she was hired at a time that the few women in the organization were being culled, and FBI Director Hoover only hired her under extreme duress. I wanted to know who this woman was... and what happened to her after only four years at the job (which was still the longest duration of any of the early female agents).

I had to really pull out the google-fu to find anything at all about Lenore Houston past the standard tagline up there. And I'm not nearly satisfied with what I did find; it's not enough by half. But here's what I know.

Lenore Houston was born on August 12th, 1878 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Joseph W Houston, was some sort of doctor. Her mother, Esther Rakemore, was part of a big old-blood German family that had been settled in the area since 1710. Lenore had three brothers, but one died at only two years old. Lenore's eldest brother Wilmer Willis Houston moved away in 1904 and went on to become a coal magnate. 

In 1890, Lenore Houston was in the sophomore class of Swarthmore College. The records list her as one out of seven "unclassified" students, which I suspect means that she wasn't intending to graduate. Her major is listed as "Irregular", which probably falls along the same lines - almost every other student with the "Irregular" major was a woman. In ye oldeny days of crap a lot of women who had the money and inclination would take a few years of college as a sort of finishing school.

However, I suspect Lenore wasn't there with the intent of becoming a more genteel lady.

At some point she joined the first female secret society, Pi Beta Phi - Lenore is listed in the Pi Beta Phi Arrow as a fraternity member for the year of 1898. This indicates that she got to college and immediately signed up, since that's the only way the timeline makes sense. That would make Lenore 19 when she got to school and immediately joined a secret society.

Pi Beta Phi's history is pretty cool - twelve friends decided that they wanted to create a society where they'd enjoy all the benefits that the male fraternities got. Clearly the idea was popular, because branches almost immediately spread to neighboring schools.

I know very little about fraternities and secret societies in general (my college wasn't big on them, so my knowledge is all secondhand through friends), but I know that right now in order to join a secret society you have to be "tapped" for it - basically, they choose you rather than you choosing them. If it was true back then too, that paints a picture of Lenore as someone striking enough to immediately be desired for induction into an exclusive society.

Between school and the FBI, there's a big blank of twenty years. She completed three years of college and some sort of separate business course, but other than that, it's a void. What happened in those years? I can't imagine she was content to sit at home.

Perhaps her later recommendations hold a clue - Governor Sproul was elected in Lancaster, but Congressman Graham had no particular connection to Lancaster, and the latter was the more ardent advocate for Lenore later in her career. Lenore certainly came from a degree of privilege, but her eldest brother didn't inherit enough land to merit him staying in Pennsylvania, and the middle brother did nothing of note at all. It's justifiable that Lenore's family might have known Governor Sproul well enough to earn her a letter of recommendation, even under the strange circumstances (a single woman in her 40s who wanted to be an FBI special agent), but Congressman Graham? I suspect there's another story there that's lost somewhere in the sands of time.

In June 1922, Lenore applied for the position of special agent of the FBI. Governor Sproul and Congressman Graham of Pennsylvania both recommended her to FBI Director Hoover - multiple times. They recommended her until she finally got hired on January 16th, 1924, as a special employee. She went off to New York for training. The Special Agent in Charge (apparently that was a title back then) said that she was "very anxious to learn and do everything that could be asked of a woman special agent".

And then he recommended her to be tasked with white slave law violations, aka the same assignment they gave both other female agents. There wasn't much going on in white slave law violations, if you catch my drift. They assigned Lenore Houston to Office Tumbleweed.

Congressman Graham recommended Lenore to Director Hoover some more until finally on November 6 1924, Hoover changed Lenore's designation to special agent.

By 1927, Lenore's salary had doubled to over $13/day, so she must have been doing good work. On August 29 1927 she was transferred to the Washington Field Office with Hoover himself. That's when things started going wrong.

Her performance ratings went down, although only to 76.7%, which seems remarkable given that the vast majority of her colleagues thought she didn't belong there. The last performance review she received stated that, "This agent has performed satisfactory investigative work, but her attitude in connection with her position impairs her efficiency."

It's impossible not to wonder what that means, and not to be hugely impressed that she did such good work they couldn't deny it even when they disliked her. Her attitude in connection with her position? What attitude? Was she a wealthy society woman (albeit an educated one) used to getting her way, who couldn't adapt to a change in location? Or did Lenore make it too clear that she resented being treated as less than an equal?

On October 20 1928, Lenore submitted her resignation. Bear in mind, however, that both the previous female agents "resigned"... after Director Hoover specifically requested that they resign.

For two years there's nothing, and then a record from December 30 1930 states that Lenore Houston was confined to a hospital. She was apparently suffering from hallucinations, and threatened to shoot Hoover as soon as she was released.

Hey, know who was a contemporary of Lenore Houston? 

