Utilitarian Review 9/2/17

 
Patreon

On pundit’s obsession with protecting on campus speakers and chattering class solidarity.

On using openmindedness as a smokescreen for ugly views.

On pretending racism is cultural borrowing.

For patron’s, a first draft of my piece on the zookeeper’s wife and gentile saviors.

 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At the Verge I explained toe James Cameron that Wonder woman has always been a feminist icon and a sex symbol both.

At Quartz I reviewed a new book about how we need to let refugees work.

At Playboy I wrote about Jack Kirby’s weaknesses and honoring him by making art he wouldn’t.

At Slate I wrote about Joanna Russ’ We Who Are About To, which is better than William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

At Patreon I interviewed Botanist about eco apocalypse black metal.

At Splice Today I wrote about

Stephen King’s It which is both mediocre and memorable.

Predator and camouflaging America’s Latin American wars.
 

Utilitarian Review 8/30/17

News

Steven Grant, comics writer, provided a nice blurb for my book Your Favorite Superhero Sucks.
 
On Patreon

Murakami vs. Pollock for title of avant gardiest.

The left shouldn’t define itself in opposition to Democrats. (and vice versa)
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I wrote about:

—Robert Altman’s Mash and the confused idea that misogyny will overthrow the status quo.

—drone artist Saito Koji and the album that wasn’t there.

Utilitarian Review 8/19/17

 
Patreon

On Angela Nagle’s excellent critique of counter-culture misogyny and how her book does the exact thing she decries.

I explained why the term alt left is bad and should be avoided.

On the Hooded Utilitarian

Somewhat randomly, we had a couple posts on HU for various reasons.

Nix on what Meghan Murphy doesn’t get about feminism and sex work.

Paul Austin on Television’s great forgotten album.

 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about:

—how the ACLU shouldn’t defend fascists.

Atypical and how autism is used in the media to excuse sexism.

At Playboy I interviewed N.K. Jemisin about her book the Stone Sky, racism, and apocalypse.

At the Verge I wrote about the goofy original Defenders comics, which are not much like the television show.

At the Reader I wrote about the Scorched Tundra metal festival.

On Splice Today I wrote about:

Eastern Condors, a Honk Kong Vietnam picture which makes all other Vietnam pictures look like half-assed messes too.

how Facebook is so cheery it depresses me.

—how the left is pretty unified, relatively.

At Bandcamp I reviewed a new drone/spoken word album from Heinali and Matt Finney.

Adventure vs. Marquee Moon

 Compare and Contrast Television’s second album, ‘Adventure’ with its predecessor: the seminal ‘Marquee Moon’.

‘Seminal’ is such a disgustingly overused word in rock criticism, but there’s no doubting how many British and American bands were spawned out of Television’s singular songwriting, aggressive yet glowing guitar attack and non-Bonham drumming. You can also hear plenty of copies of Tom Verlaine’s strangled yelp and Romantic, Impressionistic and Surreal lyrics in many singers popping up from the early 80’s onward. I’m not saying they were on their own, or even that they were best at it – but they sure are there. For one album at least… Of course The Sex Pistols only really released one album and ‘changed everything’ too, if you are to listen to some people….. I’d like to show that Television completed at least 2 great albums in the following transmission:

OPENING CREDITS

TV = Tom Verlaine – lead vocals, guitars, organ, piano, slide guitar and guitar solos on Foxhole, Carried Away, The Fire and The Dream’s Dream.

RL = Richard Lloyd- backing vocals, guitars and guitar solos on Glory, Days, Careful and Ain’t That Nothing.

FF = Fred Frith – backing vocals and bass guitar.

BF = Billy Ficca – drums and jazz.

THEME SONG

‘Adventure’ could never live up to ‘Marquee Moon’. Like ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’, ‘Spiral Scratch’, ‘The Ramones’, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and Talking Heads’ first albums – ‘Marquee Moon’ has created its own genre within punk and new wave. It’s a shame; coz here is where the show gets really interesting! ‘Adventure’ is exactly the right second album to put out after such a game-changer. It’s a step down, but it’s also a step across… it’s not called ‘Adventure’ for nothing!

