Female Ejaculation Doesn’t Exist

This news popped up on my radar last week and boy, is it news to me. From now on films that feature female ejaculation will now be Refused Classification (RC) by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC).

I did a little hunting around the OFLC website and found that films (or computer games) will be refused classification if they include or contain various ‘extreme’ forms of violence, sexual abuse and drug use as well as:

SEX

Depictions of practices such as bestiality.

Gratuitous, exploitative or offensive depictions of:

(i) activity accompanied by fetishes or practices which are offensive or abhorrent;
(ii) incest fantasies or other fantasies which are offensive or abhorrent.

Elsewhere in the code a fetish is defined as:

“An object, an action or a non-sexual part of the body which gives sexual gratification. “

How broad. Do they have a list somewhere of which parts of the body are sexual and which are non-sexual?

The next classification category down from RC is X18+ (only available in the NT and ACT but, as wikipedia helpfully informs me, “these films may be legally purchased from interstate via mail-order.”) and applies to films that contain ‘consensual sexually explicit activity’. The classification guidelines here state that:

“Fetishes such as body piercing, application of substances such as candle wax, ‘golden showers’, bondage, spanking or fisting are not permitted.”

What does this have to do with female ejaculation? Well, according to the OFLC, female ejaculation doesn’t exist and what is actually being expelled is urine or a ‘golden shower’. Great! Another aspect of female sexuality disappeared by a powerful statutory body! I’m so glad the former Chairman of the ABC can inform me as to what fluid is coming out of my urethra at any given moment.

It’s disturbing to me that the OFLC board have the power to determine which bodily functions are real and what they mean. You’d think that just telling us whether they were bad or not was enough. Now, they can just make them be something else entirely! If someone in a film having consensual sex has a vestigial tail will that film be RC too because of it’s representation of bestiality?

It’s not only that female ejaculation has been rendered non-existent by the OFLC that bothers me – it’s the way it becomes condemned by default. Male ejaculation = awesome, female ejaculation = freaky, non existent, fetish.

As Ms. Naughty says:

“One thing all the censors seem to agree on is that semen is an above-board bodily fluid. It can be ejaculated anywhere – internally, onto a woman’s body or face, across the Russian wallpaper – and it can even be mixed into milkshakes and drunk. If 20 guys all want to ejaculate their semen onto a woman lying on the floor waiting – or onto each other – that’s A-OK, thanks very much. Nothing kinky about that, it’s just normal sexual activity.

If a woman ejaculates onto a man’s face, however, that’s a fetish. That mean’s in Australia it’s offensive, obscene and Australians should not be allowed to see it lest it corrupt our immortal souls. Or something.”

For those interested here’s a New Scientist article from last year that talks more about female ejaculation and recognises the fact that, you know, it exists.

Related – Apparently, the OFLC have also been banning films that have small breasted women in them. In case anyone should get confused.

Degradation of women is not the new black

I was disgusted to read last night about the new Roger David t shirts that are being sold.

Pics and discovery of these t shirts from here

The t shirts are a new range called “Blood is the new black”. Gagging women, sexual violence, degradation…I mean seriously how can these things be depicted as acceptable themes in fashion?  Many of us have long contended that there are sexism and misogny in fashion (see American Apparel’s use of retail staff semi naked in their ads) but this takes things to a new level. I have to wonder who had the great idea of featuring degrading, dehumanising photographs of women on these t shirts. It’s not edgy, it’s not cool, it’s not provocative, it’s simply ridiculous and shows a deep contempt for women. It suggests that violence against women is something which should be sexualised and viewed by a mainstream audience. The name alone, is suggesting that blood (and violence) is in fashion. This is not ok.

These images present the message  that it’s ok to present women as restained, dehumanised, blind folded, gagged, mute and blind, their helplessness a  source of sexual pleasure.

On the Roger David facebook group, the owner states:

Blood Is The New Black offers independent artists the opportunity the display their work and points of views on one of the most common threads in society, the T-shirt. As with any of “the arts,” discussion, discourse and debate is often sparked, due to unique and controversial ideas. Art is meant to inspire and educate, and the meaning and interpretation is left in the hands of the viewer – we are here to inspire ideas, not mediate or control them.

The artist Dan Monick believes there is little to no meaning behind the shot. “She was wearing a headband and it started to slide down her face and she bit it. The shot is a snapshot from me and Annie hanging out, it is not a premeditated image. I took 3 frames. If I had put any meaning behind the image it’s more about the messed up aspects of Hollywood silencing individuality and unique voice. It’s about Hollywood silencing the human.”

Err… nice attempt at saving face hiding behind the excuse that it’s all about ‘art’.  Sounds more like a deliberate ploy to get in the media with some offensive pics. I’ll be interested to see if anyone buys the t shirts, I’d hate  to think of a friend, male relative, or young person thinking such t shirts are acceptable because they are created by an artist.  Blood will never be the new black. Sexual violence should never be in fashion. Ever.

Write to Roger David here to show your disgust.

elles@centrepompidou: women in modern art

Currently showing at the Pompidou Centre in Paris is elles@centrepompidou, the largest all-female contemporary art exhibition ever curated. Last week I spent a day at the Pompidou - the warmest place to be in freezing Paris – and took the photos I have posted here.   

     

From the exhibition website:   

The programming cuts across disciplines to take a deeper look at the place occupied by women in the culture of the last century, from literature to history of thought, from dance to cinema.    

