Why everyone should have assumed Jian Ghomeshi was lying (courtesy of math)

You've probably seen some form of this critical thinking exercise. There's this description of a person. You're asked to choose their likely profession. The description usually looks something like this:

A person is neat and orderly. An introvert, the person is shy and does not easily make friends. In spite of near-sightedness, which requires him or her to wear glasses, the person also loves books and is an avid reader. Is this person a librarian or a teacher?

I probably don't need to ask what you picked: it was "librarian". Because that sounds like the stereotype of a librarian. If I had allowed you to attach percentages or probabilities, you might have allowed for the chance that this describes a teacher. You might have even said 50/50, which seems like a safe answer. And now that I've suggested it, you're probably thinking "that sounds reasonable", right? Right.

But, in fact, no. It isn't. You're wrong. You are so, so wrong.

That is to say, you're probably wrong. And you're probably wrong because you've likely paid attention to the wrong details. Rather than asking yourself "does this person sound like a librarian? or a teacher?" you needed to be asking "just how many people work in these professions, anyway?"

That being the real question, you probably already have some idea of the answer. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there were about 15,000 librarians employed in that country in 2012. But teachers? Well, if we restrict the category to only people who teach JK through Grade 12 classes, there were about 3,000,000, give or take 100,000. That's about 200 teachers for every librarian.

So, for every shy, near-sighted librarian - and even if we assume that every librarian fits this description - do we really think that we can't find more people who fit the description among a random sample of 200 teachers? And not just more but even 10 or 20 or 100 more of them for every 1 librarian? Yep, there's at least one, maybe even two magnitudes more teachers who fit this description than librarians. There's no reason for hesitation, here. There's maybe a 1% chance that "librarian" was right. You should have guessed "teacher".

There's a name for this kind of reasoning: Bayesian inference. A Bayesian inference refers to decision-making based on probabilities. We know - or at least we should know - that there are many more teachers than there are librarians. Google then confirms this and allows us to attach a factor to it. Those details about being orderly and loving books? It's really neither here nor there, since it's a decision-making process that's based on a feeling or stereotype about what a librarian is like, rather on anything we can measure or prove.

Thus, our basic assumption - our a priori assumption, given that we know little else that is useful - should be that "teacher" is the more probable correct answer.

So, where is this blog heading? I'll cut to the chase.

Last week, I started to write a blog about the Jian Ghomeshi sex scandal. I'm not going to rehash the details. If you're reading this, you're probably familiar with the allegations against the former CBC radio host. If not, here's the Wikipedia summary.

At the time I started writing, three women had accused Ghomeshi of sexual abuse and assault and each of them had been interviewed by Jesse Brown, though none allowed for their quotes to be attributed. Another women that Brown interviewed accused Ghomeshi of sexually harassing her at work. And some of Ghomeshi's own friends - mostly famously Owen Pallett - said that they believe the accusers. Also, depending on where you live and whether you shared any mutual friends or friends-of-friends with Ghomeshi, there was plenty of rumor and innuendo that supported the accusers.

Still, there were no irrefutable "facts", as such, like videos or pictures. A lot of people on the internets made comments like these:

K*** M***: Nobody knows "the whole story" except for him and the women. I am not taking anyones side on this matter. 

@pothen: Why is anyone (aside from the parties involved & personal friends) mouthing off about #JianGhomeshi? We know *nothing* so far. 

Which seems reasonable, right? We don't "know" anything, do we? It's a 'he said'/'she said' and the allegations are as likely to be true as they are false. The probability is 50/50 and we just shouldn't choose sides.

If you've been following along this whole time, you can probably guess where I'm headed with this.

As a matter of fact, we do know something. We know that women almost never lie about sexual assault. And that knowledge should inform whether we think these women are telling the truth.

So, what exactly do we know. Here are a couple details that aren't perfectly matched to the Ghomeshi case, but indicate a pattern:

• We know that it's very rare for women to go to the police and falsely accuse a man of sexual violence. For instance, multiple researchers have put the rate of "unfounded" or false rape accusations between 1% and 8%.
• As well, the rate of "unsubstantiated" criminal domestic assault cases is estimated to be around 25-40%. "Unsubstantiated", in this case, adds all of the cases that were dismissed due to lack of evidence - not that the accusation was false or malicious, necessarily, though these would be included in the number, too.

Granted, these refer to court proceedings and not unnamed accusers in newspapers, but the trend seems clear - women tell the truth more often than not. Even the most pessimistic guess would have to start with the assumption that the likelihood an accusation is true is >50%.

But we're not dealing with an accusation, are we? We also know that there were three people alleging particularly heinous sexually violence, not just one. That increases the likelihood that he did these things to at least one of them by a significant margin: that >50% becomes something more like 90+%.

Let me connect this process more explicitly with my opening example. At first, you might have asked yourself "do I think Jian Ghomeshi did this?" And so you might have made a decision based, to some extent, on what you think of him. But that was the wrong question, and it might have led you to commit the same representativeness fallacy that you fell prey to, above, if you chose "librarian". A better question would have been something more like "someone has been accused of sexually assaulting three women - how likely is it that these women are telling the truth?"

So, even before you heard any of the details, you should have thought it at least 90% likely that the accusations were correct. That's your starting point: not 50/50, but 90/10. Because while we might not know the whole story - just as we didn't know the entire life story of the person who wears glasses and loves books - we know a lot about probabilities, and that has to inform our decision-making.

And that's before you factor in the other story of sexual harassment. The letter from Owen Pallett. The stories from former co-workers or whispers from women in bars. The other six women who would come forward to the Toronto Star in the next week, two of whom were willing to be identified by name. The internal communications from the CBC that complaints had been made. The letters from journalism schools that declared his show off-limits to students because of his past behavior. The recollections of university dons that they had to keep an eye out for him. The woman who recalled a creepy encounter with him on XOJane, last year. The woman who accused him of sexual assault via an anonymous Twitter account, this spring. Or the fact that believing the accusers requires that only Ghomeshi is lying, while believing Ghomeshi requires that a dozen women and at least one journalist have orchestrated an elaborate and long-running conspiracy...

Michael Sam and the talk about draft value

Yesterday, Michael Sam, a college football player who intends to enter the NFL draft in May, told Sports Illustrated that he's gay. It's being described as "outing", but Sam's sexuality was no surprise to his college team, whom he informed in August, and apparently "only two or three [NFL teams] didn't know" beforehand.
 

Now, the fact that this is news - that Sam would be the first out player in the history of the NFL - is obviously indicative of heterosexism. That all of the coaches, scouts, and such interviewed by Sports Illustrated confirmed that this would be a problem, that it would be a distraction to the team and hurt his own prospects is also unsurprising, and also an explicit admission of widespread homophobia. But these are not surprising findings in North American sports, even if they're still upsetting.

