Media rape

Two heroes are crumbling around me. The first, someone whom I respected greatly before I knew much about her, Groovy. What she does, she does well enough. But she revealed herself quickly... the seductively charming scattiness turned out to walk hand-in-hand with a harmful naivety, and I got burned. This has been manageable in most of my interactions with her thus far, but as time presses on, it seems the seductive charm is lessening and her true colours are showing. She's always been one of the boys, a rubbish feminist, despite her protestations to the contrary.

It was a recent and particuarly terrible action on this woman's part that brings me to my next crumbling hero: progress. I thought we might be getting somewhere, society an' all. I thought - hoped - that gradually, the old and bad ideas about women, women's bodies, and their rights, were being phased out. Until Britney.

So, obviously there was some outcry upon the release of 'One More Time'. Oh, that uniform! Oh, that cleavage! And, sigh, those eyes! (And yes, the joy of the taboo...) But it seems that's all come back to haunt her in a terribly Victorian way.

OK, for readers not familiar with the situation (as I wasn't until Dick enlightened me...), the brief backstory is this: some tabloid in the US put out a story that Britney and her husband had made a sex tape, and that the paper had it in their possession; eventually the paper had to admit that they didn't have such a thing; Britney took the paper to court, suing them for $10m for defamation. Well my first question is, why is it so defamatory to suggest someone's made a sex-tape? But that's another story... In the meantime, the judge threw the case out of sourt at the first given opportunity commenting, "The backdrop against which this issue must be addressed is that the plaintiff has publicly portrayed herself in a sexual way in her performances, in published photographs and in a reality show." Now the legal basis of the decision was that Britney couldn't sure over an allegation that she'd had sex with her own husband and that they'd made a sex tape (which I supposed is concurrent with my first question). BUT the POINT is that this is trolling out all the same outdated fascist straight-male-centred responses to women who report rape: well, you were wearing a very short skirt; well, you did invite him over; well, you're a prostitute and you do sell sex... BOLLOCKS.

OK, now back to Groovy, cos you'll be wondering how she fits in. She is in the business of discussing and commenting about matters such as the Britney case. And she and Dick (with some others) had a big academic row while discussing the matter. Dick and I concur on my previous points about 'media rape'; but Groovy... well, she took the opposite stance and agreed with a white, middle-aged, straight Texan who thinks that 'normative' is the same as 'normal'. He, like Groovy, is nice enough. Like that matters. What's the point in being nice when your politics are appalling?

Groovy's supposed to be on the ball on this one, but blatantly isn't. We were supposed to be making some headway on this kind of stupid attitude, but we're blatantly not. Maybe these sexual discourses are just especially slow going, but I sense that there's something else afoot. I'm not sure what it is yet... Maybe it's a systematic commitment to not moving too quickly on any feminist-relevant matter. So why would Groovy go along with it? Someone whom I imagine to have burned at least one bra; someone whose stories are filled with Summers of Love; someone whose career has been ostensibly concerned with questioning hegemonies and normativities... It makes me feel like maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe she's always been a rubbish feminist, as Olga says. Like, she's always One Of The Boys. Two heroes with one stone. How sad.