Assets, are they?

[elettaria]

If you haven't heard about the Open Source Boob Project scandal yet, go to the_red_shoes' post here, where you can catch up. Many people have said much of the stuff I'd have said myself and phrased it beautifully - and may I mention in passing how delightful it is to see good quality feminist crit coming from a straight man - so I thought I'd add a few different thoughts.

There's an image from theferrett's original post which keeps nagging at me. It's his description of the first random woman they groped. Obviously he's objectifying her to within an inch of her life, and the sadly common assumption that anyone with her "assets on display" is asking for it is the reason why there are judges who rule that "it can't have been rape, she was wearing jeans", but it's not just that. I think it's the idea of her as some sort of Amazonian figure, striding along with her magnificent bosom proudly on display, a challenge to all red-blooded males and especially the ones who were so awfully traumatised in school because the women they wanted wouldn't sleep with them (something which must be far, far worse than, say, the sexual harrassment which happens with varying frequency to every woman past puberty). The post is generally full of this so-called admiration of women (well, I'm inferring "women", actually he seems to be using "breasts" as a synecdoche for "woman"), even awe, and of course the chap feels that it's a form of respect and can't understand why we're all objecting to it.

Part of the problem is, I think, a kind of pedestalisation. When people place other people on pedestals, and for the sake of argument let's concentrate on the way this has traditionally happened with men and women, it does very odd things to the relationship between them. For starters, it's damned precarious up there on that pedestal. Lean the wrong way for a moment and you'll fall off, and if you land with your skirts thrown up and someone rapes you, why then it's your fault for displaying your legs and lying on the ground in that attractive way. Women on pedestals aren't meant to do much. They're certainly not meant to take the initiative. In this model (which I'm not for a second suggesting is the norm), the man states his desires, and the woman can only accept them. If she refuses, he goes off and writes several centuries' worth of poetry and song about her cruelty and frigidity, although siege tactics are perfectly acceptable to get her to change her mind. If she accepts, she gets tumbled (and I think I've finally worked out why that became a term for sex), denounced as a whore, and he can move onto the next woman teetering on a pedestal. Either way, she's going to get resented, despised or even hated. It's a classic example of virgin/whore thinking.

I'm not sure how far back the pedestalisation of women goes. I find it particularly noticeable in medieval literature, especially the ideals of Courtly Love (amor courtois). It's less popular these days, and less rigidly codified, but it certainly still manifests itself in various ways. The boy who yearns after a girl whom he views as beautiful and unavailable, and is angry when she refuses him, because she ought to be fitting into the shape he's moulded her into in his mind and behaving as his fantasy did? That's the same sort of thing. The astonishing thing is that the veneer of prettiness that covers pedestalisation, the surface flattery and pretence of worship, blinds so many people to the nastiness beneath. Taken to extremes, it can turn into behaviour such as stalking, but even the mild cases creep me out. It can happen in many ways, of course, it doesn't have to be a man putting a woman on that pedestal. However, since there's such a strong tradition of that particular form, and since its effects are still noticeable in society today, that's the form I'm looking at. Strong elements of it are present in the code of behaviour known as chivalry, and people wonder why I don't like that.

Another thing that struck me is that theferrett is making quite a fuss about how it wasn't just him perving, there were lots of women joining in the breast-touching as well. Now, physicality and appreciation of appearance runs completely differently between women to how it works between men and women. Women can do certain things together, for instance compliment a friend on her bra in the changing room, and do not, as a rule, feel sexually threatened. (Bras are one thing. Breasts are another. The only times I've been complimented on my breasts are in the context of a sexual relationship, and I'd like to keep it that way.) Here's an example of an incident that happened with my friend catnip_junkie, where it was funny precisely because we are women friends who are so sure of the boundaries that we really don't need to worry at all.

It was shortly after I had got together with ghost_of_a_flea, and we were in that new-couple stage of being together as much as possible and touching as much as possible. It's probably the time when we coined the term "autogrope". catnip_junkie was over for the afternoon, and mentioned something bloody annoying which had happened to her that day. I gave her a sympathetic hug, which I would usually do with a friend, and absently kissed her shoulder, which I wouldn't. Then I froze in horror, exclaimed, "Sorry, wrong person!" and we both collapsed in giggles. Could have been worse, I could have accidentally groped her, though she's a very different shape from ghost_of_a_flea so that would have been harder to do by mistake. He doesn't have breasts, for example.

Now imagine that mistake happening with a straight male of the "I am entitled to sex from beautiful women and they should be healing my life with their breasts" persuasion. Brrrr. At the very least, I'd have been springing off that sofa at record speed, rather than the pair of us giggling companionably on each other's shoulders.

That said, I have no desire to be groped by random women either. A friend of mine once went to a lesbian club where a woman stood at the entrance, groping the breasts of every woman who entered the club as she went past. My friend objected, and was told that if she were a real lesbian (she doesn't look stereotypically dykey, and had long hair at the time), she wouldn't mind. Er, no. So what was going on with the women who joined in the OSBP from the groping end of things? I have no idea, and it strikes me as odd, but somehow I suspect the dynamic between them was very far from what theferrett describes. There's a strong dash of perving over the lesbians in his writing, which is hardly going to encourage accurate insight into what actually happened.