As recently as a year ago, baseball's Torii Hunter was saying that having a gay teammate would be "difficult and uncomfortable", and the comment - while widely criticized by media-types - was basically a non-issue among people who are actively involved in the sport. Or in all of North America's big four sports, for that matter. The NBA's Jason Collins, a mediocre player nearing the end of his career, came out in spring 2013 and has been unable to find any more work. The NFL's Chris Kluwe, considered more-or-less average among punters, became an outspoken advocate of gay marriage and critic of its enemies and he, too, has been unable to find a job.

That the NBA's only out gay player and pro sports' most vocal straight ally find themselves unemployed is not evidence of a conspiracy, but it's reflective of this fact, at the very least - homophobia is deeply entrenched in the culture of sport.

 

What makes things more interesting for Sam, though, is that he's not on the verge of retirement, (like Collins) nor does he play a relatively marginal position that's rather easy to replace (like Kluwe). Rather, Sam is the SEC Defensive Player of the Year - not just the best at his own position, but judged the very best among all players on defense among the 14 team, Division I Southeastern Conference.

So, if Sam is going to be punished for his admission, it might be useful to look at how former Defensive Players of the Year have been treated by the NFL draft:

2012 - Round 1, Pick 17 - Jarvis Jones, Linebacker
2011 - Round 1, Pick 6 - Morris Claiborne, Cornerback
2010 - Round 1, Pick 5 - Patrick Peterson, CB
2009 - Round 1, Pick 8 - Rolando McClain, LB
2008 - Round 1, Pick 5 - Eric Berry, Safety
2007 - Round 1, Pick 5 - Glenn Dorsey, Nose Tackle
2006 - Round 1, Pick 11 - Patrick Willis, LB
2005 - Round 2, Pick 33 - Demeco Ryans, LB
2004 - Round 1, Pick 17 - David Pollack, LB
2003 - Round 5, Pick 142 - Chad Lavalais, Defensive Tackle
(previous to 2003, a single Player of the Year was named, which included offense and special teams)

Even with the inclusion of 2003's outlier, that's an average of 25th pick. And Sam? The various sources I've looked at were guessing, even before the public announcement, he could go anywhere from 3rd to 7th round - the vicinity of Lavalais, the outlier, rather than the norm. Following the announcement, the consensus seems to be that he'll go even lower. That is, if he's drafted at all.

Now, Sam is considered small for his position, (he's 6'2", while DEs tend to fall in the 6'3"-7" range) which is a criticism that unavoidably, and reasonably, damages his draft value. Doug Flutie, notably, won the Heisman Trophy and was named the best player in college football, only to be drafted in the 11 round and 285th overall. So, these things matter, and it's entirely possible that he'd fall outside the first round, controversy or no. But now we're suggesting that he would likely be the lowest-drafted SEC Defensive Player of the Year, ever? That he could, conceivably, go undrafted unless a team with "a strong owner, savvy general manager and veteran coach" can "make [it] work"? (We could spend hours peeling back the layers of the language that executives have used to describe Sam. Likewise, in discussing how cowardly it is that they've all hidden behind anonymity.)

This makes it sound like we're talking about someone who is intentionally divisive, who makes his sexuality central to his public persona. You'd think we were talking about someone who wears political messages on the field, who makes controversial remarks to media, who very openly and often talks about his sexuality, and whose media profile creates a conscious "distraction." Someone like, say, Tim Tebow.

And for what it's worth? Even with that baggage and similar concerns that his game wouldn't translate to the NFL, Tebow was picked 25th.

White male privilege in Star Trek: no single person's responsibility, but everyone's problem

I haven't seen Star Trek: Into Darkness - I plan to, eventually - but this article about Star Trek's failure to live up to its credo of diversity and tolerance (if not acceptance) makes some broader points that, I suspect, apply equally well to the new film. The money quote:

"The reality is that, at best, Star Trek is like a well-meaning but misguided friend who thinks that they are far more progressive than they actually are. Depending on the topic and franchise, Star Trek’s track record varies from 'mediocre but still better than most other shows of its era' to 'fucking hypocritical bullshit that makes me swear at the TV.'"

I wrote a short blog about this a few years ago, when I was commenting on both the remarkable racism - at least, in light of its purported progressive values - of The Next Generation and, yet, its oddly satisfying conclusion, where the producers argue that the progress narrative is deeply hypocritical and masks a root savagery that we'll never fully shake. (Deep Space Nine would pick this idea up and really run with it, positing that the more civilized the exterior appears, the more rotten it is at its core. Which, funny enough, seems to be exactly the argument that George R.R. Martin is putting forward with A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones.)

Actual shot from the most embarrassingly racist episode of TNG.

But the part of that article that I wanted to respond to, specifically, is where the author makes reference to the absence of gay characters and the explanations offered by current and former writers/producers Ronald D. Moore and J.J. Abrams. And we can add one from former show-runner Brannon Braga, too:

“The truth is it was not really a priority for any of us on the staff so it wasn’t really something that was strong on anybody’s radar.... Somebody has to decide that it’s important before you do it.” (Moore)

"I think it was, not so much a young man’s [issue], it was a syndicated family show, showing at six o’clock, you know, in Salt Lake City, so you had to deal with each separate affiliate rather than one network. And things like that. It was not a forward thinking decision. Knowing the players involved, knowing the decision makers, knowing it was that they felt reluctant about, you know, we’re not saying 'yes,' we’re not saying 'no,' we’re not just not going to touch that right now." (Braga)

"I just wouldn’t want the agenda to be-- whether it’s a heterosexual relationship or a homosexual relationship, to tell a story that was, that felt distracting from part of the purpose of the story is. ...this was not in the list of my priorities to try to figure out how to make this movie in the best possible way. But it will now be in the hopper. And it’s one of those things I’ll bring up with the writers next time we meet." (Abrams) 

So, each comment amounts to "we didn't really think about it", though with varying degrees of self-awareness and self-reflexivity. Braga seems to recognize, at least tacitly, that straight male privilege was preventing them from even considering it. Abrams, on the other hand, doesn't seem to realize how problematic it is to situate gay relationships as "distractions" when straight relationships wouldn't be similarly interrogated.

Anyway, this reminded me of the critiques of Girls and Game of Thrones, when each of those shows debuted. People complained (fairly) that Girls manages to almost completely whitewash one of the most racially-diverse cities in the world. People complained (fairly) that Game of Thrones reduces ethnic Others to almost comically barbaric stereotypes. These shows, the critics said, need to be more inclusive.

