Tuesday, December 21, 2010

God the Mother?

So yesterday I went to Walmart to get some much needed American supplies. While attempting to find chapstick I was approached by this sweet looking korean lady holding a bottle of Axe. She asked me if I'd ever heard of God the Mother... I actually have heard this crap before 2 years ago at Tysons corner. What was weird about this lady is she was actually shopping too. The first time I experienced this, the woman talking to me and my friend had a clipboard and other people walking around the mall.

So the deal is some Christians don't accept that God is male. They say God made Adam and Eve in his own image. Well that works for Adam but how did he come up with Eve? As a feminist, I find this concept interesting. I would say patriarchy has teamed up with Christianity to screw women over once more. I mean how can we refute that if God is a man, then men must be powerful. God isn't a woman, so women must be followers. A couple of posts ago I talked about how Eve's punishment was to obey Adam, further proof that Christianity is based in patriarchy. Not only did Eve screw up and eat the Apple, now she/women is not to be trusted. She always needs the supervision and support of a man.

I feel like in their own special way, this group is fighting patriarchy. So I do support them. Although (and for this I'm going straight to a Hell I don't believe in) when she asked me if I wanted to learn more I said, "Sure." When she asked if I'd come to Bible study, I said "Yes I will." She said, "great, what time?" I said, "Wednesday at 5!" I'm not going....

Monday, December 20, 2010

London Culture

So I'm back from London where I spent 3 months looking at how feminism functions in Britain. As I tweak my paper for another assignment I'll be putting bits on here for funsies.
Starting with Jordan.

Jordan, a glamour model/singer/actress/reality star is an idol of many young girls and women. When attempting to research her importance to pop culture I found a site called UKJordan.com. Turns out it is a porn site and upon entering the site I was bombarded with pop ups for more porn. Apparently that is her significance to British pop culture.

Her real name is Katie Price, she took on the pseudonym Jordan while working as a model for Page Three and then kept it for other modeling jobs. Despite this she is worshiped in this country, “Grown women idolise her (80% of her 10,000-strong online fan club is female); young girls want to be like her (63% of teenage girls would rather become a topless model than a doctor)” (Lewis). Though many people paint a grim picture of a world that admires such an over sexualized figure, there are people who would consider her a feminist hero. We could say this is a product of a society that calls women empowered for fulfilling male fantasy, but further research suggests this is not entirely true. Last year she went on record saying she was raped by a famous celebrity. She never gave up the name to the Red Tops but in her interviews she admitted to having been raped as a child. In an interview with The Sun she said, “I urge any woman who has been affected by rape and needs help to talk to somebody they trust about it" (Lee). I suspect there is more to her than Page Three, but to be fair it is difficult to see past.

I've also become obsessed Hugh Laurie, who had a comedy show with Stephen Fry in UK. He sang this song called Little Girl and I could swear it's about Ms. Price.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raRQilFcriw

Though even if it isn't, it's still really funny and worth a look!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

More on Private Practice

50th post! Yay me!

Anyway back to Erika's blog about tv shows that annoy her.

Private Practice. Sick of it yet? Me too. But I'll keep watching it for god knows what reason. So this week in Charlottes recovery she saw a lawyer who refused to charge her rapist. Sad as this is, it happens. The lawyer, a woman, apparently top of her class at Stanford, never lost a rape case, refused to take on Charlottes case because she was certain it would lose. Charlotte is a sexual deviant (met guys on the internet and had sex with them for fun. God what a whore!) and initially lied to the police about her rape out of shame.

I'm really pissed at this lawyer character. This might sound really cynical but this character is really unrealistic. That a woman get to the top of her class at Stanford and then chooses to work in rape cases is unbelievable. I just don't see that happening. Now that she never lost a rape case is actually a bit believable, only because she picks and chooses which ones are solid cases. Yes, it's true that Charlottes case would be difficult to win. We live in a world where slut shaming is a legitimate tactic in courts. But this lawyer probably only tried a few cases of stranger rape where the rapist broke into the survivors house and then left a shit ton of evidence. This solves the problem of knowing who the rapist is and that tricky problem of women leaving the home. I mean if a woman is raped in her own home, no one can say "well why was she out in the first place?" Which works as well as slut shaming. Blaming the victim of course makes the rest of the world feel safer by saying "this happened to her because she did A, and I would never do that." Cods. Wallop.

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing how the rest of this story plays out. Although, I bet this guy goes out and rapes another woman before he's finally brought to justice.

If the writers want to make it really realistic, they should send him to jail for a month and then let him go. Sad, but true.