Going back to that ridiculous "obviously putting her assets on display" comment, I've always got the impression that many men aren't quite sure how to interpret the way women dress. There's a popular notion that women dress solely to entice men. This is nonsense. It's one possible reason amongst many for how to dress, and it's not usually the main one. Women dress primarily for the way it makes them feel in themselves. Now, this includes feedback from other people, there's a whole complex social network going on here. When I'm having equal amounts of contact with men and women, personally I find that it's far more about something between women, a sort of safe, friendly admiration that might include a small amount of sexuality (catnip_junkie and I mock-flirt outrageously on occasion) but no more than, say, the physicality of a normal hug. This is probably partly due to heteronormativity. I will compliment a woman on her hair or clothing without thinking twice, and often do so. I'm far more careful about saying, "That's a lovely top, the colour's glorious," or "I like the way you've changed your hair, it frames your face really nicely," with a man, because there's the cultural expectation that I may be saying this as a come-on, and if nothing else that can make us both nervous.

Yes, a compliment can be a come-on, but then so can cooking someone dinner, it's not an inherently sexualised activity. Complimenting someone on their hair or clothing does not, for me, mean, "You're hot [in that shirt] and I want to jump you right now." If that's what I mean, I'll probably just say it. If I want to lech over them, then I won't make up some flannel about liking the cut of their winter coat, although I should probably point out here that I don't lech unless I'm actually in a sexual relationship with the person and it's happy, mutual, consensual leching. It's rude otherwise. Complimenting clothing is more about love of colour and style, about creativity and self-expression.

For most people, deliberately dressing seductively is something intentional done occasionally, rather than a full-time, open-season "if you can see this part of my flesh, you can touch it" approach. I have low-cut tops which have sometimes been worn with seductive intent, and sometimes just worn because it's a nice top and I wanted to wear it that day. The difference isn't so much in the item of clothing as it is in the body language, particularly since it's not generalised seductive intent: if I'm out in public then that same sexy top will, in a sense, perform different functions depending on who I'm with. It's still largely about me and how I relate to my own clothes, rather than how other people relate to them. If I'm going to jump someone, I'll jump them, rather than turning up in revealing clothing and expecting that to cause things to happen to me. Have you seen Erin Brockovich? Julia Roberts spends the whole film wearing cleavagey, and as I recall flattering, tops. Some of the other women in the office, feeling threatened, get her boss to call her on this. She responds to his uncertain comments in a challenging way, and says, "Well, I think I look nice."

This is precisely what it's about. I always wear relatively open-necked tops. I think I look good in them, they flatter my figure, I feel strangled in high-necked tops, and I think that the upper part of the bosom is pleasant and perfectly decent, just as legs are decent - well, providing you're not in what my mother calls "a skirt that barely covers her central heating". (Though I have never gone for short skirts myself, they don't suit me, and by now I feel exposed in anything showing my legs.) And yes, there's a mild frisson, just as there can be with admiring lovely hair or forms of physical contact such as hugs, and it's enjoyable, and maybe it's a bit sexual and maybe it's not, and there's nothing wrong with any of that. I don't see it as marking myself as randomly available, and I don't think that anything remotely suggesting sexuality should be covered up lest it lead to instant full-blown sex, otherwise we'd all be in burqas. There are many degrees of sexual interaction, and the very mild form is one that should be appreciated and treated as what it is, something low-grade and pleasurable in its own right and utterly different in terms of intimacy to actual sex.

Where I think theferrett went wrong is that he thought that breast-fondling could be in the same category. It's not. It's generally accepted to be a fairly intimate form of sexual activity practised between lovers, and that's one hell of a jump away from the kind of atmosphere in which I could safely compliment my dentist on her new haircut last week, or in which a woman can ask another, unknown, woman in a shop fitting room for an opinion and be told, "Yes, I like those trousers on you, they're doing good things for your shape," and both women exchange a smile.

Going back to the way it feels to have a moderately sexual part of the body partially on display, a feeling which I'm still struggling to define, I've always liked this passage in Jane Rule's novel Contract with the World. For context, it's worth mentioning that Alma and Roxanne are a couple. Roxanne is younger, confidently gay, slim to the point of being practically flat-chested, and always wears low-cut tank tops and low-slung trousers. Alma is more generously-figured, rather more conservative, new to relationships with women and a bit nervous about it, and in particular about her lover's penchant for revealing clothing.

Though Alma was shy of the lovely size of her breasts, particularly her nipples, she was learning to use a bra like a purse, something for storing valuables when she went out, and she never resisted the pleasure Roxanne took in them, whether they were working together in the kitchen or making the bed. Roxanne indulged Alma by covering her own more often in public, though it was almost like being blind or deaf to shield what she felt through her tits. Alma did not know there was anything to receive except sexual pleasure.