PART ONE

It starts from the album cover. It’s still the same bold and plain group portrait with a large border and clear titles, but ‘Marquee Moon’ is in midnight blues and blacks – ‘Adventure’ in fiery afternoon oranges and reds. The band photo itself shows a difference from the bleeding saturated colours of ‘Marquee Moon’ to the crisp, over-lit Adventure line-up. Words could be written about the actual band pose here: RL going from insouciant glance to a look to the floor, FF again looking like he’s just jumped into the shot and TV out front and in charge, but trying not to look it. Eyes straight ahead.
&mbsp

 
The only tune that could have really fitted on ‘Marquee Moon’ is ‘Foxhole’ and it is the only mainstream visual account of the real Television, recorded for The Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC2 in 1978. Give Thanks to the Beeb!
 

 
GLORY opens the album like a winner. An up tempo tune like ‘See No Evil’’ RL delivers a typically brilliant solo – clean, precise and angular. In and Out. The sound is classic, yet new – after all the fuzzy, phasey, echoed excesses of the early 70’s: this is Fender guitar into Fender amp and turn it up… The approach (unlike TV’s) is one of beauty and simplicity. I read once how he preferred the first two Jimi Hendrix albums against all the rest because Chas Chandler would not allow excess. He really takes that to heart in his soloing throughout Television’s career. Try ‘Elevation’ on Marquee Moon to see what I mean: sharp corners and exotic bends – but over in seconds…
 

 
DAYS is probably the prettiest love song they could ever play and yet RL’s parts and solo takes it off into a reverie that lifts the song into a more British folk-rock level before it becomes too boring. I think it’s worth mentioning here – coz nobody else has – how much the songwriting AND the guitar approach echo Fairport Convention post ‘Liege and Lief’. Like ‘Ain’t That Nothing’ it follows classic pop lines, but played by anxiety ridden retards. TV was never a good singer and the fact that most of this song hinges on a 3 part harmony hook helps make it the most radio-friendly tune in their catalogue. It would have never been a hit…
 

 
Speaking of radio-friendly, this is the main issue with this second album for me. There are two brilliant Stones-esque songs on Adventure. This, in the hands of lesser bands would have made a career, but not in this show. ‘Ain’t That Nothing’ and ‘Glory’ are fresh-out-of-the traps rock’n’roll with enough originality to get the public interested. Either one of them would have made a decent radio hit with enough promotion. Television had already had minor chart success and MAJOR critical success by now. There’s a fair few tunes on Adventure that could have caught the public ear. But they don’t quite tell a vision…

FOXHOLE comes on like a natural successor to ‘Friction’. Grinding and stuttering and aiming just over the head, it’s probably the least ‘produced’ song on the album. The TV solo here starts with 2 or 3 harmonics bent out of shape before developing into a cross between the solo’s in ‘8 Miles High’ by The Byrds and ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ by his own band. The bass, drums and RL guitar grip as hard as on ‘Friction’ or ‘Prove It’ from Marquee Moon with added depth and grease. You can almost hear the bullets fly by your ears. By the time TV hits his last few manic run-up-the-string licks it’s time to get out of the warzone.

I DON’T CARE seems to be the album’s light-hearted moment, where once ‘Prove It’ stood. But unlike that great tune there are no dramatic flourishes of TV guitar or BF drums or even a clever lyric. A rather skip-along country feel is topped off by plainly strummed guitars and a high chorus line. A little bit too high for their voices in places. Both ‘Prove It’ and ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ show how TV can write a witty couplet when he wants to, but not here. Possibly the weakest thing the band ever committed to vinyl, but luckily followed by one of the strongest!

CARRIED AWAY appears at the end of side 1, occupying the place of Television’s signature tune. And it doesn’t disappoint there. There are acres more production features now, but it serves a beautiful song. Not known for their middle eighths or advanced song structure, Television look to break the pattern here. In fact each new part of the song, while not actually changing chord patterns or anything, seems to bring a subtle development in the playing and production. The lyric gets more Romantic, more unfocussed and more abstract as the track goes on. The overall atmosphere feels like the whole band is growing louder yet getting further away.
 

