Closing off Camaraderie: Sports and Sexism

On Global Comment this week, Natalia Antonova writes about how FC Zenit St. Petersburg, one of the richest fan organizations in football, issuing a ban on female fans purchasing season tickets for its fan sector in Petrovsky stadium.

The reasons for this exclusion, it appears, stem from stereotypes and shifting responsibility. There are no women who are Twoo Fanz of Football. Women are pretending to love the game to get closer to men. Both annoying stereotypes, coupled with the likelihood of sexist activity towards women by the men present, lead to a perfect opportunity to completely isolate women football fans as a whole for ridiculously pigheaded reasons.

Now in America, we’ve worked hard to make our sports culture equal opportunity for people who want to play. There are certain ideals — like pushing yourself to excellence, working in a team, learning technique — that fuel our love to play the game. Looking at games involving the best and the brightest gives everyone a sense of pride and in the cases of regional/national affinity, a sense of belonging and membership. Moves like the one from FC Zenit go against the spirit of sports and sportsmanship. Or, heh, should I say sportspersonship?

(And please note this doesn’t mean I think American sports culture is better. There are sexist discrepancies here that piss me off — like why do the WNBA make significantly less than the NBA, for example? And what is it with sports newscasters sometimes cheering people on who are against our very American Venus and Serena Williams? HUH? And… yeah. Anyway.)

Go read Natalia’s take on the issue and see if you gather my meaning.

Confirm Rep. Hilda Solis as Department of Labor Secretary

Can you believe that Rep. Hilda Solis, strong pro-labor advocate and all-around excellent representative from California, still hasn’t been confirmed for the Labor Secretary position yet? According to the AP, they are conducting a “test vote” to ensure she receives the proper number of votes for confirmation.

I think the delay is unacceptable, and I think the filibuster threat is a distraction from the fact her confirmation has been ridiculously delayed. Feminist Majority has an email blitz campaign going to tell Senators to vote in her favor, and it’d be helpful to promote the effort on your blogs and spread the word. The message is customizable; so feel free to personalize it to your liking.

If you use Twitter, send this message along to your followers with a request to retweet it: Voting on Rep. Hilda Solis!! Contact your Senators NOW: http://tinyurl.com/djgo3h And of course, feel free to tag your tweet with #rebelleft and #confirmsolis.

If you’d like more information to share with your readers about Solis and her pro-worker track record, Sarah Jaffe’s post on Rep. Solis at Alterdestiny’s a good place to start. The SEIU also has blogged about the confirmation and made a great video supporting her.

Please do what you can so that the workers’ voices can enter the White House through Rep. Solis and true change for labor becomes possible.

Eureka! A Slumdog Millionaire Film Review

After reading this short and poignant piece, I FINALLY have a metaphor about Slumdog Millionaire and why I disliked it.

Imagine Danny Boyle in one of the open air wood platform toilets that the author describes.  Except we’ll call it his movie office.  Outside, there’s an agent banging on his door for a movie.  There are others trying to get inside; the agent’s anxious to put him in that toilet/office instead of Boyle.

Suddenly, overhead, we hear the helicopter bearing Amitabh Bachchan!  Except instead it’s multiple awards ceremonies, ready to greet the throngs of people who respect their work.  Boyle hears someone mention the awards, one by one.  He realizes he’s trapped in his toilet/office, though!  His agent locked him inside to meet Bachchan/the awards ceremonies!  And Boyle has with him an image of Bachchan/an Oscar.  

He then looks down into the toilet/the worst of India’s slums.  He doesn’t really care what’s down there; but he sees a way to Bachchan/an Oscar.  And he carefully holds the Oscar picture above him and holds his nose.  

He bravely dives into Bollywood, into India, into the shit — holding Bachchan/an Oscar high above his head.  Covered in brown (but not suffering the effects, strangely), he makes his way through the present screaming crowd without getting shit on them and he bears the Oscar ticket/Bachchan picture to the Academy/Bachchan for signature.  Validation.  