Nellie Bly: "I left the insane ward with pleasure and regret–pleasure that I was once more able to enjoy the free breath of heaven; regret that I could not have brought with me some of the unfortunate women who lived and suffered with me, and who, I am convinced, are just as sane as I was and am now myself."

There's no proof that Lenore wasn't insane, but there's no proof that she was, and a woman alone in the world at that time would have a hell of a time fighting back if The Powers That Be wanted her gone. Her education would be a mark of eccentricity; her lack of husband would be proof that something wasn't quite right. Her recorded "insanity" sounds lucid: Lenore knew that she was confined, and she knew it was Hoover's fault.

Nellie Bly: "Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted, the crazier I was thought to be by all except one physician."

It's impossible to know what really happened, but it was 44 years before another female agent was hired by the FBI.

Lenore Houston died on November 30th, 1933. The gravestone is large but plain; all it says is her name, dates, and parents. There are no loving messages, no testament to a woman who seems like she must have been larger than life. In fact, there's no testament to her anywhere, except a blurb on the FBI website that obscures half the story.

For the meantime, this will have to stand as tribute to a woman who was exceptional in life and mysterious in death.

Criticize the Women Who Allowed It, Not Anthony Weiner's Behavior!

This morning I was doing my usual scan of the day's news when I came across a lovely New York Times articled titled "Weiner's Women".

(Because as you know, if a women engages in sexual activity with a man, she belongs to him.)

Some highlights of the article include:

THERE is something missing from the endless moralizing and sophomoric jokes aimed at Anthony D. Weiner. That something is the role of women in a coarse and creepy Internet culture dedicated to the fulfillment of both male and female desires for virtual carnal knowledge. 

You know what we don't do enough? Criticize women!

Nevertheless, the female thrill seekers are as bewildering in their own way as the sleazy would-be mayor of New York is in his. Why is he called a pervert while Sydney Leathers’s statement that their Internet contact progressed to phone sex twice a week — “a fantasy thing for both of us,” she told one tabloid TV show — is greeted with neutral, if not exactly respectful, attention? Some fantasy. Cinderella, where are you now that we need you?

A married man in a position of power, authority, and responsibility sending unsolicited sexual images to women who may or may not want to see it, who may or may not be underage = a woman enjoying phone sex. Good to know. Cinderella, come back, I want to clean floors again!

These women are not victims of men like Mr. Weiner (or of ordinary, obscure sex seekers in the digital world) but full and equal participants. There is no force involved here; people of both sexes are able to block unwanted advances. Women are certainly safer on the Web than they would be going home with strangers they meet in bars.

Okay, so... women are capable of being safe and equal online... but you cannot imagine ANY POSSIBLE REASON that women would want to engage in sexual activity online rather than in person.

But the “sex” that women engage in with often anonymous men on the Web has nothing to do with pride in one’s body or mind.

She knows this because shut up, she does.

Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography.

Interacting with a single human being that you chose, for your own reasons, to interact with = getting paid to have sex on camera. Okay?

Nor do I consider it worse for women than for men to engage in this behavior. But I do suspect — because I concede the validity of the numerous studies concluding that men are more interested in and aroused by pornography than women are — that women who settle for digital pornography are lowering their expectations and hopes even more drastically than their male collaborators are.

Every woman is the same! Conform, dammit!

As a feminist, I find it infinitely sad to imagine a vibrant young woman sitting alone at her computer and turning herself into a sex object for a man (or a dog) she does not know — even if she is also turning him into a sex object.

She's saying it as a feminist, so it's okay, guys.

This is not the sort of equality envisioned by feminism. It is, rather, the equality of the lowest common denominator — a state of affairs that debases the passion and reason of both men and women.

If you don't work for the New Yorker, you are worthless. Also, women being held to higher standards than men = TRUE FEMINISM DUHHHHHH

Let me show you an online NYT post, shoved into the bowels of its online archives:

Set aside the debates over fidelity, monogamy and marriage for a moment. Just take Weiner’s behavior on its own terms, without reference to his marriage vows. Here is a middle-aged man sending photos of his erection (clothed and unclothed) to women he’s never met, aping the panting misogyny of hard-core porn in chats with near-strangers, snapping preening photos of his pecs coming out of the shower and sending them to some of his more eager Twitter followers. Do we really need the additional ratchet of adultery to say that this is inappropriate behavior? That it’s gross, undignified, and unbecoming of a serious adult? I know that there’s a cultural libertarianism afoot now that sneers at somewhat-nebulous concepts like “dignity” and “shame,” and that reduces morality entirely to issues of consent. But I don’t care how ubiquitously tempting virtual sex becomes: A culture that “adjusts” itself to accommodate grown men in positions of authority tweeting their endowments (because hey, he was just “texting while male,” and anyway it’s as addictive as Angry Birds!) would be adjusting itself into a kind of barbarism.