 
This time the tune is only just over 5 minutes as opposed to 10, but you really think you’ve been through the changes after it, just like with ‘Marquee Moon’. Judicious application of keyboards is what makes this tune stand out too. I assume they could afford to rent a Hammond Organ now and so they do: letting it take the main theme, like it was Dylan circa ’65. There is an insidious creep in the bass line and guitar motifs (initially) that seem to suggest we’re in for another tale of modern horror. We are not though – it’s the gentlest song the band ever made. The words talk about a quiet walk among the docklands of NYC, feeling the elements and blending with them. The Romance comes through in almost every line and sound.

Possibly the most ‘Fender’ sound of all time is employed throughout this song. A slow throbbing tremolo from the rhythm guitar, one chord a bar. Thank the lord for spring reverb and single coil pickups. They carry an atmosphere all their own! Every member of the band seems to be telling the same story, fixing to the same shadowy outcome. Like ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ it seems to be rehearsed yet free… and it’s got the perfect vocal hook line too. Should have been a classic…
 
AD BREAK

I’ve read allsorts of interviews with TV over the years and he seems like a bit of a bullshitter to be honest. There’s no doubting that he’s telling a vision, but he seems to love obscuring the efforts of others in his work. Me ME ME seems to be his preferred position. Clearly something was always wrong with his relationship with RL, but both FF and BF have played with him throughout his career and he’s never nice about either of them either!

BF, like John Densmore, uses his kit as an expressive tool, but never stops hitting them on-beats like any good rock drummer. There’s an adventurousness to his playing that was copied so much in the UK – The Banshees, The Slits, The Bunnymen all took a cue from him, but weren’t as technically innovative and inspired to do something every 4 bars. He’s jazz, no doubt… FF too is sorely underrated as a bassist. He’s more accurately called a Bass Guitarist because he’s often playing complimentary lines and contrasting rhythms with the 2 guitars. I suppose this is where the comparison with the Grateful Dead comes in: both bands are using the same 3 instruments to weave a big harmonic and rhythmic web.
 
PART Two
 
Now that Television’s new sound world has been established, it’s time to let it flourish. Flipping over the original vinyl record and you are faced with only three tunes, two of which again break the five minute mark. If this side were the last bit of sound before we switched the Television off, it would have been a great end. The second side shows where they were going: into a clearer and purer sound world. Maybe they decided to put all their weirdest and noisiest stuff on Marquee Moon coz they thought they would only get one album? And when a next one was required they dug around the back catalogue? Maybe the second side of Adventure shows what would have been? I think so. There are a few bootlegs where they feature The Dream’s Dream and The Fire at the front of the set – basking in glittering newness and then they play the arse out of the old material.

There is beautiful development there on the second side of the LP. With the most straightforward of sounds, an ample sense of space, cool lyrics and a soft touch Television made a great second episode… watch it!

THE DREAM’S DREAM opens like no other Television song before. A Theremin-like slide guitar squeals a melody over organ pads. RL is nowhere to be seen. BF and FF creep in slowly and surely. It’s a chord progression like ‘Torn Curtain’. The whole track lights up permanently once TV’s lead guitar enters before the chorus. The songwriting steps out now too, accompanied by TV’s loose and spectral licks. Again there’s an almost broken series of lyrics and guitar fills that make the show feel like it’s improvised and on the spot – but it just can’t be. There’s too much interplay between TV and the rhythm section. Too many little jerks, and the lyric only sets out to make it more confusing….
 

 
AIN’T THAT NOTHING is the strongest contender for ‘Television’s Big Hit Single’ as the guitars, bass and drums all coalesce into a controlled but flailing whole. Real punk energy pushes along a straightforward boy/girl lyric and TV manages to sing ok.
 

 k,,
THE FIRE suggests that their 3rd album would have been a killer. A four piece rock band, with minimal equipment and production, could make a purely ambient album.
 

