{"id":67296,"date":"2013-05-25T14:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=67296"},"modified":"2013-05-24T17:25:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T21:25:32","slug":"go-play-with-your-own-image-not-hers-or-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/go-play-with-your-own-image-not-hers-or-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Play With Your Own Image — Not Hers or Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Pretty much if you\u2019ve ever had a pulse at some point in the past hundred years, you\u2019re going to end up with a picture of your boobs on the Internets at some point in your life. Which is why I was not so shocked to see \u201cvintage nude photos\u201d of artist Frida Kahlo online. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not shocked, no, but certainly WTF. Despite the \u201cvintage\u201d bikini area, which could not have been the artist\u2019s body. There were other sorts of things that were all wrong about it, as well.<\/p>\n

(For those who don\u2019t know much about Kahlo: check out her art on Google, first, but also know that she did not have traditional monogamous relationships by a long shot — she was bisexual and she and her husband had lovers during their on-and-off marriage.]<\/p>\n

The wrong part was also noted in a fine blog post on Black Girl Dangerous<\/a> by Mia McKenzie that gives the background and the story as well. So I posted that blog post to my social network, and got a couple likes and a doofy-ass comment from a white guy about how everyone else was a racist except him.<\/p>\n

I just spent about 15 minutes looking for that comment, but it was to the effect that the blogger herself is guilty of racism because she assumes \u201call white men are racists\u201d and \u201call men have abused women.\u201d <\/p>\n

Oh, the weariness. I just felt this 30-year-old d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu — do people really still say things like that? I wonder it every time. I\u2019m na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I just wrote under that comment that if he didn\u2019t understand what was wrong with that statement, it would take too long to explain it to him. It\u2019s such a weird attempt at a self-protective internal dialogue people have to go through to get to that place: Omg what if they\u2019re talking about me THEY\u2019RE NOT TALKING ABOUT ME I DON\u2019T DO THAT why do they think I do that I feel scared and I don\u2019t know why I\u2019M NOT THE ONE WHO\u2019S WRONG what if I am WHY ARE YOU ACCUSING ME they always say that YOU\u2019RE THE ONE WHO\u2019S WRONG YOU\u2019RE THE RACIST.<\/em> <\/p>\n

A lot of time that last accusation is less hurled than made in a gentle and delicate way: \u201cI hate<\/em> to bring your attention to this, but if you\u2019re<\/em> the one saying that all<\/em> white men do something, then you<\/em> must be the prejudiced<\/em> one.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was pretty easy to do a search on the word \u201call\u201d in the blog post. There\u2019s \u201call kinds\u201d and \u201call of a sudden,\u201d but there\u2019s no \u201call men\u201d or \u201call white men.\u201d <\/p>\n

There is this following, but even that doesn\u2019t restrict the noun:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen did the idea of respecting the image, body, or identity of women of color ever trump the need for white men (or any men, really) to do whatever they please?\u201d<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t say \u201call men\u201d exploit that privilege — it just says the privilege exists, and it trumps respect.<\/p>\n

It was really easy to find the unfriend button though. Easiest thing about all this. In fact, I feel bad that I didn\u2019t stay in there and keep fighting and do the conversation thing, because as a white woman I might have a shot at getting someone to see this. But to tell you the truth the guy makes me a little nervous, and I didn\u2019t think he would take being contradicted well. I was right — there followed some further correspondences all designed to make me feel ashamed of being female and having sex, until I hit the \u201cun\u201d button and stopped all communication.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t the first time that being realistic about privilege has earned me or anyone else some badmouthing. It\u2019s actually kind of funny, the reaction that comes when privilege is exposed by one who says, yeah, you know, there it is, you\u2019re soaking in it. The privileged one often reacts in a way that brings a certain gassy, Victorian vocabulary to mind: umbrage, high dudgeon, huffy, harrumph, affront, disgruntle, well I never, and similar terms.<\/p>\n

Under the transits of recent months, I\u2019ve been wrestling with the denial demons quite a bit myself. I\u2019m bewildered by how often people deny the obvious, and how invested they are in doing so, and how they think they can possibly get away with it for very long. If I have to hear how \u201cnegative\u201d I\u2019m being from one more New Ager, I will go into high dudgeon! For instance, I\u2019ve been working on poems about the Civil War for about two years now. Just about everything I read on the topic has a stain of a belief in gallantry and noble cause, and most people assume that\u2019s going to be in my writing as well. <\/p>\n

Are you, like, fucking kidding me? What do they take me for? Just because I use images from the King James translation and lots of folderol-era words doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m falling for that shit. That war (no less than any others, or the wholesale soiling of our planet, or the drones that kill innocent 8-year-old boys) was whack, a psychosis, just another mutation of the racism virus that keeps evolving and re-infecting us. <\/p>\n

Looking into that blankness and absurdity, even at a remove of 150 years, is a tough one; getting anyone to hold my hand while I do it is no easy sell, either. Once you stop denying, there is very little to hold on to besides each others\u2019 hands; and mine is old and bony and spiked with bitten hangnails. I understand quite well why anyone would prefer a lovely view of denial out the kitchen window (framed by an artisanal-tile backsplash). <\/p>\n

But the Photoshopping of Frida is not only a symptom of racism, but also of able-ism, McKenzie points out: <\/p>\n

