What We Missed.
The Fox "Sexpert" debunks 8 myths about sex and women and it does not suck.
Safer Campus blog has a really good take on Chris Brown and teaching love.
Jeff Chang has more on Roxanne Shante.
Tyler Perry has been asked to write, direct and produce an adaptation of the 1975 play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf." And I want someone to tell me this is not true.
Gizmodo thinks coercing a woman into having sex is funny.
Have a great Labor Day folks!
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Well of course Tyler Perry will write, direct, and produce "For Colored.." Listen, Hollywood only has enough room for one black person behind the camera and Tyler Perry's movies are making money. All African American stories are the same right? So why would they bother finding someone like... oh say, a woman of color? I mean, it's not really relevant that the story not only comes from a black woman's words but is ABOUT being a black woman. I suppose fans of the play should just feel relieved that they didn't offer it to Michael Bay.
I went and saw (500) Days of Summer the other night and saw the trailer for the fi;m Push which is Tyler Perry + Oprah...and I didn't know what to think. It looks like a very emotional, touching movie - but having read about Tyler Perry's gender problems, I'm a little wary - though I'll probably go see it anyway.
That trailer looks absolutely heartbreaking. But my comment wasn't a criticism of Perry's talent or his portrayal of women. It was aimed at Lionsgate for their selection. I absolutely believe that writers can write excellent characters of different genders, races, etc. when they use the appropriate touch. But this story (or set of stories) is coming from such a specific standpoint, it just feels wrong for a man to write the voices of the women. It would feel equally wrong if it were a white woman. Hopefully Perry handles it well.
from what I've heard, Perry wasn't involved in the creative process at all with Push/Precious (and neither was Oprah), both of them are just involved in like its distribution deal
This is true. It premiered at Sundance and Tyler Perry and Oprah had nothing to do with it then. Just a distribution thing...
Not only coercing a woman into sex but coercing a girl to lose her virginity and secretly taping it in order to display it to the school. But they mentioned the super-collider, that makes it hilarious. *vomit* How immensely disgusting that it is being treated as a "cool" thing to do to "frigid" women (and by women, we mean 13 to 15-year-old girls)
The Fox News article is pretty decent, especially considering the source. However, they did manage to slip this little gem in:
"Adultery has payoffs for a woman. For example, having someone else interested in her means more resources."
Apparently, they're still not entirely convinced that women can enjoy sex without receiving any financial benefits.
I'm not even going to get into how the word "frigid" effen pisses me off, but coercing someone who is not yet mentally mature enough to say "NO" straight on is, in my eyes, the equivalent of date-rape. I know some people might flame me for that, but whatever.
Using tactics like calling a girl "frigid," or appealing to her desire to fit in and be popular, or even straight out LYING, is just plain. . .I don't know, but it's plain something.
This pisses me off, because being put on a pedestal and being called a "slut" when a girl decides who she wants to sleep with and when, was, and still is, a pervasive form of sexism and double standard. But being called "cold" and "frigid" because you just don't want to, or aren't ready yet, is the same damn kind of sexism. Especially when she is only 13, or even 16 dammit!
I'm sorry, but it seems like girls have gone from the extreme of having to look cute and dainty, learn proper etiquette and place a napkin in her lap to having to become a damn sex symbol at such an early age.
When can we just be human and make a CHOICE without having to be slapped with some sort of insulting and dehumanizing label?
I believe the word you may have been looking for was "manipulative" and/or "sociopathic".
I first came across this incident on the the site reddit.com
and I was so pissed off about the horrible congratulatory attitudes of the comments. It was like this manipulated 13 year old girl was a conquest and the reddit douche bags where slapping this guy on the back for using science to manipulate this girl into allowing him to use her. Very stereotypically frat-boy behavior. Some of the worst went something along the lines of "dang I wish I had been that smart or gusty in middle/high school" ew, just ew! Why is it that the internet seems to being out this sort of endorsement for misogyny?
