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"Why my body does not exist for your viewing pleasure"
March 27, 2012 - 1:13am
Great blog post!
Why my body doesn't exist for your viewing pleasure: An open letter to Ian Brown and friends
Hard to pick out just a couple of paragraphs to quote - the whole blog post is worth quoting!
And I love this:
Ha! :D
But you know what wiped the smile off my face? The first two commenters under her article are total assholes. The final two are relatively clueless. Gawd, it's like reading the Toronto Star comments.
I alerted on those first two comments(does the alert feature work on that part of the website yet? It didn't for a long time).
when i read this article in the globe this morning the first thing that came to mind was how creepy this guy was. There's nothing wrong with briefly admiring someone who is physically attractive, but this guy seems to be the leering type. i mean, he wrote an article to try and justify it in a national paper...
it's like he's saying "hey young ladies, when you're like 50, you're going to be BEGGING for all that unwanted attention you get now, so stop complaining and get it while you can!..."
and what prompted this article? did he just get reamed out by someone for staring at them or something?
a very strange article indeed...
When I read the article, I kept wondering why a Globe editor didn't kill it before it was printed.
A leering 50 year old man, and...say...an 18 year old female relative of his, perhaps his daughter. Would the article have been written differently? What might he say about his daughter's right to step out of her house without being visually dressed down by every greying middle aged male she might encounter on any given day? Maybe it's a school teacher, someone in a position of authority, the next door neighbor, the bus driver, the repairman he's just hired to enter his house to perform work.
Manipulative uncle-boyfriend and vulnerable, pubescent teenaged daughter. Pond life everywhere.
The obvious qualifiers that anyone might put in place where it concerns someone close to themselves, only makes the entire rationale suitable for a toss out of the nearest window, along with everything else wrong with it.
I remember Brown spouting this horseshit on Morningside, with Peter Gzowski jollying it along. Not a huge surprise that a young ogler, enabled and supported by peers to the degree that it's been part of his professional reputation/mythology for decades, has evolved into an old ogler.
A creep at any age.
I agree with everything said above. The only part I don't get about Meghan Murphy's article is the focus on age difference. What does that add? Is there something more offensive about a 20-year-old being ogled by a 58-year-old than by a 28-year-old? As writer said, "a creep at any age".
On a day when I woke up hopeful I read trash like this and dispair. Goddess will we ever learn?
First a disclosure: i know Ian Brown slightly and generally hold his work in high regard. The article in The Globe and Mail is a piece of seasonal fluff that simply does not support the grim baggage it pleases Ms.Murphy to heap upon it.
But I'm a male and this is the feminism forum. After discussion with my 78 year old mother who had also read both pieces, SHE wrote the following, and I include it with her permission, since my own language was less subtle (the word 'horseshit' featured prominently):
This blog is really rather sad. All over the world, including in Canada, children, women and , yes, men, are being subjected to extreme forms of sexual abuse. Many good people are aware of it and doing their best to prevent it, or to help the victims of it.
Meanwhile in this country a decent man writes a gentle, truthful, rueful article about the pleasure of looking at good-looking women, - and is immediately subjected to an hysterical torrent of outrage.
Could we have a sense of proportion here? If "a cat may look at a king" surely a man can glance approvingly at a woman, or vice versa? Looking in itself does no harm. We have a choice whether or not to be annoyed by it, to interpret it as we are inclined. That remains in our power. Why give that power away? Why choose to get our knickers in a twist about it?
As an elderly woman I've had my share of appreciative looks, and now have fewer than I used to. Neither the looks, nor the absence of them, ever seemed important. Sometimes they amused me, sometimes pleased me, mostly they were insignificant. Certainly I never felt that my essential sense of self was at their mercy, as this blogger seems to do. Why does she choose to cede her self-possession to something so trivial?
Men and women are likely to go on finding each other's appearance attractive. That's how the species continues, giving rise to a lot of perfectly harmless pleasure along the way. Let's celebrate that harmlessness - there are a lot worse things going on in our world, among which I'm inclined to include that sour puritanism which finds its satisfaction in displays of self-righteous rage.
Gee, I've met Ian a couple of times, and he's still been spouting this crap (seasonally?) for years. And this crap is part of the toxic environment women's lives are poisoned with. During the aforementioned Morningside item a couple of decades ago, I have a vivid memory of Ian bullying a younger man who had the temerity to insist he did *not* sexualize every woman who walked by him, mentally calculating whether she was someone he'd want to screw. "Come on!" said Mr. Brown.
Yes, how adorable. Count me uptight, I guess. Let your mom know.
Another fave: How Ian never noticed a terrorist show evidence of humour. The feature came along with a big image of a very particular kind of "terrorist". Shortly after the twin towers came down. Seasonal, perhaps?
And who can forget the interview (again, on CBC radio!) where Ian claimed women can't deal with risk and danger, which is why they don't like organized sports? Oh, how I enjoyed that gem.
How this garbage is considered journalism or informed opinion, I will never begin to understand.
The opposite of that would be, 'disapprovingly.' A suitable candidate, or not, based on a leer.
Yep, there's no room to cut Ian any slack. This is about male heterosexual erotic entitlement and this is merely one of its many forms. It's a rather nostalgic form, in which simply getting away with sexualizing every woman you see is not enough: no, Mr. Brown must turn erotic entitlement into a social good.