Whether or not you agree with the content of the article isn't important. What the article addresses is. Because you'll notice (even if you read the entire thing), not once does the (male, btw) author of the article discuss the motivations or worthiness of the female participants. Why? Because it's not relevant.

Women are an easy target. Their actions are subject to a huge degree of scrutiny. So often in our culture, we choose to criticize women rather than men, simply because it's easier. Remember the Steubenville case? How often did we talk about how those boys shouldn't have done what they did, and how often did we talk about how that teenage girl shouldn't have dared to put herself in any sort of vulnerable situation?

I trawled through seven pages of search results for "online sex" on the New York Times website, and found zero articles dissecting the motivations of men. It's all about women and children - aka, the people who need to be protected from themselves. The people who need to be told what to think. The people who need to be told what to do.

This may shock you, but women are, in fact, not children! And there's no need to discuss their motivations, or give them permission to do anything. You can keep your True Believer "sort of equality envisioned by feminism", NYT - my kind of feminism makes me an equal, plain and simple.

Marion Bartoli, Robert H. Goddard, and Why Every Woman Is Princess Peach

Everyone's talking about the Dustin Hoffman interview where he talks about society's beauty bias towards women, and deservedly so. It's an important statement about the way we treat women.

But this goes farther than just judging women by their looks. We judge women by their availability, too. We judge them by their passivity. We judge them by the rubric of Cinderella and Princess Peach.

Society judges women by their value as possessions.

It sounds extreme, but to a large extent, it's very true. I think that most women have had the experience of having a pleasant conversation with a guy, only for him to completely shut down when he finds out that you have a boyfriend/are married/are a nun engaged to Jesus. Not only that, men will often be outraged - how dare this woman waste his time?! After all, there's only one reason to strike up a conversation with a woman. She should have known that, and not wasted his time with her presence.

We see these kind of assumptions every day in the media. A few weeks ago a Wimbledon commentator said about a female tennis player:

I just wonder if her dad, because he has obviously been the most influential person in her life, did say to her when she was 12, 13, 14 maybe, ‘listen, you are never going to be, you know, a looker. You are never going to be somebody like a Sharapova, you’re never going to be 5ft 11, you’re never going to be somebody with long legs, so you have to compensate for that’

Marion Bartoli won Wimbledon 2013.

I'm truly at a loss as to what her looks have to do with it.

Then there's the Australian soccer coach of a World Cup team, who last month after being told where to sit said:

I'll sit here. You push me around like my wife. There is a saying, it is a very ... er ... women should shut up in public. I say it to my wife at home.

And then he "apologized":

To everyone who may feel offended by that, I offer a sincere apology.
It was off the record, it was more a funny remark.
It was nothing against any women or whatever. Definitely just a complete misunderstanding.

It was off the record. I see. That seems very relevant to whether or not he said something offensive. It was "more a funny remark". Why was it humorous? Humor is the juxtaposition of the expected with the unexpected. There's no punchline. Osieck doesn't like being pushing around by his wife, and he tells her to shut up. He thinks other women should shut up too. That's not a joke, that's an opinion.

If it was nothing against women, then why must he sincerely apologize? You clarify misunderstandings. You don't apologize for them. And yet here he is, "sincerely" "apologizing".

Men expect women to please them. They believe that women should take it seriously when they're told to be quiet "like Barbie" (an inanimate, unthinking doll). The papers would never dream of headlines analyzing John Kerry's appearance, but Hillary Clinton's aesthetic appeal is of utmost importance. 

Women need to do three things to please men: be pretty, demure, and sexually available.

And that's a big problem, because when I hire someone for a job, or hell, want a decent conversation, I don't care about any of those three things. I care about their skills and character. Judging someone's quality as a person by their looks, their ability to smile quietly, or their willingness to have sex with me devalues them to the status of a Real Doll. Judging someone by their looks and not their capabilities turns them into an object.

:) :) :) :) :)

We don't respect objects, or value their opinions. When a Magic 8 Ball tells you yes or no, you don't take its advice seriously. Why would you? It's just a possession.

Women hold 4.6% of the Fortune 1000 CEO positions. 67% of college graduates are women.

But women are expected to be demure. If we protest the status quo, we are being ungrateful and unrealistic. After all, many women choose to go into traditionally low-paying jobs (the kind that they are trained to see as their "nurturing" domain from childhood). We have to give "the system" time to adjust to the fact that women have brain stems. Expecting huge amounts of progress quickly is just absurd.

In 1919, Robert H. Goddard made spaceflight and engineering possibility with his groundbreaking paper "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes". In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite into space. In 1969, the first human stepped onto the moon.

It took mankind exactly 50 years to go from using the telegraph to landing a spaceship on the moon. 

