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ESSENTIAL_EROCOS
December 23, 2014
February 19, 2015
February 20, 2019
A piece by Courtney Stoker at the
geekfeminism.org site, from 2011:
http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/23/geek-girls-and-the-problem-of-self-objectification/
This is a complaint about the phenomena of erotic cosplay at
SF and comics conventions. It makes so many obvious mistakes
it's astounding that an apparently intelligent person was able
to come up with it all--
There's a paragraph where she sums-up:
"The problem is that women who dress sexy, who frame themselves
as sex objects, are rewarded by geek culture for doing so. They
get attention, approval, and recognition from the culture when
they dress as sexy Leia (or any sexy geek thing). They have
pictures taken of them at cons, and they get posted and
reposted on the internet. They are recognized as geeks (and
generally as somewhat authentic geeks, even if they aren’t
talked about that way) and welcomed into the community (maybe
not as full members, but at least as desirable). There’s
nothing wrong with wanting attention and approval in one’s
community. What cosplayer and geek wouldn’t want those things?
What female geek doesn’t want to be welcomed into the community
with enthusiasm and excitement (instead of derided as a harpy
feminist or annoying squeeing fangirl)? The problem, then,
isn’t what women do, but a culture in which the only way that
women can be recognized as a desirable part of the culture is
when they participate by making themselves consumable sexy
objects for geek men."
Is there any reason for us to assume that these women would
*not* be accepted if they weren't doing ero-cosplay group
concepts?
If you just asked the question "why do they do this?" it
would be less crazy than just assuming you know... But then
it would be obvious you need to talk to the women themselves:
"How do you feel about what you were doing? Do you regret
doing it? Did you feel pressured to do this? Have you ever
felt rejected when trying to do something else?"
But try to imagine actually asking those questions: isn't it
clear that they're really insulting and condescending? The
implicit assumption is that they did something wrong and
must not know any better.
It has been decades since the advent of the sex-positive
feminist movement, and we've still got people who have
trouble with the idea that no one gets to dictate the one
correct way that women are allowed to be. Here Courtney
Stoker is trying very hard to dodge a charge of
"slut-shaming", but not succeeding-- "I'm not blaming the
women, I'm blaming the culture that makes them do these
horrible things!" But what makes them so horrible?
And what gives you the right to stand in judgement
over them or their culture?
Courtney Stoker has the idea that the central problem with
"slut-shaming" is "blaming the victim" -- so she's stepping
in as the white knight, defending the naive young women from
patriarchy, and in the process denying them any judgement or
agency of their own. (But that's okay, just as long as she
doesn't "objectify" them.)
I don't doubt that Stoker is annoyed by the attempts at
psychoanalyzing her own motives ("Oh you're just jealous!"),
so why is she so ready to psychoanalyze the ero-cosplay crowd?
(It sucks when people are into stuff that you're not into, but
you know, sometimes it happens and then you've just got to
deal: Try not to get stuck on the idea that you're normal and
they're not.)
EROCOS_FIFE
By the way, there's an expanded version of this piece that
Courtney Stoker published in 2012, but it was too long, so
I didn't read it.
Just kidding. I went through the 2012 version looking for
some place she might've backed up and explained the premise
of the 2011 piece: cosplay geeks don't count as "real
geeks", and their popularity is a problem.
I came up largely empty-handed. Throughout, she keeps
assuming the conclusion:
" ... the sexualization and objectification of
women is not unique to geek cultures, though it
is particularly severe in geek media."
There's evidently some big problem with "sexualization".
Is the idea that "sexualization" and "objectification" are
identical? You can't be sexy and respected? You can't be OBJECTIFIED
sexy and recognized as intelligent?
Throughout Stoker keeps harping on the fact that
the sexy cosplayers are playing-up to conventional
standards of beauty-- we might infer that the problem
here is that not everyone meets these, so celebrating
one group of women as "beautiful" is necessarily I would think the
exclusionary, in some sense. goal would be to
respect women who
But then if the idea is to eliminate any potential aren't into playing
source of envy, that would seem to be problematic. show girl, not to
disrespect the ones
Her model of reality is something like this: all who are.
bad things are the results of a rewards structure
imposed by a male-dominated society, and a
conspiracy of The Media to impose a certain BEAUTY_MYTH
standard of beauty... There's this true culture
that enlightened beings like herself can see, and Or maybe it's a
a false overlay that she urges us to cast off. maleable culture
And there's no need to check with the women that awaiting Stoker's
she's volunteering to defend, because you know, instructions?
they're just playing the hand they were dealt--
they're powerless and innocent, and know not what
they do, and that's not a condescending stereotype
because, uh...
Later in the essay she goes off into new territory, though:
she was impressed with Olivia Waite's exposition that
presented an interpretation of the "slave leia" costume as
subversive. The possibility that Stoker might run with
this, and work out a new esthetic for subversive ero-cosplay
is one of the more interesting things here--
Elsewhere she's written in praise of women who take a male
character and do a "femme" version of it (e.g. "what if the
fifth Doctor really had been a woman?").
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