The exhibition is ordered thematically, under titles including Free Fire, Body Slogan, The Activist Body and A Room of One’s Own.     

     

The radical vision of curator Camille Morineau is better understood when you consider that the Louvre, the most visited museum in the world and home to 35000 artworks, does not own a piece by a female artist. In London, just 12 per cent of the Tate Modern’s collection is by female artists, and of the National Gallery’s 2300 artworks, four paintings are by two female artists.* In an interview with The Guardian - where I found these shocking statistics – Morineau explains that 40 per cent of the Pompidou Centre’s works by female artists were acquired in the last four years. Now, the museum holds 500 pieces by women artists.     

Work by German artist Gloria Friedman

 This quote from Gloria Friedman accompanied the above paintings:     

“Prior to the 1980s, conceptual art seemed to be exclusively reserved for men, unthinkable for women. The intervention of women no doubt changed the idea that we have of art, but I wouldn’t want to be too simplistic: the 1980s represent a sort of explosion, which by the way we don’t discuss enough. It seems to me that previously, for women, the question remained of whether they had a place in the cultural landscape: one day, the question stopped being asked.”    

Feminist theory and activism is well-represented; I loved the posters made by the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous group of radical feminists established in New York City in 1985, decrying the lack of female artists having work shown in New York galleries and museums in the eighties.   

          

Throughout the exhibition space, painted on the walls were quotes from prominent twentieth-century women such as Virginia Woolf, and these from Simone de Beauviour and Susan Sontag:   

 ”One is not born a woman, one becomes one. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society, it is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine. Only the intervention of someone else can establich as indivisual as the Other.” [The Second Sex, 1949]     

“The identification of beauty as the ideal condition of a woman is, if anything, more powerful than ever, although today’s hugely complex fashion and photography system sponsors norms of beauty that are far less provincial, more diverse, and favour brazen rather than demure ways of facing the camera.” [“A Photograph is not an Opinion. Or it it?” 1999]  

Upstairs the ‘Pioneers’ section is integrated into the gallery’s permanent collection, and features work by artists as varied and talented as Dorothea Tanning, Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova (whose 1912 still-life The Flowers sold for $10.8 million in 2008, the most ever paid for a work by a female artist), New York photographer Diane Arbus and her one-time teacher Lisette Model. 

Dorothea Tanning - Portrait de famille (1954)

Natalia Goncharova - Les porteuses (1911)

There is a great interactive website to accompany the exhibition, with extra video resources and other information, however it is in French. Good if you speak it of course.

elles@centrepompidou is a great exhibition – enormous and diverse – and an excellent catalyst for discussion about the role of women in modern art.

*I would be really curious to learn how Australia’s state and national galleries compare in the percentage of holdings by female artists.

Jackie Frank: doing her bit for ethical editorial standards

Next month Marie Claire will hit newsstands with an untouched photograph of a nude Jennifer Hawkins gracing the cover.

According to the Daily Telegraph, editor of Marie Claire, Jackie Frank, said the publication of the images…

“…will raise funds for eating disorders support group the Butterfly Foundation, [and] were inspired by a Marie Claire survey of 5500 readers which found only 12 per cent of women were happy with their bodies.”

Putting on a magazine cover an untouched photograph of a naturally beautiful woman, and one whose body is a commodity and thus the product of much investment (time and work), and saying it is because 88 per cent of the surveyed readership are unhappy with their body, is an exercise in untruth. Crucially, it is also admitting that the publication of airbrushed photos of women is detrimental to the self esteem of the female audience who reads the magazine, no matter what the editors say.

Untouched photographs of Jennifer Hawkins and Bianca Dye published in Australian magazines (news.com.au)

Publishing this untouched photograph, amid the unsurprising media hoopla, is more about ethical editorial standards than boosting female body image. It’s about honesty and transparency, and about admitting that positing images of digitally altered women as pinnacles of beauty has a negative effect on female readers who are led to believe that in order to be as beautiful as possible they need to look like what are effectively cartoons.

Jen Hawkins as role model is not what should be happening here. Photographs of women who don’t represent the zenith of current ideas about beauty would be more suitable to be marketed as providing women with role models – and since the story broke Mumbrella has quoted Jackie Frank denying the role model spin (“we’re not saying Jennifer is what all women should aspire to”). Jen Hawkins here is just being beautiful, as she is. Jackie Frank’s decision to use this photo on the cover should not be considered “daring” or “revolutionary” – it should be accepted practice.

It is more educational than anything – that something as insignificant (and I would say fetching!) as a model’s waist crease would normally be removed from a photograph destined for magazine publication astounds me. I would love to see magazine pages filled with women who have not been digitally enhanced and homogenised – like these photos of Jen, and too Bianca Dye in Madison.

Clem Bastow makes a necessary point when she writes, “It’s imperative that women stop defining ourselves by our body shape. There are simply more important things to worry about – pay issues, maternity leave and sexual violence spring to mind – and better things to celebrate, such as our minds, hearts and work.”

However right now, in this imperfect world, women are influenced by the images they see on billboards, in magazines and on the Internet. If the practice of digitally altering photographs to remove perceived flaws and blemishes is not to be outlawed immediately, then in the short term magazines such as Marie Claire should be impelled to clearly state when photographs have been airbrushed.