The release of the movie trailer for
Fifty Shades of of Grey puts me in want of a spanking, and with that I commence another diary...
Chrissie Hynde, one of the foremost female rock ‘n rollers of all time...oh, the hell with that…one of the foremost rock ‘n rollers of all time once wrote a hit song about Akron, Ohio, called My City Was Gone:
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
I know the song, but I did not know that it was the theme song for the toxic radio show of
the second worst man in America. Nor did I know about the
negotiation that went on between Chrissie and the second worst man in America over his use of the song. Limbaugh chose it as his theme song because, as he explained, “…it was [written by] an environmentalist, animal rights wacko and was an anti-conservative song. It is anti-development, anti-capitalist and here I am going to take a liberal song and make fun of [liberals] at the same time."
Chrissie’s music company issued a cease and desist order to Limbaugh over the song’s use, but then she got clever (which is the more effective opposite of earnest) and told The Great Pustulate that he could use the song if he paid the royalties directly to PETA, one of her pet causes (no pun intended). Generally I applaud whenever a musician slaps down some conservative mook over misappropriation of creative effort far beyond the conservative ability to produce same. I know one of the things that drives American Rightists nuts (or, rather, more nuts) is that they feel an ineluctable alienation from popular culture…and any act that relieves their sense of permanent exile in Squaresville, I disapprove. But I think Chrissie made a sly deal here. I'm all for political jujitsu…and, hey, who knows how many dittoheads-in-training may have been drawn by that theme song to seek out more of her music, and thus greater enlightenment?
Though in these times it’s hard to tell what some aspiring young misogynist might make of Chrissie’s Night in My Veins.
I see him standing silhouetted
in the lamplight,
I cross the street
and I quicken my pace,
He cups his hands and he
lights a cigarette
I find myself in the bones of his face
It's just the night in my veins
Oh,
making me crawl in the dust again
It's just the night
under my skin
slipping it in
He's got his hands in my hair
and his lips everywhere
Oh yeah,
it feels good,
it's alright
Even if it's just
the night in my veins
He's got me up against the back of a
pick-up truck
Out of sight of the neon and glare
We might as well be on a beach
under the moonlight,
Love's language reads the same
anywhere, yeah
It's just the night in my veins
Oh,
making me crawl in the dust again
It's just the night
under my skin
slipping it in
He's got his chest on my back
across a new Cadillac,
oh yeah,
It feels good,
it's alright,
even if it's just
the night in my veins,
Even if it's just the night in my veins
I've got my head on the
curb and I can't produce
a word,
oh yeah,
It feels good,
it's alright,
even if it's just
the night in my veins
It feels good,
it's alright,
even if it's just
the night in my veins
Even if it's just
the night in my veins
it feels good
it's alright
One can imagine a band of embittered warriors sitting around a Men’s Rights sweat lodge listening to that song on their iPods and proclaiming, “Hear that, right there…they like it like that.” What they don’t hear of course is the consensual nature of the song, which is where a lot of the confusion comes for many young men, especially it seems on our college campuses. They don’t fully understand what consensual means, and I’m afraid that “No means no” (like its antecedent, “Just say no to drugs”) doesn’t cut it as an explanation. The learning curve for some men who still take their mating cues from their Neanderthal forebears is long and steep. And it’s not at all helped by the fact that we live in a society where the virtual motto is
Everything’s negotiable…where “no” very often just means “not right now,” or something equally ambiguous and equivocating, whether the thing being profferred is another helping of dessert or an extended warranty.
As to the other side of the gender divide on the issue of transgressive sex, I’ve found myself doing a great deal more reading on feminism in recent weeks than I ever intended. What my research has revealed thus far is that though there is definitely a stereotype of what feminism is, feminism itself is hardly monolithic. I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women strictly in terms of corporate hierarchies (How many executives are women? How many board members are women?). I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women strictly in terms of academia (How empowered are the coeds? How much gender diversity in various course syllabi?). I’ve encountered feminists who measure the progress of women in terms of the popular culture (How many women writers on Saturday Night Live? How many pro athletes getting away with brutalizing their spouses?).
I’ve even encountered feminists who are openly and keenly at odds with other feminists. One of the most compelling pieces I’ve read in my inquiry is by Jessa Crispin, who reviewed two recent books about the reaction to the mega bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey in The Los Angeles Review of Books. She wrote, in introduction:
Shouldn't we all feel a little embarrassed about the fuss we made over 50 Shades of Grey? I don’t mean the book’s fans. I mean…the book’s critics; all of us who committed time and energy to blog posts and commentary and long essays attacking E. L. James’s novel. The focus and outrage we brought to the 50 Shades backlash was remarkable, as though we were not so much critiquing a bad book as fighting a war (sic). The situation seemed so grave. If millions and millions of women were getting off on the idea of being sexually subjugated; if the secret fantasy buried in us all is that we meet a very rich man who’ll spank us — is this the end of feminism?
I serendipitously realized the relevance of Crispin’s piece to Chrissie Hynde’s
Night in My Veins…because what is
Night in my Veins, after all, than a musical,
working-class version of
Fifty Shades of Grey? Crispin’s defense of E.L. James’s work against a feminist critique can just as well apply to Chrissie Hynde’s song. Crispin writes:
The writers of [Fifty Shades of] Feminism respond to the variety within women’s desires with indifference at best, and condescension at worst. Here, they say: unless you are a deluded old cow, this is what you should want, this is what will make you happy. Think this, do this, believe this, use these words and not these others…The argument presented is this: your action is feminist because you are choosing for yourself. The result is a “feminism” that’s not only depoliticized but also desocialized: “feminism” becomes a word to slap onto a choice after the fact, as a way to protect a decision from any criticism. Unless, of course, you, the reader, choose differently than the writers in the book, and then the condemnation comes down hard. Pornography, high heels, and bikini waxes, prostitution and other forms of sex work, refusing to label yourself as a feminist, plastic surgery, sexual submission, and reading 50 Shades of Grey: all these are listed as crimes against humanity, betrayals against the sisterhood.
I believe that the body, not the soul nor the mind, is the governing agent of our existence. The body is the truth teller and holds the trump impulses. So when sensuality comes up against ideology, the smart bet is on sensuality. What that means for men and women when the night gets in their veins is to realize that if it doesn’t
feel good and
alright to
both of them, then it’s not.