humour and complacency

This is like, Gender Studies 101, but I need revisit some age-old questions and get this rant off my chest. So, I'm sitting with some friends last night - all guys. They start making make-me-a-sandwich jokes, trying to get a rise out of me.

It. fucking. worked.

To sit, surrounded by men, being barraged by offensively sexist jokes is infuriating. But what was even more infuriating is that I found myself paralyzed, unable to say anything. Maybe it was because they are longtime friends, maybe it was because I knew that they had no idea how offensive what they were saying was, maybe it was because these comments were intended as 'jokes', or maybe it was because I've been conditioned to be quiet, passive, and non-opinionated for 25 years.

But what do you say to 'jokes' like this? How do you avoid being dismissed as uptight and hyperbolic? Or should you even care what they think at all?

Trying to fall asleep later that night, I starting thinking about how gendered oppression exists on a spectrum. On the one end: make-me-a-sandwich jokes. On the opposite end: rape. All rest on the assumption that women ought to be passive objects existing primarily to satiate male desire. I don't mean to equate victims of rape with victims of jokes in bad taste, as their experiences are clearly incomparable. However, we see the same excuses offered up for sexist comments as we do for rape: 'she's overreacting;' 'he didn't know it would be unwelcome;' 'she was enjoying it.'

My friends are intelligent people, but appear never to have bothered asking women about why these jokes are offensive, nor have they critically considered the jokes on their own. If they did, they might see that it was indeed venomous to degrade and humiliate me like that. But more importantly, they might consider their own role in gendered oppression broadly - the assumptions they make, the jokes they laugh at, the comments they excuse.

After last night, and having been out of a feminist-friendly environment for almost three years, I certainly need to recognize my complacency in gendered oppression. I'm making assumptions I shouldn't, laughing at jokes I shouldn't, and excusing comments I shouldn't.

Okay so I've been out of the Gender Studies realm for a while now. I'm admittedly a little rusty on my post-modern feminist pop-culture dissecting. Please help me figure this one out:

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Thank you, Miss G__.

Dissecting Mad Men: Episode 4, "The Arrangements."

The moment I picked this week is little Sally Draper and Grandpas Gene eating ice cream together shortly before his death. Grandpa Gene blatantly favours his grandaughter over Bobby, agreeing to buy peaches for snack time because Sally loves them even though they give his grandson a rash, though that admittedly occurs after the scene to which I am referring. So, let's get to the scene in question.

Sally and her grandpa are sitting in the kitchen, conspiring to eat ice cream before dinner and to hide it from Betty in the process, who probably wouldn't like her daughter eating something so fatty, as Betty seems to have developed pregorexia in previous episodes (Remember the melbatoast incident?). Gene tries to trick his daughter with lines like, "I have a salt tooth. It's right back here, see?" But she just groans and says, "Oh Grandpa." Instead of getting mad at Sally for being precocious, Grandpa Gene instead tells her, "You could really be something. Don't let your mother tell you that you can't." He tells Sally she's smart and encourages her to eat the ice cream. He doesn't care if she gains weight because he senses his grand daughter's potential isn't limited to her looks. I love this moment because it seems to be foreshadowing for The Second Wave feminist movement to come.

What's significant in this moment is a grandfather considering his granddaughter's intellect and favouring her for it. He knows what he's saying is subversive too. He knows Betty wouldn't want him to encourage Sally to become something besides a Stepford wife, and yet here he is, about to die just as traditional patriarchy was about to begin its demise in the face of a heightened feminist movement (although, as we know, it's still not completely dead). Gene's a successful man, but he seems to think his granddaughter is the progeny who'll make him proud more so than his grandson. As he's dying, he's starting to see his family in a more meritocratic way. Not only this, but he sees how he's too blame for Betty's unhappiness. He tells her earlier in the episode, when they are discussing his funeral arrangements, that it's his fault she is the way she is because he shielded her from the unpleasantness of the world as a child. He tells Betty that's why she married "this joker" in reference to Don. And maybe that's true. If she hadn't been shielded from the realities of the world as a child, she might have been more suspicious of Don's shady past and lack of parents before they got married. If she'd been a little tougher, she might have made better life decisions. Patriarchy makes women weak and unhappy, which Gene seems to know. He also seems to know that Betty has become totally complicit with patriarchy and lacks the self-reflexivity to raise her daughter differently. This is why Gene's words to his daughter are so touching; he wants her to learn to speak up, to learn that she can "be something," that she isn't her mother's emotionally stunted and infantile daughter.

Sally will grow up in a generation where women did have more options than they previously had. She will come of age watching schools integrate, listening to The Beatles, hearing about people doing acid at Woodstock and perhaps she'll even protest the Vietnam War. But what's important is that someone has told Sally she has potential, so maybe she'll grow up to use it. Sally will have the opportunity to participate in many social movements and help change the world. Maybe now that Sally has been told she can do that, she will....

Dissecting Mad Men: Episode 3

Today's episode had lots of great moments from a feminist perspective, but alas, the rule is I only get to dissect one. So, here it goes. I could easily have picked Peggy standing up to her co-workers and insisting they let her join in on their pot-fueled brainstorming. I could also easily have picked Peggy telling her secretary not to worry, that she would succeed. I could also have picked Betty Draper's father's altercation with Carla, and Carla's confident comebacks. I could have picked so many moments, but one that stood out for me this week was Joan telling off her husband as the two of them planned their dinner party.

So, Joan's mediocre doctor rapist husband needs Joan to throw a dinner party to impress his boss, and Joan obliges. Still, Joan does it ON HER TERMS. She's not going to be like Betty Draper, who married a guy who wouldn't even tell her who his parents were or how much money he made last year. Oh no, Joan might have married a date rapist, but she's still asserting herself in their marriage. You see, Joan's husband wants to seat his boss at the head of the table, but Joan says no, Emily Post would not approve of anyone other than the host himself sitting there. Joan's dude says he doesn't care about Emily Post and that he just wants to impress his boss, but Joan points out that the other wives WILL have read Ms. Post and will judge her for not knowing proper protocol. When Joan's husband yells, "I don't want to fight right now," Joan in term says firmly, "Then stop talking." Joan follows this snappy come-back up with her brilliant solution; they'll have a buffet and people can sit wherever they want. Her husband is relieved by her plan, and goes to leave the room, but Joan makes him kiss her first, because she wants what she wants.

I LOVE that join is trying to assert some measure of equality in her marriage. It's not all about being his partner and serving his image; she wants to appear as a good hostess too. Screw her husband's man's world, she wants to excel in women's world too! Joan won't sacrifice everything she wants just to help her husband get chief resident, a job we found out today he is woefully unqualified for, what with his assy surgery skills. So yeah, Joan comes up with the perfect solution for the dinner party herself and it's one that both she and her husband approve of. Joan has agency and won't just give into her spouse's demands. This is progress. Now maybe she'll have an affair, or leave him for someone who hasn't raped her...