And rather unbelievably, without mention of how Boyle arrived there, why he’s covered in brown, where it came from — the Academy/Bachchan fulfills his request.  Boyle cheers.  And later we see Hollywood/Boyle’s mother bathing him clean of the shit. 

Sound unbelievable?  That’s what just happened last night at the Oscars.

It’s bad enough when none of the actors in this spectacular film merited an individual award based on their talents.  It’s bad enough when one of the crew members honored by the Academy calls a cast member by her character’s name instead of her real name (“Latika” is Freida Pinto, btw).  

But it’s downright cruel to pretend that this movie is the quintessential best thing since sliced bread when you could have taken the basic plot and placed it in any country, allowed a limited amount of cultural depth, and likely generated the same basic movie.  I don’t think it’s easy to say it’s Bollywood and that’s it; it was very Western fairytale/American Dream in its scope, superimposed on the Mumbai slums.  The Disneyesque foray into poverty, the wide-eyed singleminded pursuit of love at all costs that brings a person to win a game show, the two-dimensional character development… to be honest, the movie reminded me of an anime.  People have heard me crow this for a little over a month; but it does, from the plot line and overall settings of the story down to the camera shots and the dialogue.

But was it feel good?  Yes.  Feel good moments are superficial most of the time, and this time was no different.

On digital clusterfuck feminism

I’m quoting what a wise woman told me a long time ago when blog messes threatened to make me vomit up the contents of my stomach and sit miserable for days:

i think that to continue to go back and forth about feministing/valenti/hugo…and any other white blogger who makes a racist/sexist/idiot comment is not worth the energy. it’s not that to ignore it means you don’t care, it just means you chose your battles differently. i for one can no longer discuss those sites…its too repetative, draining and useless to tell you the truth. there are so many other important things happening in the world that some folks are missing because all the attention is given to certain people.

Those words are from Kortney Ryan Ziegler; her movie Still Black is advertised on my sidebar.

I think the idea of digital colonialism generally is an interesting concept when viewed on a wider lens; but the entry that is the focus of all these discussions falls under what I like to call digital clusterfuck feminism.  I’m sorry that I won’t deal in fancy footnoting and more academic jargon than “clusterfuck”; but it goes a little something like this:

• White feminist wakes up.
• White feminist studies and “gets” everything that The WOC write about.  
• The WOC, in this instance, is a singular, browner-than-thou included yet separatist entity, that desires millions of dollars in book deals, desires to be left alone, guest posts at all the big blog hot spots, develops small safe space audiences for venting about Lady YT keeping it down, and craves FAME in anonymity.  
• White feminist gathers what she thinks she “gets,” and rather than speak specifically about the phenomenon, give names, and show solutions, she writes a theoretical screed where the Big Lady YTs are the subjects and The WOC — complaints, accolades, included, separatist and all — is the object of oppression.  
• Fingerpointing at shadows ensues.  Secret cabals intimated.  Do YOU know what Lady YT is cooking in HER pristine industrial kitchen?  Do YOU see which WOC are secretly crying at night?  Where does YOUR money go when you hit the PayPal buttons and turn your head?
• White feminist works hard to make sure she is sufficiently “down” with the struggle, inadvertently showing her privileged ass to omit and to offend people who don’t know them from Lady YT and the Big Bad Stupid-stench.  
• People tentatively embrace the white feminist’s analysis, because the Twoo Alliez are the ones down enough to recognize oppression wherever it lies.  Down with the struggles, y’see. 
• Other people question the technicals and move outside of white feminist’s established “Getting It” parameters, and white feminist loses control of her carefully crafted narrative.  Whoa-oh!
• The offended people that white feminist step on begin to speak, and white feminist dismisses them with the brush they just wrote about.  Poor tones, y’see.  Whoa-oh!!
• White feminist sees her full ass exposed and begins issuing apologies.  And in the world of PC dynamics, you know what that means.
• White feminist is flawed!  SWARM, SWARM, SWARM!
• The WOC trickles in.  It is sympathetic, it is ambiguously interested, it is ambiguously pissed, and all of IT in ways play defensive to this white feminist infringing on its agency!  And the questions from Lady YTs and various sides of the cabal commence:  ”Do you want in and out of our Kool Kids Klub?”  ”Why do you care so much about Lady YT?”  ”Don’t you all secretly want book deals?”  ”Where were you earlier?”  ”Why didn’t you come later?”  ”What do you think about this?”   The WOC answers and confuses everyone because its answers are varied and complex for a cohesive unit!
• White feminist gives up and lies in wait for her Webmaster to help solve her technical problems.  
• The WOC varies from humorous to mean, from opportunistic to chivalrous, from angry to hopeful.  Its Amalgamated WOC Chatter fills the feminist blogosphere, wondering what if?  How come?  A-fucking-GAIN? 
• The Big Lady YTs remain silent, preening their hairs and editing their books.

