James Deen & The Crisis of Media-Appointed Feminist Heroes

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When James Deen was accused of raping or sexually assaulting several women—including his ex-girlfriend, the performer Stoya, the internet exploded. Some people wondered if porn actors could actually be raped (of COURSE they can; and never read the comments), while some people wondered how they could have ever supported him. Reading through the "we were wrong" headlines, it's clear that the masses are wondering: How could it be that someone who was public and likeable! and funny! and into consent was allegedly raping his co-workers and other women?

When Deen started becoming porn-famous around 2012, women - some of them devout "deenagers"—thought of him as a feminist icon. Jezebel said he was "dreamy," painting him as the guy next door who wants to hold your hand and watch Clueless. The media at large took Deen off of the faraway internet sex pedestal and put him into our lives as a hybrid entertainer-cum-women loving dude friend. His own social media engagement helped hone that image as well, even when he made ignorant rape jokes. The Frisky even hired him to write an advice column (they've since stopped publishing him). 

When someone is given the feminist seal of approval by the media, it can burrow itself into the psyche of readers and fans. It's hard not to be excited about someone who doesn't appear to denigrate women; we naturally want to celebrate them and make a public case in the hopes that it will influence others. However, it creates this idea that James Deen is a disappointment because he was deemed such a cool guy, not solely because he possibly committed a series of serious ethical crimes against women and humanity. 

When the porn actress Stoya tweeted that Deen had held her down and ignored her safe word, other women came forward and alleged that Deen had assaulted them as well, leading Deen to take part in an email interview with The Daily Beast, saying he was "honestly shocked" by the allegations and that “I have never claimed to be a 'feminist' or 'the boy next door.'"

This is a guy who previously told Elle, "I wouldn't consider myself a feminist….At the end of the day I want everyone to have the respect that they deserve and to respect people's civil liberties and rights. I don't know, maybe I am a fucking feminist!"

Simply, as figures in the media and consumers / retweeters of media, need to rethink the way we categorize public figures. We bestow upon celebrities our seal of approval and then we taketh away, but the reality is we need to look at lots of variables to know if a person is a) a good human being, b) a feminist and c) not a criminal. 

It seems like all men need to do is throw a bone towards women and they're suddenly in the clear. Bloggers need to know this isn't enough. Not online and not in real life.  

The Internet is the quickest to vilify. If an actor (who happens to be a woman) says she’s not a feminist, we write dozens of responses, critiquing their ignorance or kicking them out of the Feminist Club that we’d put them in ourselves. Sometimes we call them feminist heroes because of something they said and sometimes we just decide they're the It Feminist and good for clicks. Just as wearing sneakers on the red carpet doesn’t guarantee you’re in feminist club, being a porn star who says he respects women doesn’t make you feminist. Being feminist just isn't enough anymore. 

Whether or not these allegations around Deen are true—and we’re standing with the women who say they were victims to what sounds like Deen’s sexual entitlement or dangerous blending of real world vs. porn world—we know that we need to treat this like a criminal case and not like an, "Turns out he's NOT so feminist anymore, you guys" headline.

Interacting with feminism online should be done in an ideological way, not in a way that works for page views.  When we pump content onto the Internet, even us feminist journalists and bloggers, we need to be ethical and responsible enough to say, “Do I actually know 10 reasons X is a feminist?" We should always be thinking about what we’re saying, why we’re saying it and what affect it has on society. Deen could possibly be very guilty; don't let all the headlines make you question the victims.

Poems by Jennifer L. Knox

Editor's note: these poems originally appeared in the old/previous Luna Luna

The New Twilight Zone: “Empty City”

The cloud cover enveloping our hull
splits, shifts to our back like a parachute,
and we descend to the city below. Its three
mighty rivers: now kinked, dribbling hoses.
The scent of seething biomass—brown mounds
going green again with psyched, thriving mold—
reaches us far up as we are—and look: plumes
of smoke snaking into the air there. Flames
and dry backyard blowup pools below coming
into focus, but too much sun to see the windows
in the buildings all have x’s in their eyes.
Between white lines dash-dash-dashing the roads:
not a car. The voice on the tower mic:
silent as a bee hive.