The defenders of these shows replied (again, fairly) that it is not their responsibility to be inclusive - they're telling a story, and telling it the best way they know how. And this is where I see the overlap with the Star Trek quotes above. Presumably, if someone were to push particularly hard - and I think you can actually see this if you read the full Abrams interview - they would fall into a sort of rhetoric of 'it's not my/our job to be everything to everyone', and making media for straight white dudes is a relatively easy sell. And, again, on an individual basis, they would be right.

The problem is, no one thinks it's their job to make a multicultural Girls, a racially-sensitive Game of Thrones, or a gay Star Trek character. Well, not "no one", but certainly very few people - and certainly not anyone with mainstream prominence. And while it may not be any single person's responsibility, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that real people see their lives reflected in real representations.

And that's the catch-22 - there's a collective obligation and need, here, but you can't force a J.J. Abrams or George R.R. Martin to be more inclusive, individually. (Well, maybe you can argue that Star Trek requires that the guy at the helm prove that it deserves its reputation. Maybe.) Yet, it's obvious that individual action - and accompanying monetary success - is the only thing that can lead to change among the wider entertainment industry. But while something needs to change, no one person is required to be the person who does it. So, no one does.

And that's why we just keep complaining.

A knock on the defense offered for Yunel Escobar

A brief update on the ongoing Yunel Escobar and the "tu ere maricon" controversy, which I first blogged about here and here.

The common defense that's being used, in the hours and days following the press conference, is that the possible negative connotation of the word is being overblown. Latin American players and reporters have been quick to say that there's a translation problem - both linguistically and culturally speaking - and that it really wasn't a big deal. "Maricon" means a lot of things, they say, and lots of people use it everyday and in casual conversation with friends and family. So, no problem, right?

Well, I don't really buy it. In fact, the culture-gap/culture-clash defense strikes me as pretty weak. Worse, it strikes me as, at best, a bit clueless and, at worst, indicative of a much larger problem with homophobia and a misunderstanding of how it operates and perpetuates. (And I'm not even gonna go anywhere near the "boys will be boys" type of defense that's been offered by Dirk Hayhurst and others. Honestly, if I need to explain why that one is unbelievably fucking problematic, you're probably not going to understand anything that follows, anyway.)

Players and coaches like Omar Vizquel and Ozzie Guillen quickly defended Escobar by saying that Latin Americans use the word in casual conversation with their friends all the time, to show them affection, to tease them, and/or to emasculate them. 

• Vizquel: "We say that word very often, and to us, it doesn’t really mean that we are decreasing anybody or talking down to people or anything like that. It’s just a word we use on an everyday basis. I don’t know why people are taking this so hard and so out of place or out of proportion."
• Guillen: "In my house, we call (each other) that word every 20 seconds. I've got three kids," Guillen added.  "For us, it's like 'What's up, bro? What's up, dude?' It's how you say it and to who you say it. But that's our country.

Now, admittedly, I'm no expert or cultural anthopologist with expertise with respect to the Caribbean. But I am keenly aware of just how much more dangerous it is to be an LGBTQ person in Central America than it is in Canada. And that difference, that danger? I'm going to suggest that it has a lot to do with the ease with which people like Vizquel and Guillen can brush aside Escobar's words. (Just a quick note: I am not so naive as to think that race isn't playing a factor in the way that the Toronto media has taken up the story. But that's another story for another day.)

Because this defense sounds an awful lot like "when we say 'fag', we mean you're too sensitive. we don't mean you're gay or anything'." This sounds an awful lot like "when i say he's a 'pussy', i mean he's weak. it doesn't have anything to do with women, so it can't be sexist". It sounds like they don't recognize the implied equivalence - that if, say, "pussy" means "weak" but it also means "woman", then a connection is implied between "weak" and "woman". It sounds like they're pretending - or are genuinely oblivious to - the power that words carry, the things that they say in excess of what we intend for them to say all the time.

And that power? It doesn't go away if we stop acknowledging it - it just becomes invisible. As Irene Monroe puts it, in her coverage of this story, "if the phrase 'TU ERE MARICON' goes unchecked or is not challenged, it allows people within their culture to become unconscious and numb to the use and abuse of the power and currency of this homophobic epithet -- and the power it still has to thwart the daily struggles of many of us to ameliorate LGBTQ relations." Being unconscious or numb to the word's connotations through overuse isn't a good excuse - like I said before, it's indicative of the larger, systemic problem.

The response of people like Guillen and Vizquel is also a remarkably unempathetic. Every one of these responses has, from what I can tell, been offered by straight Latin American men who use it in conversation with other straight Latin American men and note that other straight Latin American men don't find it all shocking. WHAT A SURPRISE. But what about all of the gay men that they talk to? (I mean, in addition to the men that Escobar employs.) Or that don't talk to them because the language makes them feel unsafe? Or, worse yet, who join in the discourse because they would feel more unsafe if they didn't play along? Because - guess what? - that happens all the time. They don't exist, I guess. In fact, if the media-response outside a couple papers in Toronto is any indication, the whole queer community doesn't exist! Or, you know, you could look for them, because you would find them.

*     *     *

As a totally unrelated aside, I can recall the comic book creator John Byrne explaining that, when he was a kid growing up in England during the 50s, it was not uncommon for the English to use the word "nigger" in everyday conversation. He said that it was even relatively common, at least where he grew up, to give the name "Nigger" to cats and dogs. And, he adds, it wasn't racist at all! But how's that possible, you ask? Because the white people who used it didn't think it was racist.

That makes sense, right? A bunch of white people casually use a derogatory word for non-white people, and they apply it endearingly to animals and, of course, without malice or intent to harm - so that's totally cool, right? Because who could be offended by a word loaded with painful historical baggage? Who could be offended if that word's given as a name to a dog? End of story.

And if that logic strikes you as totally fucked up... then maybe you can see that I was lying when I said it was a totally unrelated aside.

The Yunel Escobar press conference: well, that was a complete disaster

If I'm being charitable, there are two things that went right with the 30-minute press conference that ended less than a half-hour ago, where Yunel Escobar and the Blue Jays were asked to explain why he wrote, in Spanish, "you're a faggot/pussy" under his eyes. (You can find the picture in a blog I wrote yesterday, found here.)

1. He apologized and said it won't happen again.
2. The Blue Jays will donate money to You Can Play, a Toronto-based charity that combats homophobia in sports.