 
The lyric and voice disappear behind a mesh of glistening guitar, gradually getting used to the space and filling it. Reverb creeps in. There are no major psychedelic effects, but the affect is definite. Television never needed too much production to create an alternate space. FF’s bass suggests things. BF stretches them out. Like ‘Little Johnny Jewel’, the whole song sounds improvised but structured. It fades and throbs between passages with TVs guitar always near. But unlike that song there is no central motif this time, it’s a jumble. Yet gripping. How do they do that?

An Open Letter to Meghan Murphy, fwiw, from an Other Side of Feminism.

Editorial Note: This was originally posted by Nix on her tumblr on July 1, 2015.
____________

Hi Meghan,

I hope you’ll permit me to address you by your first name.  I do so not out of any disrespect or desire to minimize you or your work, but because I want to speak with you directly, a bit intimately, as one woman to another, as one Feminist to another, as one human being to another.

I’d like to tell you a bit about my life and the experiences that led me to choose sex work at the comparatively late age of 33.  I sort of want to confide…

I’m 34 years old, white, and from a Leftist, activist, middle class background (in Southern California).   My family has been torn apart by all manner of deceit, greed, abuse (including sexual), and hypocrisy, but I can assure you that there has never been a conscious moment in my own life when I wasn’t a Feminist.   I wasn’t permitted Barbie dolls unless I worked for the money to buy them for myself. I was given unlimited puzzles and books. I was told I could be anything that I wanted to be.  And I was encouraged to invest in my intelligence and physical capacities, as opposed to being “pleasing” to men.

I was not raised to see myself as an object.  I was raised to see myself as a subject, and a talented one at that.

Anyway, in 2008, I found myself in the very uncomfortable position of reporting two of my colleagues for sexual harassment at Northwestern University.  I was two years into a PhD program there.  One colleague had grabbed my ass at a bar (he was married and I thought we were meant to be discussing Deleuze) and another had told me that he had raped me and I didn’t remember it because I had been so drunk the last time he saw me (and technically, that was possible).

I did not want to ruin anyone’s career. But I did want to report for record, in case this sort of thing happened to someone else. I also requested sexual harassment training for my entire department in an effort to make sure that it would not.

Unfortunately, the Chair of my department was a woman who would not permit any training session to occur unless she knew which students were involved.  Conflict of interest much?

I had planned on letting it all slide.  I wasn’t about to out myself like that, as my department was so tiny and gossipy, and there would undoubtedly be negative repercussions.   Further, I was TAing for the Chair with that married colleague who had grabbed my ass.  I figured that I just needed to make it through the quarter… Until she asked me to compare grades with him at a coffee shop.

So I confessed to her, for lack of a better word, because I wasn’t about to meet with him off-campus.

She told me: “People get grabbed.”  She told me: Rape was “unthinkable” and “why would anyone say such a thing?”  She told me: “The Sexual Harassment Office is just an excuse for a sad, incompetent woman to hold a job and drink from her Northwestern coffee mug.”  She told me: “Americans are too uptight about being touched… Why, even her yoga teacher had to ask before touching students!”  She told me: “Reporting sexual harassment is a weak act.”  She told me: I needed “to take better care of myself and not worry so much about other people.”  She told me, in short, that: The only problem was me!  I was just too sensitive, weak, and fragile.

I’ll be honest with you, of all the words used to describe me over the course of my life, that is the only time I’ve ever heard “weak.”   She maintained this line and I eventually reported her to the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention for gender discrimination and a toxic work environment.

She was investigated over the course of a 24 hour period, which is an amazing turnaround, don’t you think? And then, nothing happened!  So I eventually attempted to report the entirety of Northwestern University to the Office of Civil Rights for violation of Title IX, arguing that NU has absolutely no protocol to speak of and pointing to their own lack of staff, myriad conflicts of interest, and lack of training, generally.

