I recently posted this over at Eating Anarcrow and received numerous emails attacking both the creator of the t-shirt and my ”advertisement” of her shirt. Apparently, I am ”supposed to know better.”
Pfft. That’s a hoot.
While it very well may be the case that I should know better, it’s precisely because I don’t know better that I ran the comic. Here’s a link to the original post with the rocking tank-top (as seen in the first panel below–you may have to blow it up to read it) you which can purchase to either show or not show your support for ‘effing feminists (the revolution will contain lots and lots of merchandise). Below is the three panel strip Zak and I created which summarizes so astutely my thoughts on Camille’s t-shirt–as if I’m in a place to render judgment.
(I think what my ‘maybe’ is hiding/suggesting is this: Initially, I saw it as a kind of reclaiming of the language that the early Riot Grrrl movement were attempting to own . . . a sort of shock and awe, “this is what you think we’re here for, well F!@# that, but we can still revel in it if we want, and even throw it in your face” kind of mentality. You know, like Bikini Kill’s Suck My Left One. Classic. At the same time, the idea of a ‘cisman’ sporting the shirt does not exactly scream solidarity for feminism as it does, potentially, suggest a sexualizing of feminism that could possibly undermine feminism. It may even underwrite MacKinnon’s point that, within a patriarchal history, sex between males and females is difficult to ever see as being consensual–and the message on the shirt simply serves but one more way of getting laid for heterosexual guys. Granted, if that’s the case, then I guess that simply reinforces the fact that we are like every other species on this planet who do everything we can to copulate. Are male hetero-humans really any different than male ducks, dolphins and octopodes who go to bizarre, horrific and self-serving lengths to have sex? Probably not. And this is why we’re screwed.)