        

And that's it. And that covers two or three minutes of the content of the press conference. So, what went wrong? All of it, pretty much:

•  Escobar said the words "didn't mean anything", that he didn't "intend to offend anyone", and it was "misinterpreted". As far as apologies go, this veers dangerously close to victim-blaming. That is, he implied nothing, which means it's our fault for inferring something hurtful. And that's bullshit.
• Escobar - and his teammate Edwin Encarnacion, via reporter Shi Davidi - said that the slur isn't necessarily a slur, depending on the "context" (Escobar's word, via a translator). Encarnacion said it was a "joke". Right. Just like when someone, for instance, uses "gay" but actually means 'ugly' or 'stupid'? That's a joke too. In no way are they implying an equivalence between "gay" and "stupid". No, not at all. It's just a joke. 
• And what of "context", anyway? Escobar said it wasn't meant to be read by anyone. (Which is curious, since the manager, John Farrell, said that he often writes words under his eyes, and they're usually inspirational. Which suggests that they can and are meant to be read. But that's not the most egregious failure of communication between staff and players. More on that in a bit...) I don't know whether he's being disingenuous or he's actually that stupid, but there's no explanation that makes sense except to assume that he was directing it at the Boston Red Sox - the team the Jays were playing that day. And if he's directing it at the opposition? Well, that context lends itself to the interpretation that he did mean to call them "fags" or "pussies", and that he did mean it pejoratively. No other conclusion makes sense.
• That other moment where Farrell wasn't quite credible? It took forever, but one of the reporters eventually asked whether homophobia is a problem in baseball locker rooms. (A classic response to this kind of incident is to frame it as an isolated incident - to invoke the "one rotten apple" fallacy.) And Farrell completely blew it. He said it isn't a problem, but any of us who have played sports at any level know that he's hilariously wrong. As Dirk Hayhurst, the former Blue Jay, wrote yesterday, "Crude, offensive humor is a part of the lexicon of the clubhouse. Always has been, probably always will be." So, let's be honest, at least. Because telling such a transparent lie just totally destroys your believability.
• And Farrell dropped the ball at least one more time, too. When asked why he didn't notice the words, he said that doesn't pay attention to them, and that no one really does. And he didn't admit that he should be looking - in fact, he took no responsibility at all. That's a catastrophic failure of leadership. The first words out of Farrell's mouth should have been an admission of fault - an admission that he didn't look, but he should have. While, sure, Escobar deserves blame for hilariously poor judgement, Farrell is the guy letting him write on his face and failing to vet those same words. And, plain and simple, he's the boss. A huge part of the manager's job in baseball is to take pressure off of his players, to mediate between players and umpires, players and management, players and media, players and players... But Farrell just threw Escobar to the wolves.
• This next criticism applies to everyone who was sitting on the panel. Until a reporter said the word "homophobia", not one of them used the word. Escobar and his translator said "gay", (as in, embarrassingly, "my hairdresser is gay") but no one addressed the elephant in the room directly. What they did do was admit that there was a "problem". Repeatedly, Farrell and the GM, Alex Anthopolous, referred to homophobia as "the problem". A problem so serious, evidently, that we can't even refer to it by name. For fuck's sake, guys. Couldn't you have spoken to a subject matter expert or PR consultant before doing this? Couldn't you at least bring a diversity or sensitivity trainer in to coach you? Which leads me to my final point...
• ...which is that, aside from throwing $90k or so to charity, it felt like the Jays came into this press conference with no plan at all. No talking-points that made sense, no idea of how to talk about the issue, no clear indication that they had received advice or vocabulary (much less some quick mediation or counselling) from a gay rights or equity or anti-oppressive educator. (Hey, Blue Jays! I can even recommend my friend to you!) They. Looked. Totally. Lost. And what might the Jays or Escobar do after the money is donated? I have absolutely no idea. Hope that everyone forgets, maybe? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Yunel Escobar wrote what on his face, now?

In one of life's great mysteries, my typical orientation to sport is the total opposite of how I just generally read life. Niney-nine percent of the time, I'm all about the qualitative analysis and teasing out the nuance that numbers miss; when I'm talking games, though, I'm usually discussing data and metrics.

So, when people say that a ballplayer is "a winner", I mock them for seizing a quality that's hilarious undefinable. And when they say someone has a "bad attitude", I ask for the proof that it affects performance. Thus, when the Blue Jays traded for - and extended the contract of - Yunel Escobar, a player infamous for being surly and supposedly a bad teammate, I was thrilled. Here's a guy who's undervalued and underpaid for reasons that have nothing to do with his numbers. So long as he's performing above his pay-grade, he's a good thing.

And then, this happened.

Strangely enough, I learned about the existence and meaning of "tu ere maricon" only a couple weeks ago - at a World Cup qualifying game between the Canadian men's team and Panama. It's a homophobic slur, most commonly translated as "you're a faggot". And it's just fucking awful to see it scrawled across any athlete's face. If there's a way to cut or suspend him without paying him - and I'm pretty certain that there isn't, unfortunately - I am all for it. Just get rid of him. Find a bottomless pit and drop him in it.

It gets worse, though. Because fans are already doing cartwheels in an attempt to defend or dismiss his actions. For instance, from the page where the photograph was first posted:

• "Let's not make such a big deal about this....you mind your business and he will mind his business."
• "relax. its not big deal"
•  "Ho hum - obviously he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer"
• "what ever happened to free speech? dont get me wrong i dont hate gays but its just a name!!! get over it, soft people"

 Sometimes, people are just awful. And no number can justify that.

Comic books and the impossible woman: people still don't get it

So, in the past few days, this picture of Catwoman has sparked a veritable shit-storm on the internet:

Catwoman #0, cover by Guillem March.

There's a lot to dislike, here, if you care even a bit about anatomy. (And since Catwoman's abilities do not involve the reshaping of her body to fit her whim, the "it's fantasy!" argument really doesn't hold water.) Her breast plate appears to be angled outward and upward(?!), which, given the position of her tailbone, would mean that her spine is bending at something like a 50 degree angle. And bending in the wrong place. And her abdomen is about 3 feet long. (Let's not even talk about how it's being simultaneously twisted, though.) I suppose that's theoretically do-able - gymnasts can certainly bend backward - but not under these circumstances. Catwoman's legs, arms, and neck are moving against the curve of her spine, whereas the gymnasts entire body needs to contributing to make it work. The movement of her jump doesn't make sense, either - she's leaping forward into space, but her body would have to be arcing backward for this to be even slightly plausible. And to make matters worse, if you were to map out the structure of her shoulders and collar bone, you'd need to conclude that her neck is actually popping out of left shoulder. (Well, either that or her head has been dislocated from her neck. Which is possible, because the angle of her face looks wrong, too.)

But perhaps surprisingly, the frothy-mouthed barking has not come from people who hate the cover. It's come, instead, from the people defending it.

Let me back up a bit, though. There have been critics of the cover, of course. But, y'see, one only has so much energy and disbelief to devote to these things when this is probably only one of a dozen gratuitous and impossible T&A comic book covers that will grace shelves this month. Which is why most of the responses - and this has been true of most comic art since Escher Girls was created, at least - have involved gently, and hilariously, mocking and parodying the image. And, in some cases, even correcting it. (Click those links. They're pretty great.)