“Schenectady Is Most Definitely

a hyperbolic landscape full of empty swimming pools,
violent men with tight asses straining the seams of their acid
washed jeans, pizza swamps of molten cheese with slices,
like my heart, rrrrrripped out—like starfish missing arms,
but opposite—inverted—or something,” my voice trails
off but my hands keep miming a triangle shape in the air,
tee-peeing it pointy and knifey to show him the purport of that
invisible missing piece, its edge so etched in my brain, then
one hand slips down the other side like a bathtub spider so
I climb back up the spout…

                                               “Did you take your crazy pills?”

he asks. “I don’t have anything to swallow them with,” I reply,
about to cry. He pulls over, we get out, I follow him into
the branches of an overgrown cloud of a hedge, green
as animal eyes, to a blue pool hidden in the middle.
“Swallow them with that,” he points at the water.
“It’s full of chemicals,” I insist. “Not for years,”
he grins. I bend down to the water, “You’re like
an almanac—gulp gulp.” Somehow, again, I’d
missed the shy emptying and filling,
the husk, bud and bloom.

The End of NYC

I sat down on the F train across from a woman (?)—long stringy black wig, short dirty white skirt, bad plastic surgery, bulges like slugs shifting under her skin. Taking up her entire right calf: a tattoo of a woman’s face—a sad woman with her hair in rollers—thick lips and eyelids—lips curled back—teeth showing but not smiling. The hair rollers. The eyes rolled back. My mind told me that the woman across from me was a genius. I made eye contact with her. “That’s the best tattoo I’ve ever seen,” I said. She lit up, “Yes, I’ve got two! It only took him an hour, it’s my angel…” her words poured out without pause. Instantly, I understood she was nervous and desperately lonely—not the kind of woman who’d get an ironic tattoo. My eyes moved back to her calf. Those weren’t hair rollers‚ just sproingy ringlet curls. It was an angel, and the worst tattoo I’d ever seen. I felt the recognition of this fall across my face, and I saw her see it on my face. Like when Jack Nicholson in The Shining thinks he’s making out with the hot chick who just crawled out of the bathtub, and he looks in the mirror and sees she’s really dead. I’d like to think I didn’t look that horrified, when, for no reason she would ever understand, I turned on her and her angels.

Hive Minds

Riding in the car with my mother, I never graduated from the back seat to the front. Whenever I tried to climbing in next to her (“This is stupid—I’m riding up front”), she’d howl and swipe at me until I caved. That was how she defended her space. We drove around like that until I got my driver’s license: us two, locked in the dust-mote mottled skies of our own minds, counting things. Me: syllables and the shadows of telephone poles falling across the car. Her: I don’t know. She can’t describe her OCD to me—only that it has to do with numbers—some inexplicable tally she’s been running all her life. I imagine it like a spider’s web, easily disturbed, then dispersed by the breath of other people. Whatever its shape, it’s the only thing that’s ever soothed her.

One stalk of corn can’t bear fruit by itself. It needs other stalks around to pollinate. Even a single row won’t cut it. Indians knew to grow them in circles, my boyfriend tells me. And sunflowers, his father adds, grown in a row will take turns bending north, then south, etc. down the line to give each other a shot at the light. We’re in the garden after dinner. Suddenly I envy anything that moves itself to accommodate another: a subtle shift to the left or right, self preservation that could pass for love.

____________________________________________________

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of Days of Shame and Failure (Bloof Books, 2015). Her other books, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Drunk by Noon, and A Gringo Like Me are also available from Bloof. Her poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series (1997, 2003, 2006, and 2011), as well as in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present and Best American Erotic Poems.

Stop Saying "I Have A Boyfriend"

BY ALECIA LYNN EBERHARDT

I enjoy “going out.” I like dancing, I like music, I like drinking, I like spending time with friends. And I like meeting new people, chatting with them, making friends. I also understand that many people (men and women) go to bars and clubs in hopes of meeting a romantic/sexual partner, and of course, there is nothing wrong with this, in theory.

That’s why, if someone attempts conversation with me, I try not to immediately write them off as a “creep.” I welcome conversation and believe that the more people in my life with whom I can converse, the better off I’ll be. However (as most women know) there sometimes comes a point in a conversation with a man where it becomes necessary to draw the line and indicate that you are in no way, by any means, at all interested in pursuing anything further. There are also times when it is clear that friendly conversation is not in the cards (i.e., those men who substitute grabbing your hips and attempting to “dance” with you for a polite introduction). This is about those times.

