Trouble with judging judge
Americans are not like us. They don’t get irony, for one thing. Their idea of comedy is insulting each other, or describing real or imaginary, solo or accompanied, sexual exploits in detail, because that’s blunt enough to find hilarious.
And then, as with Billy CK, who turned out to be as creepy as his stage persona, they back away from the revealed truth in shock. The Puritan part of them wants to believe we’re virgins for ever, but the jock part likes its sleaze, which is why their president is such a hit.
Porn star Stormy Daniels only gives Donald Trump more oxygen when she describes their skin contact, though I gather her new book delivers a sharp jab below the belt.
I puzzle over the conflict between these attitudes and the running American drama with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, 53, accused of groping a girl of 15 with intent decades ago, when he was a 17-year-old. This will possibly play out in a few days’ time at a Senate committee hearing.
Such teenage behaviour is a mainstay of American films and TV. They can’t get enough of attractive adolescents ripping their gear off in tedious frat house narratives as predictable as porn.
Kids pass, in their entertainment industry, from being precocious little creeps endowed with deep natural wisdom to being eye candy bouncing about on each other like sex robots. Which is what adolescents are.
To be a teenager is to be a child given a fighter plane to fly, with no manual and no pilot’s licence. It is to be curious, bewildered, instinctive, gross, obsessed, and inevitably, to crash. Today the process is channelled through online porn into tributaries I’d rather not think about, but back when Kavanaugh is accused of drunkenly mauling the girl, now a university academic, there was a lot less of that.
Feminism is about issues that affect men just as it is about issues that affect women.
Iwant to take sides in this conflict of memory – she remembers, he doesn’t (as if he’d admit it) – but what holds me back is that the ‘‘stumbling drunk’’ incident would be universal. Something like it has played out in all our lives, surely. That doesn’t make it right, but what is it exactly?
If it’s light entertainment one minute, can it be a crime the next? Is it only a crime if you’re nominated for a top job?
And if a posse of 65 women say they know you well and you’re a good boy, is it true? How well does anyone really know anyone?
I don’t like the look of Kavanaugh. He looks like a sleek and rather wet product of private school, Ivy League university, and money, an unattractive otter.
I don’t believe in Mr Perfects, least of all when Trump describes him as one of the finest people he knows. How often have they met? If they have anything at all in common, I’d reject Kavanaugh on principle.
As for Christine Blasey Ford, she remembers him trying to pull her swimsuit off on a bed he’d dragged her to at a dumb teenage party with no parents on the scene.
The part of her story that resonates is when she says she tried to scream, but he shoved his hand firmly over her mouth.
That takes things up a notch. It’s the detail you’d remember, and that needs underlining; the sign that he – whoever it was – knew he was doing wrong, even blind drunk.
In true frat house comedy style, Kavanaugh’s equally drunk friend, also allegedly in the room, jumped onto the bed, knocked them all to the floor, and she made a run for it.
Roll credits. To be continued.
Itold my dad the other day that he may be a bit of an angry feminist. He was appalled. Understandably, because for many nice, kind, sensible sweater-wearing older men it’s almost the same as saying that they look like a Green voter or someone who wears socks and crocs as evening wear.
But just hear me out for a moment.
I’ve been thinking about this because it’s Suffrage 125 week, and I’ve spent a lot of time answering various iterations of the question, ‘‘Have we come far enough for women?’’
It’s a hard question to answer without sounding at least moderately angry, because no, obviously not. And there aren’t too many chipper ways to paint Pasifika women’s pay gap, or rates of violence against trans women, or the one police callout every five minutes for domestic violence. Inevitably, when you talk about this, someone’s going to call you an angry feminist.
It’s meant as an insult. I’m not especially offended, though. I mean, yes I’m frustrated, and I’m a feminist. But my theory is that it’s hard to be a human being with a heart who isn’t one.
In fact, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that, if you’ve got a good heart and moderate interest in others, you might be one too. Even if you don’t know it.
Now I know it’s exhausting trying to define the word ‘‘feminist’’. The word is highly polarising, highly misinterpreted and comes with more baggage than your average family trip with two kids under two.
But for me a feminist is simply someone who understands that society puts lousy expectations on people (men, women, and everyone in-between) because of their gender. And this isn’t fair.
The spirit of feminism is about pointing at those unfair societal expectations and being like, ‘‘Wait, that sounds like bulls... to me, we should think about this.’’
It means feminism is about issues that affect men just as it is about issues that affect women. Male suicide rates in New Zealand are a good example. Anyone else think it’s nuts how men are taught that any emotion, besides being angry or horny, is weak and girly? And that society actively kicks all of the finer, tenderer human feelings out of boys to turn them into ‘‘real men’’? And that these ‘‘real men’’ struggle with the vast, tangled labyrinth of human emotions. And this ultimately means they struggle to articulate any emotions, let alone the dark and deep ones, let alone have the ability to ask for help when they most need it.
See, that makes me mad – and it’s a feminist 1. Who said: ‘‘You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time’’ – Winston Churchill, Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln?
2. The hockey-stick graph is a controversial chart purporting to show what?
3. What A-list Hollywood actress had her breakthrough role playing a teenager in the 2010 film Winter’s Bone?
4. Trafalgar Park is the main rugby ground in what city?
5. Would you encounter Denisovans in an issue. Society puts all of these stupid gendered expectations on boys, and then acts surprised when it majorly screws people. Male suicide is three times higher than for females, and there’s a suicide every 15 hours. If that makes you mad too, you’re having an angry feminist moment.
Yes, I think on balance women have to deal with more crap from society than men do. Especially women of colour. Especially trans women. But the point is that feminism isn’t just about issues that affect women. It affects you whether you have a uterus or not.
What’s more, you’ve probably already had moments of unconscious angry feminist-ing.
Everyone, unless you’ve lived in a man cave since birth, has a female friend who’s been sexually harassed. You’ll have heard the story. It’s likely you were angry. Of course you were, you care about these people. You’d have to be colossally unfeeling not to be.
But you still may not identify as an angry feminist. Maybe you don’t see these moments in your life as manifestations of deeper societal issues. Yes, you can get mad that someone harassed your sister on the street. But if it doesn’t happen to you, let alone every week when walking to work, then it’s much easier to see it as an isolated jerk rather than a societal issue.
It’s also likely you had a bad experience with feminism at some point. I get it. I went to Honolulu in January and was so disgusted that I swore I’d rather spend a weekend in a K Mart queue. But I’m told that the real Hawaii is paradise. And just as Honolulu is not Hawaii, one angry woman who once burnt a bra on your campus is not feminism.
Or maybe feminism has just done a bad job of explaining itself, and you thought it was never about you. This is a big intergenerational problem, not just for older men like Dad for whom feminism means something very different to me. But also for kids raised on the internet, which tells them feminists are just man-hating fat lesbians.
So I don’t mind if you don’t call yourself an angry feminist. But the truth is that you probably are one yourself if you’ve got a heart. episode of Doctor Who, an archaeological dig or a Star Wars movie?
6. According to the Bible, what town did Jesus Christ grow up in?
7. What three countries were at the centre of the Axis Powers alliance in World War II?
8. What island near Auckland is home to the world’s largest pohutukawa forest?
9. Blue September is a campaign to promote awareness of what cancer?
10. What popular sandwich spread has the same name as a traditional French cooking vessel?