In the chronicling and advent of digital clusterfuck feminism, the larger non-digital world debates on whether to take kids away from a single mother because she is single and has had 8 too many babies.  Immigrant women and children face abuses from ICE agents as they try to meet quotas for fugitive and criminal immigrant arrests.  The world debates the relevance of feminism to the brutal police shooting of a young black woman’s fiancé, an older black woman’s son.  The relevance of feminist cultural analysis is supplanted for Science and lent news credibility when a recent study reveals that men perceive attractive, scantily-clad women as objects or tools rather than as human beings.  A brutal recession wracks the world, leaning its ever-present yoke on women’s necks with herself and/or relatives to feed, bills to pay, and a job to obtain and/or keep.  Unless of course they’re “recession proof.”  Women’s fertilized eggs move closer to recognition as full people.  

But during this phenomenon, these items are trivial.  Digital clusterfuck feminism rages on, circular and eternal.

Black Historical Politics in the Age of Obama

I invite you all to check out my feature at Global Comment on Black History Month.  I’m trying to read Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s The Miseducation of the Negro in commemoration; but it’s hard when you don’t have enough time to drink in everything.  All the same, his writings influenced my piece to a major degree.  Here’s an excerpt.  

With President Obama installed into the White House, I wonder if it will grow into a four-year awakening of racial consciousness.    But as Dr. Woodson identified himself, who holds the power is irrelevant if people’s minds have not changed.  How will evidence of mental shifts in racial temperament be made manifest?  More kind smiles on the street?  Symbolic rebuffs stemming from historical and personal clashes?  An Obama, like an Oprah, is not enough to eliminate the racism that saturates this nation.

The rest can be found here.

About Notorious

It’s getting harder and harder for me to write, let alone write full pieces and reviews lately, because of constant stress. I miss writing so much; law school is killing my drive to read and write right now.

But I have to write about the Sean Combs Variety Show I watched last night. The film was so shallow and two-dimensional that I felt physical pain. If Biggie and Tupac (yes, Tupac) were alive and watched what executive producer Sean Combs has wrought, they would team up and beat his dancing opportunist ass.

I used to like Combs. When I was much younger, I had a crush on him not because he was attractive, but because he was powerful in the hip-hop circle. Everyone else liked Ma$e and he bored me lyrically and looks-wise. Ugh. But anyway, even back then, something was not right with Combs’ prevalence in the hip-hop scene, his constant sampling of old hits, and his essential function to screen the shadow hand of Clive Davis and Arista in the formation of mainstream hip-hop on the East Coast. Suge was deplorable in his own right, but at least he was real about how awful the rap game is for mainstreamers.

With all that said, I know Notorious is not supposed to be a documentary; there are other vehicles for all of my quibbles. But it struck me as dishonest to a huge degree. I’m going to try to keep this short:

1. The people who aren’t in the movie are just as important as those who are. We have some very brief glimpses with Craig Mack and a Lil Cease who looks like his growth stunted in the film. But you never see folks like Ma$e, Black Rob or The L.O.X. (gee wonder why hmm) or the Bad Boy Family (a very important part of Biggie’s rise as an artist — his saturation of the market was similar to Lil’ Wayne’s saturation now in terms of song features).