I still maintain this. And they’ve had three public scandals since I attempted to file a complaint against them with the OCR in 2010: one concerning a fucksaw, one concerning Ludlow and an undergrad, and the latest over this piece of pablum.

Of course, the OCR didn’t take my case.  I wasn’t raped, or at least, I don’t think I was.  And nothing that happened to me was a big enough offense to move a federal agency like the OCR, even if I was pointing to NU’s bureaucratic structure and lack of training as the root cause of my problems which would necessarily produce more problems for others.

So, by 2012, after fighting within the system with everything I had, I dropped out A.B.D.  I couldn’t justify writing a dissertation for a university that didn’t care about my own bodily sovereignty and safety, particularly as a “Feminist.”  And how was I supposed to be an authority on any topic whatsoever if I wasn’t the authority of my own personal space?  The entire experience was immensely disempowering.

I moved back to Southern California and I set out to get a job.  Any job!  Because I was starting my life all over!   Clearly, the academic route had been a terrible, terrible mistake for me.

As you might imagine, though, no one – and I mean no one – is inclined to hire someone who left their last post because they found out their institution had no functioning sexual harassment policy.  It’s too likely that you’re… fragile, weak, and sensitive.  And you’re a whistleblower.  Who the hell wants to hire someone that you know will blow the whistle on you if she deems it necessary, according to her own lights?

This left me in the position where I would have to fabricate a biographical lie for job interviews, which frankly I see as censorship and a disavowal of what happened to me.  This seems resolutely anti-Feminist to me and I was unwilling to make prospective employers comfortable with me, my past, or Northwestern.  I was unwilling to deny what I saw to be a fundamental injustice that must necessarily perpetuate itself by way of an almost willful negligence on the part of NU admin.  Not having a functioning sexual harassment and assault policy at a major university seems to me like a fucking crisis if ever there was one.  People should know.  And why should I be ashamed?  I left. I didn’t stay like some obedient slave. That would have been truly shameful, in my opinion.

Thus, I was unemployed for a good 6 months before I started my first business – which failed – after which I finally got into phone sex and camming as an independent domme in August of last year.  I’m a newbie, but the decision to do sex work was a long time coming and there are two important moments/thoughts that brought me there, and which I’d like to share with you.  (I thank you if you’ve made it this far.)

The first was when I was still at Northwestern.  I told a few of the professors, in 2010, that in light of the Chair’s clear policy on ass-grabbing, they really weren’t paying me enough and, indeed, I didn’t think they could afford me, and even if they could, it certainly wouldn’t go down like this.  I am not some unoccupied lot of land waiting for some intrepid male moron to come squat on me!  My existence is not an invitation to anyone for any reason!  I am not your Lady Everest!

The second thought occurred to me in April of last year.  I was very much unemployed and sort of psyching myself out for homelessness when I realized – If I was an exotic dancer at a reputable club, my ass would not be grabbed against my will because there would be bouncers.  Any ass-grabbing would only ever happen on my terms, with my consent, for money.

How in the hell is it that I’d be better protected from sexual assault taking my clothes off as sensually as possible in a designated area for money than as a PhD student at Northwestern University interacting with colleagues?  That’s a very sincere question.  How is that possible?  What insane fucking world is this?  But there you have it.

So, about four months later I spent an entire week researching my sex work options and deciding what I might commence with, what I was willing to do, what I was not willing to do.  I bought stock photos of sexy ladies – no shortage of those! – and framed body parts as if I was creating examples for a Mulvey lecture.  That wasn’t hard, as I’m sure you can imagine.  (I use my own image now, but I didn’t start that way.)

And you know what I thought? If this works, I’m finally going to profit off of the very thing that has been harming me my entire life.  It felt like grifting a system that had only ever grifted me.  And that felt really good.

The clients were not at all what I expected.  There are creeps, to be sure, but most of my clients are not even remotely abusive or rapey, because the most entitled men don’t pay for sex at all.  They just take it.  There are no boundaries with them, only overarching entitlement.  Ratio-wise, though, I encounter far more of these rapey men in my day-to-day than at work.  And I think there may be a plethora of them in academia, but who knows?  Still, there does seem to be a suspicious trend.