I don't know enough of the particulars to judge, like the way she actually feels about this, (which may not be as bad as I suspect because, yes, some 13-15 year-olds know for sure they do want to have sex) but the reaction to it by men on a site I like to delude myself into thinking of as semi-politically progressive just ruins my week.
I think it is just the double-standard of young women and sexuality in general, (and this is generalizing) that if she says no initially she's "frigid" and a "prude," but if she says "yes" then she's a slut. She's probably being harassed right now as both, paradoxically.
I think the additional video taping just brings it up one more notch of horror for me. Not only does it strike me that these girls were coerced into this, but now there is the humiliation aspect of being taped and having the whole school (and at this point, probably parents, other students' parents, etc.) also viewing that private moment, which wasn't even wanted to begin with. And I don't have any issue with exhibitionism, but the whole idea of secretly taping/photographing women I think gets brushed aside and it really painful (not that I am saying you do this, just commenting on the attitude there).
The fact that there are people out there saying it is "cool" and "awesome" how it was done is just a cherry on the cake of hideous.
I've actually been playing with the idea of whether it'd be possible to reclaim "frigid" - admittedly, there would have to be more people than just me trying, but when I hear "frigid" I hear "girl who doesn't want to have sex (with a particular person, in a particular situation) and is willing to say so." And I fail to see why that's a bad thing.
When I hear "frigid" I think it usually means a woman who isn't comfortable having sex in a situation in which she would otherwise like to have sex. For example, a woman who just married a man that she loves and is attracted to, but she's been taught that its wrong for her to enjoy sex and she feels bad about it so she ends up not enjoying it or wanting to do it.
If frigid means the more general sense that you used, then yeah, there's not really anything bad about that.
Yep, not bad for Fox, though as someone said above, the implication is if a woman is in an adulterous relationship, clearly she must be getting more out of it than just sex and is clearly raking in money, gifts, or possessions from whomever it is she's seeing on the side. The implication is that men must clearly have sex for sex's sake and couldn't possibly have any other motive beyond that.
Speaking from what I have observed personally (and I'm being vague for a reason, please pardon), I can vouch for a specific instance where a woman got into an extramarital affair specifically for the sex, though to be honest it was also motivated by the fact that she had stopped loving her husband and was hoping to replace him with something better. But since this individual with whom she carried on the affair was flat broke, I doubt money or possessions was precisely what she was after. If by payoffs we mean an emotional connection that she no longer felt for her husband, then I suppose so, but that would have been about it.
But what you can pull from this article is that, at least regarding sex, men and women aren't really that different, after all. I'm shocked! :)
At any point now someone please jump in and say the Tyler Perry thing is a hoax...honestly I don't believe it,I do a number of person of color celeb gossip sites and I never heard this.
I read the article you linked to about Shante, and it isn't very good. It complains that the author of the Slate piece has ties to record companies, but it doesn't debunk a single thing that he says. Whether or not he's on the side of record companies, it seems to be a fact that Shante did not get a PhD from Cornell and does not have a diploma from college. Even if it turns out that she somehow does have those degrees under some other name, the Daily Mail still published an article claiming she had those degrees and got them due to an unusual contract clause without finding any evidence for any of those things-- so it still its a good point that that newspaper published a totally unsubstantiated story.
FYI Perry and Oprah came onto the project AFTER it was completed and played at a festival.
They helped get Lionsgate on board for distribution.
am i the only one having trouble accessing the safer campus website?
I can't believe that Gizmodo article! The comments alone made me furious! Men relaying "examples" of how stupid women are!
Then arguing that it's stupid that it was almost considered child porn, not even taking into consideration that the girl wasn't aware they were even being filmed!
I just read an article about Perry doing For Colored Girls and it made my blood run cold. He is such a damn hack and you're going to tell me he gets this project??! WTF!!! His fondness for dressing on screen drag does not make him a woman. Do they not get this in an interpretation of the loves of women that needs skilled translation?!! I can't fucking believe this.