But about the anger - this reaction, written by Jason Kerouac, to the re-draws and critiques appeared yesterday. And he's not at all happy that people are criticizing the cover. (He begins with "Grow the fuck up", so you know he means business.)

He suggests that the pose is plausible, but he's wrong and his photo comparisons aren't even close. He also suggests that it doesn't matter because it's art - money quote: "Y’know who else exaggerated anatomy? Picasso" - but ignores the fact that this artist is actually a realist, and some basic rules do apply. And he makes the classic recourse to reverse-sexism, arguing that men are exaggerated and sexualized, too. Except that they're not, really - idealized, yes, but there's no male equivalent to the fetishization of double-D breasts, peeking through rubber-catsuit cleavage. (Centuries of sexism and the resulting imbalance of representational power will do that.) So, he provides a lot of arguments, but they don't work so well together - he plays both the realism and surrealism cards, which is weird - and none of them work separately, either.

Part of the problem, I think, is that he doesn't seem to really understand why people dislike the cover. He thinks that the response has to do with anatomy, with Catwoman being a poor role-model, and with being a "cool kid" who can poke fun. And it might have something to do with each these. But what these reactions are really responding to misogyny - to a comics industry that still can't see why a female superhero or supervillain is worth reading unless her tits and ass are magically detaching from her body and flinging themselves at you - the 90% male readership of super-hero comics - while you read about them.

Did I say "them"? Sorry, I meant "read about her".

Counter-campaign, anyone? One Million Moms and their anti-gay superhero backlash

One Million Moms is a hilariously hyperbolic right-wing organization that is "against the immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children." Of course, by "against...immorality" they actually mean "we hate gays", and by "hyperbolic right-wing organization" I actually mean "surprisingly polite, albeit hate-spewing, homophobes".

But there's a lot of these groups, right? And I don't typically waste time on this crap, unless they're digging their claws into something that's near and dear to me.

Unsurprisingly, then, I'm posting this because One Million Moms have decided to go after gay superheroes. Helpfully, they explain that both Marvel and DC have some major events planned that revolve around gay characters - an upcoming issue of Marvel's Astonishing X-Men will feature the wedding of Northstar and his boyfriend, and at some point next month (maybe?) DC will reveal that one of their major characters has been in the closet. DC's VP of Sales, Bob Wayne, invokes Obama in referring to the decision as an "evolution", and he's right. Even if the execution is bad - and given the mainstream comic companies' track-record, here, that's probably more likely than not - this is a good thing.

Progress! Also, how cool is it that Doop - the Cold War nuclear military
experiment who is also a green floating blob - is front-and-center?

Unless you're One Million Moms, that is. Here's a quick sampling of what they have to say. (Coupled, of course, with my own brief responses.)

Children mimic superhero actions and even dress up in costumes to resemble these characters as much as possible. Can you imagine little boys saying, "I want a boyfriend or husband like X-Men?"

I love that their fake quote is so awkwardly written. Because no one who reads an X-Men comic would ever say "like X-Men". (Also? I can imagine this, and think it's pretty great.)

Why do adult gay men need comic superheroes as role models? They don't but do want to indoctrate impressionable young minds by placing these gay characters on pedestals in a positive light.

I honestly can't figure out why they think gay men (to say nothing of women) wouldn't want superheroes as role models. Why is that, exactly? Is it because THE GAYS spend all their time and energy distorting and recruiting "impressionable young minds", and thus they can only admire villains? (Sadly, I bet that my mocking guess is really close to their actual reasons.)

Children do not know what straight, homosexual, or coming out of the closet even means, but DC Comics and Marvel are using superheroes to confuse them on this topic to raise questions and awareness of an alternative lifestyle choice. These companies are prompting a premature discussion on sexual orientation.

Wowza. I'm not sure what I find most clueless, here - the suggestion that kids don't know what those words mean, at least implicitly, or that the discussion about sexual orientation isn't already happening. (Albeit a very limited discussion that privileges straight, Disney-romance love.) Regardless, this is just dumb.

But this is easily the best part of their diatribe:

Earlier this year One Million Moms emailed Toys 'R' Us concerning the "Life With Archie" No. 16 with two gay characters getting hitched. Toys 'R' Us had the audacity to display "Archie- Just Married" at the front of the store by the checkout counters.

Amazing. AMAZING. What a spectacular failure on OMM's part, and a fantastic way to send a message to these bullies. This should happen again. Someone, somewhere, needs to make sure that this happens again. 

Cover to Life with Archie #16

So, how do we do that? Well, there's a prompt to action at the bottom of the anti-gay superhero campaign page, where they give you a form letter to send to Marvel and DC. You could start by creatively misusing the form, deleting their hateful garbage and replacing it with words of support for the two companies. That would be pretty cool. [Note: if you do this, you're required to sign-up for their email updates.]

You could also try the other link on the campaign page, which is the One Million Moms complaint form, and tell OMM what you think of their plan. For my part, I took their own sentences from the Take Action blurb on the campaign page, rewriting and replacing words as necessary. So, if you'd like to help me build a counter-campaign by telling OMM that they're the ones that need to change, feel free to take my words and either copy-and-paste or rewrite them to suit yourself (the bold type is their original language, the rest what I've added or edited):

I am sending One Million Moms this email urging them to change and cancel all plans to continue spewing homophobic venom against homosexual superhero characters immediately. I ask them to do the right thing and reverse their decision to publicize this puerile and misguided campaign, which serves only to demonstrate that OMM is totally out of touch with contemporary social attitudes and scientific knowledge.

(Fyi, on the Complaint Form, I referred to the Name of Complaint as "Hate Speech", and the Network as "One Million Moms.com".)

One Direction and subtle misogyny

As if it weren't bad enough that boy bands are back with a vengeance, these are the sort of lyrics that they're giving us:

You're insecure
Don't know what for
You're turning heads when you walk through the door
Don't need make-up
To cover up
Being the way that you are is enough
Everyone else in the room can see it
Everyone else but you

This is from One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful", by the way. And this opening verse seems pretty innocuous, as if they're saying that the "you" should be more confident. Even the part about not needing make-up isn't necessarily judgmental, and could actually be a compliment that isn't saying anything specifically about make-up or what it signifies.

But, no, a subtly nefarious judgment does creep in, in the chorus:

If only you saw what I can see
You'll understand why I want you so desperately
Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe
You don't know
Oh oh
You don't know you're beautiful
Oh oh
That what makes you beautiful

Because, as it turns out, the girl is beautiful precisely because she doesn't know that she's beautiful. That's the catch, and that's what makes those seemingly harmless lines about make-up a great deal more loaded than they first appear. A girl who doesn't wear make-up is, presumably, unaware and ignorant of her sexuality (ie. she's still pure and innocent) while one who does is comparatively world-weary and, ostensibly, has been around the block a few times.