This all leads me to making the online acquaintance of Noah Berlatsky, a man you clearly hate, I understand… but I do think you have the wrong end of the stick here.  Please bear with me and grant me the possibility of a free (and stubborn!) will. I do appreciate your consideration and time.

Noah wrote an article that I became a little obsessed with on the UVa Rolling Stone scandal and Eden.  I was reading it because I was a sex worker and his work had been referred to often enough. I liked his articles.  But what struck me the most with this one was how it related to what I had experienced at Northwestern.  What happened to me was quotidian, not a big deal, something I was supposed to suffer under to prove that I was “tough.”  In it, he quotes Jessica Luther as telling him that:

 “We are saturated by a culture that sexualizes women but also demonizes them, that celebrates fuzzy consent and certainly doesn’t punish it, that blames victims for the sexual violence done to them, that is sometimes willing to ask people to intervene but is never willing to directly say to men that they should not rape. This kind of saturation makes it so people don’t really want to hear another story about a woman being sexually assaulted—and even if someone is willing to listen to story after story, what has to change to make it so these kinds of violent acts don’t happen with such regularity feels insurmountable. So there is this idea then that to get people to care, the story of that violence that you share (either as a journalist or a survivor) has to shock people so that they say, “Damn, even in THIS culture that doesn’t care much for women, THAT is bad.”

This quote seemed to exactly sum up my problem at NU and with the OCR.  And Noah seemed to be tracking two problems of which I was, and am, particularly aware – Sex worker stigma and sexual assault.  Or to put it another way – If I use my sexuality to extract cash from men, I’m a victim.  But if male sexuality is aggressively thrust upon me, that’s somehow my fault.  It honestly feels to me like my limited agency within this jackass culture is completely inverted, and whatever I say about myself will be turned upside down by those who “know better” than me, about me.

So I tweeted at Noah and told him how much I appreciated his articles.  And that was that.

I’ve had a ton of online exchanges with him and one chat by phone.  He has not once commented on how I look, referred to me by any diminutive, called me food items or pastry titles, solicited my services, pried into my personal life, condescended, or even ignored me, the latter of which wouldn’t be gendered violence so much as modern busyness and I-can’t-even.  That is pretty rare.

And that’s why women, and perhaps sex workers in particular, are willing, and even enthusiastic, to speak with him.  He isn’t objectifying us.  If he was objectifying us we would most certainly be charging him, or he’d end up listed as a loser by STUPIG or some other service like it.  It’s that cold, jim.  It’s that cold.  But there is nothing of the kind.

This leads me to the travesty that you think sex work is.  It wasn’t because I wanted to be an object that I got in to sex work.  It’s because I found myself sexually objectified even in places wherein I was meant to be valued for my intelligence.  It’s because I’m supposed to interpret an invitation to discuss philosophy as a sexual overture by virtue of me being cast as “girl” and my colleague being cast as “boy.”  And this ridiculously heterosexist garbage passes as “common sense” and even “professionalization” amongst people certified in the Humanities.  Ha!  Great. Why would I ever want to finish my degree?

So you tell me: What made me a whore?  It wasn’t sex work. I got into sex work because I wanted bouncers, distance, control, agency, choice, money, and all that freedom that I’m well aware you don’t like.  I got into sex work to capitalize off of what was always and already, my objectification. And before you call me a capitalist, please know that I am not.  But this is a capitalist society.  And I do seem to be reduced to my sex no matter how smart or competent I might try to be.

No.  I got into sex work because I don’t care what men think.  I don’t want their love.  I don’t want their approval.  I don’t want their advice.  I just want their cash, after which point I want appropriate behavior, and then I’d like them to go away.

As for Playboy… I get it.  It’s probably the premiere magazine in which the Beauty Industry and the Sex Industry overlap most overtly.  And that is a problem.  But it does have an impressive readership as well as a history of fabulous interviews with intellectuals.  Further, the sexism is not denied and the women do get paid.  It’s not free as you indicated in The New Statesman.  Sex workers are hustlers, if nothing else.  We want money, not to be told by the 50 billionth schmuck that we’re “fuckable.”  We know we’re “fuckable.”  As dumb as you might think sex workers are, we’re crystal clear on this.  That’s the business.