If you do a Google search for “how to avoid being hit on at a bar,” you’ll get several articles with “helpful” tips on skirting conversation with men you are not interested in. The majority of these list pretending to have (or actually having) a boyfriend/fiance/husband as the number one method for avoiding creeps (second to “pretending to be a lesbian” or “pretending to be crazy,” a la Jenna Marbles). In response to my complaints about men creeping on me at dance clubs in college, an ex-boyfriend of mine used to get cranky that I refused to whip out this cure-all excuse (one of many reasons he is an ex).

Yes, this may be the easiest and quickest way to get someone to leave you alone, but the problems associated with using this excuse far outweigh the benefits. There is a quotation that I’ve seen floating around Tumblr recently (reblogged by many of my amazing feminist Tumblr-friends) that goes as follows:

Male privilege is “I have a boyfriend” being the only thing that can actually stop someone from hitting on you because they respect another male-bodied person more than they respect your rejection/lack of interest.

This amazingly puts into one sentence what I have been attempting to explain to ex-boyfriends and friends (male and female) for years, mostly unsuccessfully. The idea that a woman should only be left alone if she is “taken” or “spoken for” (terms that make my brain twitch) completely removes the level of respect that should be expected toward that woman. It completely removes the agency of the woman, her ability to speak for herself and make her own decisions regarding when and where the conversation begins or ends. It is basically a real-life example of feminist theory at work--women (along with women’s choices, desires, etc.) being considered supplemental to or secondary to men, be it the man with whom she is interacting or the man to whom she “belongs” (see the theory of Simone de Beauvoir, the story of Adam and Eve, etc.). And the worst part of the whole situation is that we’re doing this to ourselves.

This tactic also brings up the question of the alternative. If the woman in question was boyfriend-free, would she automatically be swooning in the arms of the creep harassing her? Unlikely. So why do we keep using these excuses? We’re not teaching men anything about the consequences of their behavior (i.e. polite, real conversation warrants a response while unwanted come-ons do not). We’re merely taking the easy exit, and, simultaneously, indicating to men that we agree, single girls are “fair game” for harassment.

So what can we do? I think the solution is simple--we simply stop using excuses. If a man is coming on to you (and you are not interested--if you are, go for it, girl!), respond with something like this: “I’m not interested.” Don’t apologize and don’t excuse yourself. If they question your response (which is likely), persist--”No, I said I’m not interested.”

“Oh, so you have a boyfriend?”

“I said, I’m not interested.”

“So you’re a lesbian, then?”

“Actually, I’m not interested.”

“You seem crazy.”

“Nope, just not interested.”

Et cetera. You could even, if you were feeling particularly outspoken, engage in a bit of debate with the man in question. “Why is it that you think that just because I’m not interested, there must be an excuse? Why is it not an option that I’m simply not looking for a sexual encounter and/or something about the way that you approached me indicated to me that you have very little respect for women and therefore I would never be interested in having a sexual encounter with you regardless of my sexuality or relationship status?” (Or, ya know, switch it up as you see fit.) Questioning them back (if you have the energy) puts you back on an even playing field. I’m not saying this is easy. I’ve gotten into my fair share of arguments with men during what were supposed to be fun nights out with friends over whether or not I have the “right” to tell them to buzz off, boyfriend notwithstanding. However, there are a few reasons I continue:

1. So that maybe, possibly, the man I’m speaking to, or other men observing the encounter, may learn something about the agency of women,

2. So that maybe, possibly I might be inspiring other women observing to do the same so that one day, we can be a huge kickass collective of ladies standing up for our right to go crazy on the dance floor without being hassled, and

3. So that I can go home that night, sweaty and tired and happy, and know that I gave myself all the respect that I deserve.

Editor's Note: This is republished from our old site, lunalunamag.com

---

Alecia is a logophile and a library bandit wanted in several states. In addition to feminist rants, she also writes essays, short stories, bad poetry, recipes and very detailed to-do lists. She currently resides in a little blue cabin in Woodstock with one fiance, one Dachshund and one pleasantly plump cat. Find her tweeting @alecialynn.