So, that insecurity that they were complaining about in the opening line? That wasn't actually a complaint. It was actually a precondition for finding her desirable. And confidence? Well, if she should have it, it's clear that it should only come from the affirmation that the singer offers. And, by extension, that a girl's confidence only ever comes from guys. Which means that girls who are already confident and self-aware - the kind who wear make-up? Well, they must have gained that "knowledge" from other boys, and this, of course, means that they're not innocent and not actually beautiful.

One last bit on the logic of beauty, according to One Direction. Hilariously/disturbingly, the lyric holds that a girl can never actually know that she, herself, is beautiful. If unawareness of one's beauty is what makes them beautiful, then someone who is aware of their beauty would, ironically, no longer be beautiful. The only options are ignorance and self-deception. Super.


[These lyrics also reminded me of a story about a male high school student near Toronto who was suspended for distributing a letter that celebrated girls' "inner-beauty". Which he did, unfortunately, by not-so-subtly excluding the girls who "dress in revealing clothing". Who, clearly, couldn't possibly possess inner-beauty.]

That Gaga/Foucault Meme

This has been circulating for months, (a year, even?) so my comments are beyond late. But anyway:


It's a cute joke. And it's right. But the meme only really works if you assume that Gaga's being totally sincere.

Now, I don't think she's being insincere. She's telling kids that they weren't born 'wrong', that they're aren't mistakes by virtue of being different than the norm. It's pretty basic stuff, but that's the audience it was written for, too - adolescents that have never heard of queer theory, kids in Middle America who aren't hearing this message from anyone else.

And seriously? Look at that picture. She has prosthetic spiky cheekbones and horns. I'm willing to guess that she wasn't actually born that way.

The DC relaunch: some reactions

1) DC Comics made waves - of the bad kind - in July when their co-publisher, Dan DiDio, got in an argument with a fan at Comicon. The fan had a legitimate beef: DC was canceling and relaunching all 52 comics in their superhero line, and in so doing was slashing their compliment of women from double-digits to just 2. And if this wasn't problematic enough, DiDio decided to chew the fan out, questioning whether it made a meaningful difference and demanding that the fan tell DiDio who they should have hired. It reflected pretty poorly on DC, especially given that women, in comics, have always been underrepresented as creators and problematically sexualized as characters.

2) I've picked up only two comics from the relaunch, including the very first one, the flagship Justice League title from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, and Grant Morrison's Action Comics. (Though I've seen a lot of reviews and responses to other comics - but more on that later.) I don't know what the objective is with these new comics, but it seems to me that DC has actually rid itself of two of the things that gave its universe a unique character among the various superhero worlds - an optimistic outlook and bigger-than-big powers. Especially in relation to Marvel - where the world order is always tenuous, the situation is always dire, and the (anti-)heroes unliked and over-matched - DC has always seemed bright and bubbly. So, at least according to this guy's initial assessment, the newly brooding and irascible DC universe looks a whole lot like Marvel's. And this isn't a good thing.

3) In the past week, though, all of the attention has shifted back to the sorts of concerns that were, at least implicitly, being voiced back in July. Specifically, it's these comics, Red Hood and the Outsiders and Catwoman:


Now, admittedly, these are just small portions of bigger comics. But they're also pretty fair representations of the whole from which they've been taken. And they also seem to offer good evidence that the jokes that non-comic folks make - y'know, about superhero comics being filled with T&A and comic readers being horny fanboys - are well-founded. So rather than completely stealing someone else's thunder, I'll post some good quotes and refer you to the source - it`s worth reading it all:

"Most problematically, we are shown [Catwoman's] breasts and her body over and over for two pages, but NOT her face. [...] Can't you show us the playful or confident look in her eye as she puts on her sexy costume? Because without that it's impossible to connect with the character on any other level than a boner, and I'm afraid I don't have one of those."

"If you really want to support Starfire's 'liberated sexuality' like she's somehow a person with real agency, what people should really be campaigning for is more half-clothed dudes in suggestive poses to get drawn around her, since I'm sure that's what she'd like to see. But people don't really want that, do they? Because it's not about what Starfire wants. It's about what straight male readers want. [...] but let's be honest about what's happening and who we're serving (or not serving) and at whose expense."

Rihanna has made some strange (dumb?) choices

Rihanna is mostly famous for two things, and not necessarily in this order: "Umbrella" and being assaulted by then-boyfriend and fellow pop-star Chris Brown.

So it's a bit baffling to reflect on some of her recent song choices:

* From the first single following her break-up with Brown, "Russian Roulette":

And you can see my heart beating
You can see it through my chest
And I’m terrified but I’m not leaving
Know that I must must pass this test
So just pull the trigger

* From her recent duet with Eminem, "Love the Way You Lie":

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's alright because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's alright because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie

At my most optimistic, I could maybe see that the first song is trying to celebrate her survival - she's stronger for having had the relationship. (But it feels more like she's rationalizing what happened, almost trying to excuse his behavior, as if in 'testing' her he was ultimately helping her. I think it's fucked up.)

And the new song? I can't see anything remotely redeemable in it. If I'm trying to be optimistic, the best I can do is suggest that she's a masochist. But there's nothing more here that's even remotely recuperable.

Rihanna, though, disagrees: "He pretty much just broke down the cycle of domestic violence and it's something that people don't have a lot of insight on. [...] The lyrics were so deep, so beautiful and intense. It's something that I understood, something I connected with."

"Broke it down"? If she means that it's a wholly uncritical stream-of-consciousness first-person account of the ways in which misogynists explain and excuse their behavior, then yes, he did a good job of showing just how an abuser can twist things to try and make their behavior sound reasonable. But to call it "deep" and imply that he shows "insight"? No. There's none of that here. I mean, for fuck's sake - the song is about a guy who hits and threatens to murder his girlfriend, a woman who is seemingly okay with it because she "likes the way it hurts". Who "connects" with that?

(The video is even worse because it a) makes the abuse sexy and b) tries even harder to implicate both of them in the violence. "Deep" and "beautiful", indeed.)

Brief comment on Twilight

With New Moon about to premiere, I thought I should finally getting around to commenting on Twilight, which I watched a couple months back. (I also read parts of the book, but couldn't bring myself to read more than a page here or there in isolation. It is badly, badly written - Bella "shudder/s/ed" four times on one page. Either buy a thesaurus or send her to a doctor, because this girl is obviously sick.) And having seen the movie, I get why people like it - it's hot. Pattinson and Stewart do a remarkably good job of making it look like their blood is boiling over with super-heated hormones and it's all they can do to keep it from exploding out of their perpetually fluttering eyelids and, yes, shuddering bodies.