2. The myth of the stupid West Coast rappers/rap game couldn’t be shelved for the sake of this movie, now could it? In order to fill the gap about how to this day we don’t know who shot two great hip-hop icons, we had to watch a shallow resurgence of West-Coast-ain’t-shit posturing, and a cryptic West Coast rivalry shooter take Biggie out.

3. The women in the film might as well have been cartoon characters for all the personality the writers allowed them. Lil’ Kim is so pissed at Biggie, she can’t put on her concert without giving him pissed off looks! Biggie’s momma keeps throwing away the incredibly powdery mashed potato plates underneath his bed, lolol! And don’t get me started on that grotesque thing they put on Faith’s breast after they got married. Okay, I admit; that was funny because that tattoo is notoriously huge. Puns intended.

4. Piggybacking off #3, the movie consistently tried to mitigate/to excuse the abuse Biggie perpetrated against the women in the film. (If you haven’t seen this yet, watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPlLdMTSIGg)

5. Oh, Puffy. Sean Combs was so deep in this film and gave Biggie his focus. When Biggie performed in packed houses, the crowd really didn’t go wild until Mr. Combs hit the stage and started wiggle-seizing all over the place. And magical Biggie never needed to write another lyric when he hit the Bad Boy studio. B.I.G.’s only crime as an artist is he partied too much. Womp womp.

6. And piggybacking off that arc, the film is a good depiction of the fact that while Sean Combs can identify when someone has talent, he has no idea of what it takes to be an artist. His true talent lies in marketing; in the end, that’s all this film is.

For the folks born after Biggie who recognize there was something legendary in his talent, this film helps them fill in the misinformation they weren’t privy to when they were alive. It dredges up reenactments of familiar news clips and video footage (the SOURCE Awards diss by Suge Knight, the video where Biggie and Tupac talk about taking over hip-hop and everybody’s money). Some of the actors hired for the parts make you laugh a bit. Okay, a lot. But growing up around that time, I feel duped. I feel like Combs didn’t feel like reviving Making the Band to keep himself relevant would be enough; so once again he’s trotting out Biggie to remind people of how he rides people’s talent to his own benefit. (Similar but not quite related note: how is Tupac in a new song with Keyshia Cole? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7GvNuZEKvM Having flashbacks to Chappelle right now; “I did this song a long time ago, a really long time ago…”)

There’s one moment in the movie where Sean Combs talks to Biggie about how his career is taking off and how they’ve signed a new deal with Arista. “I just signed a $42 million deal, and you’re going to get 5!” The math may have made sense if the movie showed a cohesive hip-hop unit in Bad Boy. But in the end it just showed that Biggie got a raw deal during his rap career and he’s getting one postmortem. I walked into the movie expecting a $42m story and I only got 5.

And it’s all Sean Combs’ fault.

Safety Zone
By YaliniDream

A priest speaks of
flesh raining the trees
where
the road flooded
with people seeking safety
was shelled

the thick air and muddied red soil
is unable to swallow the mounting bodies
or muffle her scream
as she is
herded into a camp
split from her dying husband
trapped in a small room
with 30 more cries
fed food that pours out from her
faster than the tears.
She bathes under army men’s open eyes
unable to leave
no visitations
guarded from dignity
imprisoned in “safety.”

imprisoned in “safety.”

Quick Prime Time Press Conference Reflection

Before I abandon the internet to fight the homework beast slouching towards my desk to be born, I have a few passing thoughts about President Obama’s presser I want to put out into the open:

• President Obama did a great job diffusing the onslaught of Republican revisionism in the past couple of weeks surrounding this impending stimulus package in the course of about two hours. Even though the news media continue to glut themselves on low-cost Rethug Rum Punch, nothing demands more press time than the President taking time to address the public and his colleagues on a serious national matter. So good job in engaging the press head-on and redirecting the narrative.