Notable News: Week of February 2-8, 2013

This week was full of great posts about the Super Bowl, sex, and sex and the Super Bowl.  What more could a person ask for?

1. On objectifying language

Dianna Anderson does a great job summarizing the problems with the use of words and images that reduce women’s existence to that of male plaything.  She says,

The message we’re continually bombarded with is “women exist not for themselves but for the pleasure of men.” It’s the definitive male gaze.

I usually suggest staying away from the comments on blog posts unless one wants to either experience rage or contribute constructively, but in this case, go ahead and read them.  There’s more good stuff in there.

2. On objectifying ourselves

Sarah Moon does a phenomenal job of explaining the difference between women as objects to sell products and women dressing (and performing) in ways that make us feel empowered.  Best quotes:

Men are often seen as more human, as REAL men when they are sexual, while women are accused of objectifying themselves.

Objectification does not happen when a woman like Beyoncé decides to use her sexuality to be powerful. Objectification happens when Audi commercials show a teenaged boy kissing a teenaged girl without her permission and displaying that as bravery.

Amen and amen, Sarah.

3. On Beyoncé’s performance

I saw a boatload of Facebook statuses and tweets about how inappropriate Beyoncé was during her halftime performance.  But I saw just as many great blog posts defending her.  Here are some of the best:

• David Henson, A Defiant Dance of Power, Not Sex: Beyoncé, the Super Bowl and Durga (and the follow-up, Pharaohs in America: On Beyoncé and blindspots)
• Joy Bennett, What Beyonce’s Halftime Show Reveals about the Evangelical Love/Hate Relationship with Human Sexuality
• Matthew Paul Turner, About That Beyonce Performance Being Like Soft Core Porn
• Nish Weiseth, outraged moms and the super bowl
• Bo Sanders, Beyoncé and the Bigger Question (and the follow-up, The Silent White Guy and Invisible Black Women)
• Crystal Wright, Right & Left Unleash Furor over Beyoncé’s Super Bowl Show but Conservatives: “Put a Sock in it”

4. On “impromptu sex week”

I’m borrowing the term from something Preston Yancey tweeted last night in the process of collecting various blog posts on the subject.  (Not to mention the fact that, well, that honestly just sounds pretty good in general, doesn’t it?)  In addition to Preston’s own two posts on purity culture and virginity, as well as the ones I linked in last week’s news, there have been several other good ones:

• Emily Maynard, The Day I Turned in My V-Card
• Elizabeth Esther, I Kissed My Humanity Goodbye: how the evangelical purity culture dehumanizes women and Virginity: New & Improved!
• Suzannah Paul, beyonce & policing female sexuality
• Joy Bennett, News Flash: You Probably Won’t Marry a Virgin
• PerfectNumber628, Purity for the Sake of Purity

And of course, my own 3 posts this week on masturbation, two of which were linked by Slacktivist in this post (a nice summary of the purity culture posts over the last couple of weeks).

5. On my other blog

I started a second blog, because this one just isn’t the place for fiction.  But I write some of that, too, so I thought, Why not?  The plan is to put something new up there about once a week.  There are three this week, because I just started it last Saturday.  You can read the introductory post, my first story, and my guest post for Tim Gallen on there.  Be sure to check out the page for guest posts, because I would love to feature your writing!