But that doesn't make it good, or even not bad. And it also isn't enough to totally distract you from the often subtle, and sometimes less so, creepiness of Edward and Bella's relationship. When you notice that the characters seem to model their behavior on stereotypes of abuser and victim - especially in the hospital scene near the end, which made my skin crawl - that kills the sexiness pretty fast.

[Only somewhat related: I just learned that the villain in the Buffy: Season Eight comic is also named Twilight. I'm guessing there's a joke here, as Buffy fans on the whole despise the Twilight series for undermining Buffy's feminism, but has it been made explicit? Is there anything more to the joke than the name?]

The half-life of funny (to offensive)

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective made $72 million in 1994. (It was the 16th highest-grossing film in North America that year; for comparison's sake, Slumdog Millionaire was 16th last year and made $141 million.) And given that it was so popular, you'd think I would remember if it had earned any complaints or criticism for its rather questionable portrayal of a certifiably insane trans/queer villain and a homophobic hero. Here's a reminder of the latter:



I can easily imagine a character like Finkle/Einhorn still featuring in a comedy in 2009, but I can't fathom anyone including a scene like the one above. Ace's reaction was evidently thought harmless, even funny, by most audiences in 1994, but this sort of humor has all the charm of hate speech, today. And that's a really short turnaround, isn't it? To go from 'acceptable for a general audience to laugh at' to virtually unfilmable in 15 years?

(Or am I simply wrong in thinking that homo/transphobia can't be quite so obviously celebrated and laughed at anymore?)

The queerness(?) of Michael Jackson

This article about Michael Jackson and his status as queer icon was recently posted to my departmental listserv. I tend to agree with what it suggests about MJ's victimization by a system of compulsory heterosexuality that he tried to fit but couldn't. (I'm less certain about whether he actually had vitiligo, but his eventually cartoonish efforts to whiten himself through bleaching and surgery go well beyond dealing with a medical condition.)

Among the exchanges in response to the article over the list, one friend suggests that Jackson didn't actually aspire to normativity. I can see why he'd be tempted to say that - through the late 80s and early 90s, a surprising amount of academic writing was devoted to discussions of MJ's ironic embodiments and performance of identity, masculinity, sexuality, and whiteness. It seems fair to wonder why anyone who wanted to seem 'normal' would choose to have his face altered in such a way that it looked inhuman.

But I'm of the opinion that MJ was entirely too conscious of normative white America's ideal images. The problem, and it's the same problem that appears to have informed many of his life's decisions, is that he tried to normalize himself in the way that a little boy would - by exaggerating to the point of parodic and grotesque excess. That is, it would be parodic if it weren't so sincere; and it would be endearing (rather than disturbing) if, like a child, we thought that he was expressing some inner-essence - a masculinity that he would eventually grow into.

And as for 'the queerness of Michael Jackson'? Another friend adds that "Queer also isn't synonymous with deviant, although often, what is regarded as deviant can be included in what it is to be Queer". So failing to be heteronormative does not make one queer - especially in MJ's case where it seems so clear that he wanted to be heteronormative and just didn't know how to go about doing it. No one ever perfectly matches the demands of compulsory hetersexuality, but it's rare that someone who wanted so badly to match it ended up missing the mark so spectacularly.

"Hetero man-crush"

One of my very favorite expressions to use is "hetero man-crush", in part because it always gets a laugh from people who've never heard it, and in part because it's almost always perfectly apt. I use it to describe non-sexual-but-more-than-platonic attraction to other guys, though it seems to be used by most other guys to exclusively describe an attraction to male celebrities or other guys that they don't actually know. (I suppose it's somehow safer or less anxious if it's confined only to people you'll never meet?)

I can't recall when I first started using it or who/where I got it from, though the very oldest reference to "hetero man crush" (as opposed to simply "man crush") that I could find on Google is in August of 2005, which uses it "to denote a man that [one] admires, to the point of wanting to get to know that person more, admiring that person to the point of thinking about them often and wanting to be like them." In fairness, though, that definition seems to fit "man crush" more accurately than "hetero man-crush", the latter being a bit more ironic and cute about the way that it self-reflexively asserts the heterosexuality of the speaker/writer. (And, in that assertion, also winks knowingly at the anxious and tenuous construction of that heterosexuality.) There has to be some admittance that you want to be too much like them, that your fandom (in the case of celebrities) approaches a discomforting level or your interactions with them (in the case of people you know) are already ambiguously gay. No definition of "hetero man-crush" works without the inclusion of those levels.

As for specific examples of my own? George Clooney as Danny Ocean is maybe at the top of the list, and I suspect it has something to do with both his overwhelming coolness and my love of Clooney's hair, given that I'm getting a number of grays and hope sincerely that my gray hair will somehow eventually be like his. It's incredibly unlikely, sure, but just maybe...

Uncanny X-Men 503 and THAT scene

I wanted to write something else - less contentious, more literary - about Matt Fraction on the X-Men, so it's a shame that this has to be the first thing. See, there's a scene in the middle of 503 where Cyclops and Emma Frost are investigating the Hellfire Cult's warehouse, during which Emma dresses up in some bondage gear and, presumably, things get a little unprofessional.

The thing is, as we learn at the end of the issue, it's not Emma in the bondage gear. Apparently, I was the only person (on a message board, at least) who was immediately skeptical - "this is kinky even for you", Cyclops' mentioning that she's unnecessarily in his head, and the uncharacteristically glowing red eyes were pretty much a dead giveaway. Or so I thought. But there are other, rather obvious clues: the story arc's mystery villain, the Red Queen, is shown telepathically extracting information about Emma Frost's personality earlier in the issue, and Emma admits to having no idea what Cyclops is talking about when he mentions the scene at the end of the issue - after which Cyclops immediately sees the Red Queen, who he identifies as his ex-wife, Madelyne Pryor. So it's implied and not totally clear until the end, but it happened nonetheless: Cyclops was telepathically raped. (If you're still not with me, see my brief discussion of the issue of consent in the very last paragraph of his blog post.)

When I asked why no one was talking about this on the message board, it was suggested that it's a sort of comeuppance for Cyclops. During Grant Morrison's run, Cyclops and Emma had a psychic affair that the former dismissed as not disloyal to his wife because it wasn't physical, and so Maddie is sort've toying with that logic - that is, it must not be sexual assault because it was only psychic. And, going back to Claremont's pre-Inferno days, the same person suggested that the story element of tricking him into doing something without his informed consent is not unlike the process by which Madelyne was herself transformed into a villain during what she thought was a dream. Notably, Cyclops didn't accept this as an explanation of her transformation, nor did he accept any blame for the mental distress that led her to that point, much of which was his fault.