93 years ago women were given (how nice of the government, to grant us human rights) the right to vote in the United States. And yet today we still have articles from Forbes explaining why women need to sit down and shut up on Wall Street so that the menfolk won't be distracted. Because obviously the men should stay on Wall Street. Because men are, apparently, inherently more capable than women.

Woman. Man. Black. Disabled. Gay. Transgender. Which one of these people is the most intelligent? Which one is the kindest? Which one has the greatest ability to process non-linear thinking?

Judging people by what they are rather than who they are is demonstrably stupid.

There was a study done recently about how any comments at all about a female politician's looks harm her chances with voters. It didn't surprise me. Commenting on a female politician's looks remind the voters that she isn't a person - she's a woman. She's an ornament. She's social currency. She's a charming, smiling, dutiful reward after a man fights his complex, fascinating inner demons and becomes the hero of the story.

This plot of the most recent (2013) Mario video game.

Yes, Mario, your princess is (still) in another castle. 

#StandWithWendy

In case you missed it - this was a pretty incredible thing to be a part of, even hundreds of miles away.

Women in Combat

There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about female soldiers for a variety of reasons:

1) Women being allowed to fight on the front lines

2) Sexual assault claims

3) Special forces opening to women

I'm only talking about 1 and 3, although 2 plays its part.

Women in America have been pushing for a long time to be allowed to fight on the front lines and to try out for the Special Forces.

Think about that for a second.

To be allowed.

I don't know how to explain how wrong this issue is any better than that. Who is anyone to tell a grown woman that she can't fight for her country in the capacity she's capable of? We're told that "Americans do not want their women hunting and killing the enemy". Well sorry, nameless and faceless Americans, but I don't care what you want.

The main argument against fully integrating (yeah, these arguments always look so good later on in history, huh?) women into the armed forces comes from plaintive cries of WHY DON'T YOU REALIZE WOMEN'S PHYSIOLOGY IS DIFFERENT, THEY ARE WEEEEAAAAAKKKK. And it is absolutely true that a majority of women have different capabilities than men.

Were you listening? I said *different*.

See, what usually happens during the passionate spiels by men about how it simply does not make biological sense for women to be allowed (allowed) in combat, is at some point they will slip and say something like, "War is brutal and bloody. It's no place for women." and, "This isn't Women's Rights 101 for the feminazis". At which point I stop having any respect for their point of view, because it is clearly coming from a place of agenda. And the agenda is to deny the basic right of autonomy to 51% of the population in order to keep the status quo in place.

If these hand-wringers were actually worried about the optimal utilization of female soldiers instead of WE CAN'T LET THE WIMMENS JUST DO WHATEVER THEY WANT GAWD DO YOU KNOW HOW HARRRRD IT WILL BE FOR US TO DEAL WITH, they would be begging The Powers That Be not for restrictions on female soldiers, but to apply brainpower to finding the best use for female soldiers.

Because while most women are not physically capable in the same way as men, not all men are huge hulking brutes easily capable of tossing a 250 pound fallen comrade over their shoulder on the way out of a firefight. There are variations in build amongst men, and the military has shockingly seemed capable of adapting to use all these different men in the best possible way.

Fully integrating female soldiers into the military does require more serious thought - but not about whether we should do it. Women are not nails, and dear old Judeo-Christian patriarchy is not a hammer. Good leadership utilizes its assets by understanding the strengths of its individuals. If the military is unable to use female soldiers effectively, it's not the fault of female soldiers - it's the fault of shoddy leadership.

A defense of GIRLS, by someone who has never actually seen it

I notice that GIRLS - written, directed and acted by women - is taking an awful lot of flak for its supposed narrow, self indulgent, and inconsequential content.

Know what's also airing on television right now? BIG BANG THEORY, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, and RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. Given the dubious depth of these sitcoms, I find it really freaking suspect that a show which attempts to take the lives of twenty-something girls somewhat seriously rather than outright mocking and dismissing them is being torn apart like this.

The frenzied arm-flailing and outright venom I see directed toward this show, and particularly its creator, is astonishing. You're complaining about racism? Sorry, I must have missed all the racial diversity on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. You're complaining about nepotism? Sorry, you must have missed the last trillion Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Pine movies.

The truth is that this show is being held to the classic "have to work twice as hard to be half as good" minority principle. Because GIRLS is a show made by women for women, it is expected to transcend the norm of pop culture. And it apparently doesn't. Did you hold SCRUBS to the same standards? Or TWO AND A HALF MEN?

You might not like GIRLS, and that's fine. It doesn't sound like my cup of tea personally, so I haven't bothered to watch it. But if you're frothing at the mouth over the hollow mockery of a human being (believe it or not those are all separate links, and it took me basically five minutes to find them. Seriously) that is Lena Dunham... either admit that you're being a misogynistic jerk, or sit down and shut up.