On dicks, rape and feminism

Last week I spent hours pouring over the whole Jezebel vs Lizz Winstead thing.

The deal is this: Moe and Tracie (aka Slut Machine) are writers/editors for Jezebel and each have their own blog. They are funny and gross and don’t really give a shit that you may not think so. They were invited to be interviewed on an episode of Shoot the Messenger, in a segment titled Thinking and Drinking, hosted by Lizz Winstead, co-creator of the Daily Show. What emerged from that interview was a mushy mess that left several people freaked out by the Jezebels comments and ready to form a lynch mob. A feminist lynch mob no less.

I don’t think the interviewees, interviewer or audience members could agree on what the show is and should have been that night. I also have a feeling Lizz Winstead and most of the audience had never actually read the works of the two writers. Or at least not enough to get a handle on the fact that if you invite them to a comedy show entitled Thinking and Drinking they might actually do that. Moe and Tracie took the drinking part to heart, which I imagine they do in their day to day lives anyway.

I watched the entirety of the interview. It started out enjoyable and when it got to the sticky icky parts I barely even noticed what people were all up in arms about. I heard Tracies comments about rape and totally got what she was saying. She was not saying rape was OK or that it is the victims fault. What she did say (imho) is that we put ourselves into situations where we feel comfortable and when we ignore those instincts bad things can happen. She wasn’t saying that she’s never been raped because she is smarter than rape victims; she said she’s never been raped because she trusts her instincts. Granted, she was drunk and it didn’t come out so coherently. But fucking christ people, are you really going to hold Drinking and Thinking interviewees to an unattainable standard of being role models, definitive feminists and coherently drunk?

Lizz Winstead has the credibility of being a co-creator of a super awesome show that makes me want to snuggle. However, she came off as shrill and condescending during this interview. Did I agree with everything Moe and Tracie said? No. But I did want to hear it because I find these women interesting. She reprimanded Moe and Tracie and sometimes didn’t even let them finish their sentences because she didn’t agree with what was spilling out of their mouths. There was a lot of tension in the room, I felt it on my side of the screen. She played to the audiences insecurity and confusion, making campy faces and basically having them join her in a big what the fuck?!

She took on the role of feminist mother guiding her young ducklings to be the right kind of feminist. The problem arose when Moe and Tracie wouldn’t grab her hand and follow. They respectfully acknowledged what previous feminists had done for them but disagreed with them on several points. Lizz seemed to forget the point of feminism! To question standard methods and practices. First wave feminism wasn’t perfect, whatever wave we are in now isn’t perfect but it is the compounding of knowledge and experiences that strives for total equality. Yes, Tracie called Gloria Steinem a dinosaur. But she was drunk! When I’m drunk and on the spot, there is no way I’m going to be able to come up with something like, “Gloria Steinem is part of the old establishment of feminism. A very basic tenet of feminism is to question establishment and improve on the traditional ways of doing things so that women can enjoy equality blah blah blah….” No, I’m probably going to call Gloria Steinem a dinosaur. Deal.

Moe gave a detailed account of her date rape and kind of blew it off in the end. Lizz totally crossed the line when she criticized the way Moe dealt with her rape.  Moe wasn’t denying the gravity of her experience but just chose not to make it a pool of pity in her life. That is something I can totally respect. After it happened, she was confused and ultimately decided not to pursue legal action because she didn’t want to deal with it. Lizz called her selfish for not protecting other women. And I kinda agree with that stance, however, Moe was 19 when this happened and admitted that if it happened now it would have been totally different. Also, it is estimated that rape goes largely unreported for a variety of reasons. Ideally it would be reported, investigated and prosecuted but that is so rarely the case. And can you really blame Moe for not wanting to go through the agonizing process of filing a rape charge? Especially after it’s been disclosed that even when a woman reports a rape and undergoes a humiliating forensic sampling procedure all her efforts may be for nothing. So really Lizz, was it so selfish? Have you never committed a selfish act against your fellow women? Because I know I have and I would be pretty fucking pissed if someone had the gall to give me shit about it in front of an audience then post a video of it on the internet prefaced by:

I feel a responsibility to hold these young women accountable for the statements they make as they seem sure to keep repeating them.

Whether there was a pre-interview or not, who ever said what before hand is not really the issue here. The issue is that the format of the show was not clear to anyone, including the host. Lizz swung wildly from making jokes about her multiple abortions (“My sister calls me Terminator 3″) to being overbearing in the face of controversial opinions (interrupting Moe and Tracie with “What the FUCK!”). Moe and Tracie seemed genuinely blindsided by the hostility coming from Lizz and the audience. After all, they were invited and promoted as the editors of Jezebel, where their opinions are widely known. Who wouldn’t be suprised with what transpired?

Many people have said that Moe and Tracie were rude to the people who paid to see them. But I think they are forgetting that people paid to see them. If I pay for a Bon Jovi concert I’m not going to be pissed when Bon Jovi walks out. I would be pissed if they tried to be Def Leppard. But that’s the thing, Tracie and Moe were not Def Leppard, they were themselves, unapologetically themselves. And isn’t that why they were invited in the first place? Certain audience members may have been appalled but that doesn’t make their points any less valid. People may disagree and not understand their brand of humor, but that doesn’t make demons out of Tracie and Moe.

They were berated during the interview, and later in forum threads, for being poor role models. I’m not going to even get into the fact that they are just doing their job, because I think everyone knows it even if they don’t want to concede that point. What bothers me most about the whole role model business is that people, including Lizz Winstead, do not give young girls enough credit. We can read a humorous essay about doing coke off a random guys boner and using the pull out method as a sole source of birth control and not do the same things ourselves. Do I think pulling out is an acceptable form of birth control? Fuck no. Do I think it’s funny when Moe says, “it’s the birth control method that feels the best?” Fuck yes. It doesn’t mean we are going to go fuck strangers in a club bathroom. Some of us may decide to do that but Moe and Tracie won’t be the catalyst. We are smart, we can decide for ourselves who to emulate, if we want to emulate someone at all. We are smart, we don’t need you to censor others for us.

Being an avid reader of mainly Tracies but definitely of Jezebel as a whole, I watched the interview and I agree it wasn’t the best forum for these two. Not because I was offended or felt they came off as stupid or whatever. But because these two are writers and being put in front of an audience with a combative host isn’t their forte. They were a few drinks deeper than they should have been but no one should have been surprised. They have admitted to stage fright and beyond that, it’s what they write about; getting drunk and fucking. Who’s the idiot for expecting something different?

I don’t think there was an apology in order. And there hasn’t been one, not from Tracie or Moe at least. But Anna posted this kind of retraction/oops/apology at Jezebel. Unfortunately, Moe and Tracy have retreated. Moe has reduced her blog to this and Tracie hasn’t updated since posting a video of Lizz Winstead drunk. Which means I haven’t had any new sex or drugs content from one hysterical writer, and that is the real tragedy in all of this.

[tags]lizz winstead, moe tkacik, tracie egan, jezebel, feminism, shoot the messenger, thinking and drinking[/tags]