But this business doesn’t function with quite the stringent “boy”/”girl” beauty standard bullshit you might expect.  Really, this industry is built on fantasy, fetish, and to be perfectly frank, I think shame.  There is a performative quality to sex work that has the potential to be very subversive and very political.  But mainstream crap is generally just that, and it’s always been regressive and propagandist, not just in the sex industry.  My point is – It’s not the only type of sex work out there, even if it is the “norm,” which is, of course, a fiction.

With that said, I can’t say that I have a problem with a fantasy sex world existing, pending it is circumscribed and designated between consenting adults.  But I do have a problem when those fantasies start being projected on real people trying to live their lives in peace.

Personally, I am much more disturbed by The Chronicle of Higher Education. This is a supposedly non-sexist, sober-minded American standard that has continuously and seemingly willfully made errors of fact concerning specific allegations of rape and sexual assault on my former campus against one professor in particular.  These two cases don’t concern me personally in the slightest, but the negligence with which The Chronicle has addressed them here, here, and here – and the way in which every other news source has parroted Kipnis’ thesis again and again, from Jezebel to NPR to Reason just yesterday – is distressing to me,  to say the least.  I don’t know what to call it, save a snow job.

I think Kipnis, who repeatedly calls herself a Leftist and a Feminist and then gives not one whit of proof by way of any of her arguments is more damaging to Feminism than Playboy, because she’s more sinister and covert.  And if I were to be mad at Noah Berlatsky for being published in Playboy I’d likewise have to be miffed that he’s published by Reason.  I mean, Kipnis actually says in her latest interview that she feels sorry for men making 98 cents on their past dollar when women currently make some 70-something cents.  Ha!  Wow.  I honestly can’t wrap my head around this. And she also re-uses the same example of an “anonymous prof and student dating” which she was specifically taken to task for here because it’s from the professor’s testimony only and concerns a rape case that is still being considered.

Anyway, while I do understand that you’re angered by the existence of Playboy, I’d be really happy if you might consider those day-to-day factors which might lead a woman to choose sex work and attack those much bigger issues, as opposed to attacking sex work, itself.

Because, ultimately, I think the main reason that you and Noah butt heads is because you’re trying to deconstruct Femininity and those with less power, when you really might want to start with Masculinity and those with more power.  Masculinity is a far more damaging and destructive force than Femininity at the moment, as the two genders are currently culturally coded. And Femininity is put down all the time. Indeed, it’s hard for me to see Whorephobia as anything other than internalized hatred that originates from male violence.  Because let’s be honest: We’re called “whore” no matter what we do.  Or to quote Emma Goldman:

“Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.”

Anyway, I’m rather sorry this is so long and I sincerely thank you if you made it to the end.  I don’t want to start a feud with you and I don’t want to convert you.  Indeed, I don’t really expect anything from you.  But I did want to share my perspective with you because I am angry, I am Feminist, I am activist (albeit despite myself), but my traumas and targets seem to be a bit different than yours.  It sort of seems a shame that we should be on different sides.  But then, I suppose it takes all kinds.

Take care, and thanks for your time, Meghan. – Nix

Utilitarian Review 8/11/17

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Advice for academics talking to journalists, and vice versa.

For Patrons, the first draft of my essay on race in Hateful Eight.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Playboy I interviewed Zinnia Jones about straight men claiming they don’t find trans women attractive.

In the romance criticism series I’m editing at Public Books, Qiana Whitted wrote about Alyssa Cole and the possibility of love for black women.

At Bandcamp I put together a list of awesome Latin American prog.

At Splice Today I wrote about

Lee Fang, neoliberal shill.

Jacob’s Ladder and Vietnam as American dream.

At the Reader I wrote a short blurb about British R&B newcomer Jorja Smith.