I think this also has to do with the fact that Mr. Brown really, really wishes he had a column in the Times, the Guardian or the Independent and not the damnable Globe & bloody Mail.
http://jezebel.com/5896523/the-top-29-reasons-why-its-okay-to-creepily-s...
The Top 29 Reasons Why It's Okay to Creepily Stare at Women's Butts
I've never held a particularly strident stance on the issue of men staring at women in public-sometimes it's fine, mostly it's creepy, and the difference hinges on a jillion subjective subtleties. Some women like it, plenty of women do it to men (irrelevant! Power differential!), and anyway, if we make having eyeballs a crime then only criminals will have eyeballs. SCIENCE FACT. So as long as women's voices are being heard and considered (you know, the women who don't feel comfortable being publicly roped into every stranger's sexual fantasy) and men at least try to keep it on the civilized side of creepy, then whatever. Have at it.
However! That was the old me, before I read this article in Toronto's Globe & Mail, which I cannot prove wasn't originally written on the flayed skin of a missing prostitute. Titled "Why men can't-and shouldn't-stop staring at women," the piece attempts to make a reasoned argument for why the male gaze isn't creepy (in fact, men are doing society hella favors!), but instead reads like an episode of Law & Order: SVU (one of the ones where Liv uses her sexuality as a weapon and it backfires and Elliot has to rescue her). If you need me, I will be joining one of those weird churches where they live in a corn field and dress like unyielding Victorian governesses. Has anyone seen my crinoline starch???
If anyone is still wondering what "rape culture" means, the piece by Brown, and the varying defences of it, are perfect examples.
And speaking of rape culture, consent is hot, assault is not. Perfect timing to share this amazing poster that came by my FB newsfeed the other day.
Indeed. I just made a comment on the blog itself prompted by this comment. The first two comments, now removed, were violently offensive and attacked Murphy personally. The other comments are less violent, but still seek to vindicate Brown in some way and variously accuse Murphy of some other sin: ageism, "bigger fish to fry," etc. See? We're conditioned to attack and criticize those who even expose rape culture, let alone question it.
Good. Does that mean that flagging comments on rabble's main page works, or was this an extraordinary circumstance?
Yes, it "works" in that Rebecca and I can see the comments from stories and blogs flagged as offensive. Usually our practice is just to remove bad posts and ban the user but we won't intervene the way we do here. So it's likely that more borderline offensive posts will simply go unremarked.
As a guy; looking, sidelong glancing, etc., is all well and good and a natural part of flirting between the sexes, but this article creeps me the fuck out.
Oh thank God. I for a second he was going to start empathising with what SHE thought.
Yes. Treating women like equals is SO COMPLICATED.
I do wonder how Ian might react if, say, Scott Thompson or Rufus Wainwright were to write a similar piece about gay men defending their inability to stop staring at straight men's butts, and insisting that, someday, the straight men would miss the attention(obviously, neither Scott nor Rufus would write that, but go with me on this as a hypothetical).
(corrected to remove bizarre grammatical error I just discovered).
Ok, thanks. I wasn't quite sure how that all worked.
/drift
And, Ian, if you're reading this thread, and you truly MUST have a 20-year-old ass to stare at...well, here you go, buddy:
An important point. Or if they did it would at least be interesting and funny.
It's one thing for someone to not realize or not give a shit about what others might think of his writing. It's quite another for an editor to have the brilliant idea that it might be something everyone wants to read over tea and toast.
Ian Brown is into voyeurism? Well, I suppose that is a matter between him and people who have to deal with it. But if he had any intentions of getting some dark glasses and being subtle about it, this article was not the way to do it. And if he thinks he is blowing the lid off a dirty little secret all men share he has a way over-inflated opinion of his own brilliance.
Having to read him getting all sentimental about whatever it is that turns him on is nothing short of embarrasing. I don't need to know that about my family or my friends and I certainly don't need to know it about some geezer I don't even know who is being paid far too much for this self-indulgent crap.
As for the Grope and Flail, I just have to shake my head and wonder what they were thinking, and how they did not realize that it would get the furious reaction from some that it has.
Or maybe they 're trying to get nominated for the Literary Bad Sex award.
(edit)
I have been thinking about what bugs me about this, because it doesn't anger me; I think of it more as pathetic and ignorant. The fact that he's into voyeurism doesn't actually offend me..
But there are people who are far more persecuted and who are ostracized even within ostracized groups, and who carry themselves with a lot more dignity and respect.
So to have some fool come along and make out like the most conventional, privileged, and often the most inconsiderate of indulgences - that of the voyeuristic man - is somehow persecuted and misunderstood, is just self-indulgent. Hell, they have a booming industry set up to indulge that fetish.
What exactly is he complaining about? That some people are offended or don't get how important he thinks his hobby is? Well he can deal with it by not offending others, or if he can't manage that, growing a thick skin. But to expect to have it both ways is petulant.
or they knew exactly what kind of response this would generate and are watching their ad revenue soar to new heights. more traffic more money...
Speaking of rape culture and guy culture, I can't recommend this highly enough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhaodUPqSU
If it were a video by some new band perhaps, but I can't see anything marketable, or any advantage at all in running this fool's tired old ramblings. Like really, who would want to associate their advertising with that tired and jaded BS? Someone clearly was thinking too much about not offending the columnist, and not enough about what was actually appropriate for the pages of a mainstream newspaper.
(edit)
Something that takes Mr. Brown's obsession to an even more invasive level:
http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women...
Didn't they outlaw an app in France because it targetted ethnicity? I suppose it is too much to expect similar consideration in this case.