One complaint that often comes up when we/I gripe about something as feminists is "Why do you give this subject the time of day? Why don't you talk about something important?" Recently, with respect to my ire and the ire of others who agree with me over the Gor books (see previous post), I am hearing "Why do you legitimize these books by complaining about them? You'll just give them publicity and boost their sales."

Legitimize, is it?

There is another thing I often hear: "You chicks have it made. You got your women's liberation. All you have to do is cash in."

All I have to do is cash in. All I have to do is shut up and reap my liberated benefits. That means that female comic book heroes in my feminist, liberated time, are of all races, backgrounds, and body types. Women in entertainment don't have to sleep with producers to get a chance or a part, and are offered a rich array of characters, varying wildly from the Old Days' sexpot, innocent girlfriend, harried young married, and scream queen/future dumpster girl. They also have positions of power in the entertainment industry. The majority of heroes in kids' books, from picture books to teen lit, aren't boys--in fact, the hero division is fifty/fifty, and the bulk of women characters in picture books aren't nurturing moms, any more than the bulk of men characters in picture books aren't rescuing, always-right dads. There is no music in which women are labeled hos and ordered to do sex acts in music as they hump male stars for the camera.

The chief cause of death for a pregnant woman isn't her spouse or boyfriend; the majority of rapes still don't go unreported through fear or shame. Domestic abuse is at an all-time low. So are eating disorders, self-injury, and suicide among girls and young women. Fashion magazines are presenting more balanced body images among their models.

No? We don't have these things? But I haven't gotten to equal pay for equal work, the vanishing of the glass ceiling for female executives and academics, unions for club dancers and sex workers, positive study and work environments for women in science and technical fields, and the upholding of Valerie Plame's case because the judge said it was wrong to flush a woman's life down the crapper because you didn't like what her husband said. Then there's the funding of family planning clinics for the developing world that includes contraception and abortion for women worn out by childbearing . . .

I'm not cashing in?

Then I still get to point out that women are abused every hour of every day, and the republication of works that advocate any man's right to enslave and abuse any woman in any way he pleases in my right and my obligation until the battering of women and any work that gives open or tacit approval to it are considered to be so disreputable, so despicable, that no one would own up to the act or possession of works condoning it for fear of the hate and rejection of his peers. I will consider accusations that I am helping to legitimize these works as simply attempts to silence me, because I make the person who says them uncomfortable, or because they have such contempt for "feminists" that they will dismiss what I, or they, say in any terms they think will make us squirm.

Awareness is far more important than legitimization. My battle isn't over yet. I will risk people going out to read these books over what I say (and I hope the books make them as queasy as they made me) if I can wake up others to the fact that this stuff, which advocates violence against women and still has a following, is being republished. Let people who were never abused dismiss the books or claim the violence "wasn't that bad until Book X". They aren't the subjects of Norman's hate. I wonder if blacks reading the TURNER DIARIES or Jews reading MEIN KAMPF discuss the problems in writing style with such contemptuous ease.

We women aren't supposed to raise a stink about these piddling little books that others wiser than we have judged unimportant. We're supposed to put up and shut up--because we still haven't had that liberation, and apparently people still think they can tell us what issues are supposed to be important, and what aren't, and what "unimportant" things we're legitimizing by daring to point out they are vile.



J. E. Remy in his blog entry Sexist, Degrading Bullshit II: Comic Book Fiction not only presents us with some more highly illustrative quotes from the Gor oeuvre, but he also gives us addresses for protest letters, including that for Dark Horse. Here's to you, J. E. Remy, my Main Man for July 2007!

update 8/25/07
I edited out a question asking if the slaves were of other minorities than simply the female, when it was pointed out to me that this creates an opening for an assumption of rivalry between groups who should always be allies. Our oppression is no better and no less than anyone else's, and I don't need the comparison to make my point--thus the change in the paragraph that now begins "We women."