We\u2019d have to be in some serious denial to think that these things did not affect the way Frida\u2019s body looked. There were surely scars, surely much evidence of decades of pain and surgery and brokenness. To replace that broken, scarred body with smooth, un-flawed flesh, as in these photoshopped pics, is plainly able-ist. Further, it dishonors the life Frida Kahlo lived and the experiences she survived. Here was a woman, an artist, whose artistic expression had everything to do with her physical pain, everything to do with existing inside a body that was twisted and gnarled, a body that hurt every day. To erase that is to attempt to erase Frida herself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s the thing that pissed me off the most about this. First of all, behind it I suspect there\u2019s a sort of refusal to believe that a woman with many lovers, with what was from all accounts a strong and active love and sex life, could also have a physical being that was so troubled. We know from her self-portraits and writing and evidence of her multiple surgeries that she was scarred, in chronic pain, often in casts and braces. Her legs had been affected from polio. She was in a horrific bus accident as a teenager — broken pelvis, collarbone, spine, and an iron rail through her stomach and uterus. Surgeries over the course of her life topped 30. <\/p>\n

She was not a heroic little silent sufferer, either. She painted herself, her casts, herself in her casts; she saw beauty, fierceness, strangeness in her own predicament, her own reality. She faced that reality in the mirror and then transformed it into (something more real) her art. She faced her life and then self-invented like crazy. Her art was her self, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

For anyone who respects an artist, putting her head on another woman\u2019s body is grotesque. It doesn\u2019t work as art; as novelty it\u2019s creepy; even as commentary it misses the mark. <\/p>\n

So this is what disturbs me most about women\u2019s naked photos being released on the Internet without their permission. I don\u2019t want anyone\u2019s photos being used without their permission; men too, and in whatever stage of dress, or not. <\/p>\n

Recently an advice columnist responded to a woman who was disturbed about her husband and his friends sending emails about women they\u2019d slept with, with photos. One of the readers said something like: \u201cAsk the guy how he\u2019d like it if that were his sister up there on the Internets!\u201d <\/p>\n

Which is a terrible case of missing the point. You or your sister or anyone else don\u2019t have any reason to run and cover up in shame. The one who is trying to provoke the shame — the one who manipulates and controls the image — that\u2019s the one who owns the shame and derision. (It goes without saying that if the problem involves someone underage, there are laws and courts — sic ’em.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve posed nude for artists and photographers, and I was once a stripper. I don\u2019t make a big deal out of it. Everything I\u2019ve done has had its good and bad points; some moments transcendent. I\u2019m still trying to be a good artist and writer. My having been naked in front of people has been a part of my life, as much as my cooking food for people, or my brushing my teeth. If images of me showed up on the Internet, what would I do? It wouldn\u2019t be that big a deal, either, unless I felt there was an intent to threaten me or those I care about in some way. Then I\u2019d deal with it. <\/p>\n

By the way, I don\u2019t consider it a threat if someone wanted to show someone I care about naked pictures of me. The people I care about would just make sure I\u2019m safe, then laugh, or think you\u2019re a creep. I\u2019d feel ashamed if someone had images of me being cruel, but I\u2019d also be ashamed while it was happening, if I did it in real life. Right now I\u2019m feeling really ashamed remembering that I once cut in a line at a buffet because I didn\u2019t realize where the end of the line was. I just want to melt into the floor thinking about it! I never felt ashamed about modeling or dancing, though. <\/p>\n

What if we decided that there was nothing shameful about sexual photos or talk, that these were simply interesting or not? The shamers and manipulators lose their power. This is the next step; it\u2019s what\u2019s coming. This is the place we\u2019re headed as the world creaks open under the pressure of the Uranus-Pluto square. Victim-blaming and slut-shaming are losing. The most vicious efforts to keep this alive — from legislated ultrasounds to athlete-rapist apologists — are death throes. These people are going down. Unfriend. Unelect. Unpower. <\/p>\n

How many scars and flaws do you and your loved ones have? How much do you love them for them? Would I wish that either of the men I love not have what are considered disabilities? Of course I want them to be happy; but I want more than that for them to be themselves, whatever that might be. It\u2019s a very strange paradox of identity, one I\u2019ve tried to write about several times in ways that for me are clearer than rhetoric. I hope you\u2019ll forgive me if you\u2019ve heard this before.<\/p>\n

Ten of Swords
\nWounded Healer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a while since I’ve kissed the scars
\nOf someone I love. The indentation in your leg,
\nThe star shape to the left of your navel,
\nThe weal sewn over your heart. No more
\nDelicate fingertips and wide-eyed awe here.
\nWhen you first know a body, you count the scars,
\nYou wonder over them, you hear every story
\nThese marks tell. You are hungry for the news.
\nYou would push the point of your tongue
\nInto a tiny, still-red canyon, mining
\nFor information, for emotion, for the undeniable
\nTruths of the past. Now it’s an act of faith
\nTo overlook what hurt you so long ago.
\nIt’s tempting for us damaged
\nTo worship the wounds, you know.
\nSo I resist, slide my lips quickly over and past
\nThose places, over and past for you.
\nThese next few moments are what I live for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila Pretty much if you\u2019ve ever had a pulse at some point in the past hundred years, you\u2019re going to end up with a picture of your boobs on the Internets at some point in your life. Which is why I was not so shocked to see \u201cvintage nude photos\u201d of artist Frida … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}