So to the extent that it seems to be invoking these earlier moments of Cyclops' hypocrisy and using it against him, it works. But there's something so incredibly distasteful about the suggestion of rape, here, that I just can't get past. Maybe it's just that sexual assault is so often sensationalized, and that instances of gender-reversal of his sort are so often handled poorly, that I'm having a knee-jerk reaction that will turn out to be unfounded. And maybe it's also because I have some affection for Madelyne's original character and didn't like her transformation into a villain in the first place - and so I find it additionally detestable that she's been reduced again, this time into a rapist.

[I should also note that this scene caused me to reconsider an element in the last Casanova story arc where something surprisingly similar happens, though it escaped my notice in the moment. In that story, Casanova is undercover as his sister, Zephyr, and has a sexual relationship with a male terrorist named Kubark - who, predictably, feels deeply betrayed and disturbed when he learns that Zephyr was never Zephyr at all. This fits all the same criteria for any legal or moral definition of rape - you can't give informed consent when someone is withholding information that prevents a full awareness of the consequences of your actions, ie. when they're lying about who they are or intend to do you harm. And yet I totally missed it - probably because Casanova is deeply apologetic and Kubark is totally evil, responding with homophobia rather than admitting any emotional pain. It's probably to Fraction's credit that he can do this twice before I catch it, and that it can work so well in the context of the story. But I still find it a troubling sort of trope.]

Wikipedia's curious visualizations of fetish porn

So sexual fetish porn is incredibly racialized and gendered*. This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. But what might come as a shock is the usually very reliable and politically self-reflexive Wikipedia's participation in the production of these, uh... representations. (I'm trying to be subtle because it's all a bit discomforting. You'll see what I mean.)

Here's one, and another, and one more.

It's not that it's weird for Wikipedia to attach R- or X-rated images to its entries. It seems pretty sensible for an encyclopedia to do that when they're covering porn or sex and they do it in quite reasonable ways on other pages. What's weird is that in cataloging the porn fetishes, they manage to also perpetuate those most problematic aspects of them. And that's just not cool.

Now anyone want to tackle the implications of these images being cartoons? (And quite realistic, though still obviously fake, cartoons?)

*And they're racialized and gendered both simultaneously and connectedly, since those racialized roles of fetish-play are always assigned gendered (masculine, feminine) values. Or you could read it in the reverse - that the gender roles in hetero fetish-porn are implicitly raced. Anyway - the point being that they're inextricable and mutually implicated.

Miley Cyrus, teen sexuality (gasp!), and 'growing sideways'

I've been meaning to write something about this for weeks and just never got around to it: the career-threatening scandal (say what?) surrounding Miley Cyrus and various pictures that she's taken which suggest she may not be the ideally asexual teen that her TV and stage representations make her out to be.

(In case you're in need of catching-up: Cyrus is 15, a pop music and TV megastar among her child and tween audience. Two examples of her alarming popularity among young girls should suffice: with the help of this relatively small (but, evidently, disproportionately powerful) demographic group she's managed to debut both her albums at #1 on the American Billboard charts and the concert film that Disney released in movie theatres posted a record opening weekend for a film on fewer than 1000 screens - over $8 million.)

And the controversy? The accusations that she was less than an apt role-model started with an Annie Leibovitz shot:
That some people would be made uncomfortable by a teenaged girl wrapped in a bedsheet is, I suppose, predictable. But I don't think it's the bare skin or sheet that actually freaks them out - I think it's the hair and the smirk. She doesn't look vacant, innocent, or wholly ignorant in the way that most overtly-sexualized starlets are made to appear - she looks too aware of what she's projecting. And what's worse, she looks like she's enjoying it.

And more fuel was added when (apparently) her cellphone was hacked and pictures were stolen from it. There are a lot of them, but this is about as bad as it gets:

The controversy here baffles me even more. They're ostensibly pictures taken of herself, for herself or her friends, not the sort of thing that strangers - us - were ever supposed to see. They're also almost exclusively pictures of only Cyrus herself. And if people can't handle a teenaged girl flashing her abs for her camera, god only knows what they would do if they learned that teenagers masturbate - and even have sex.

Kathryn Bond Stockton has written of the way in which children's sexuality is denied to them - they are assumed to be 'not-yet-straight', that is presently asexual but presumptively straight - and suggests that when they can't "grow up", they instead "grow sideways". But this is not to say that growing sideways is necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, it seems to me that growing sideways is actually a fairer representation of how people (like Miley Cyrus?) actually grow - not from presumptively heteronormative innocence to straight adulthood, but with hiccups, leaps, and sidesteps toward an uncertain endgame. That is, if there's actually an end.

The X-Men and identity politics, pt. 1

In response to a complaint at the X-Universe Message Board that there are hardly any gay mutants - despite the fact that the mutants in the X-Men's universe are popularly understood as analogous to queer or racially Othered youth - a poster named Tiger Shark wrote the following: "the X-men is already a metephor for minorties everywhere and of all kinds, so there's no need to trot out a 'gay' X-Man just to fill a quota".

There's something immediately appealing about this logic, though I'd suggest that it ultimately fails. It's appealing, I think, because claims to X-Men's metaphoricity are incredibly seductive. Under the logic of metaphor, an implicit comparison allows for the attributes of a to be read on to b. So X-Men is not just a superhero comic - depending on who you talk to, it's also about race relations and civil rights, homosexuality and homophobia, 'the red scare', Jewish-American assimilation, and/or teen alienation.

That said, a metaphorical relation implies equivalence, and some of these metaphors are more equal than others: given the overwhelming normativity - the characters are almost universally whiten, malen, able-bodied, middle-to-upper-class, and heterosexual - of the X-Men, the race and sexuality readings can be contradicted and deconstructed without much effort.

The same poster later accused me of "being too literal" and "lost in minutiae", though these sound like reasonable demands to place on language. We should be skeptical of a comic book that, literally, presents us with dozens of heterosexual characters but asks us to understand (misrecognize?) them figuratively as non-heterosexual. A certain degree of dissimilarity is expected in a metaphor, but this isn't just minutiae that I'm getting stuck on - it's a fairly evident contradiction that's embodied in nearly every X-character.

[This was all inspired by a specific textual incident, but I'll get to that in the next installment. My apologies if you've read my 'Mutant Readers, Reading Mutants' paper, which I posted here, and this sounds redundant. But most people don't want to bother with a 20 page document, and it feels helpful and necessary for me to rewrite some of those arguments in a more concise manner and with some tweaking and more contemporary examples.]