James Deen & The Crisis of Media-Appointed Feminist Heroes

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

When James Deen was accused of raping or sexually assaulting several women—including his ex-girlfriend, the performer Stoya, the internet exploded. Some people wondered if porn actors could actually be raped (of COURSE they can; and never read the comments), while some people wondered how they could have ever supported him. Reading through the "we were wrong" headlines, it's clear that the masses are wondering: How could it be that someone who was public and likeable! and funny! and into consent was allegedly raping his co-workers and other women?

When Deen started becoming porn-famous around 2012, women - some of them devout "deenagers"—thought of him as a feminist icon. Jezebel said he was "dreamy," painting him as the guy next door who wants to hold your hand and watch Clueless. The media at large took Deen off of the faraway internet sex pedestal and put him into our lives as a hybrid entertainer-cum-women loving dude friend. His own social media engagement helped hone that image as well, even when he made ignorant rape jokes. The Frisky even hired him to write an advice column (they've since stopped publishing him). 

When someone is given the feminist seal of approval by the media, it can burrow itself into the psyche of readers and fans. It's hard not to be excited about someone who doesn't appear to denigrate women; we naturally want to celebrate them and make a public case in the hopes that it will influence others. However, it creates this idea that James Deen is a disappointment because he was deemed such a cool guy, not solely because he possibly committed a series of serious ethical crimes against women and humanity. 

When the porn actress Stoya tweeted that Deen had held her down and ignored her safe word, other women came forward and alleged that Deen had assaulted them as well, leading Deen to take part in an email interview with The Daily Beast, saying he was "honestly shocked" by the allegations and that “I have never claimed to be a 'feminist' or 'the boy next door.'"

This is a guy who previously told Elle, "I wouldn't consider myself a feminist….At the end of the day I want everyone to have the respect that they deserve and to respect people's civil liberties and rights. I don't know, maybe I am a fucking feminist!"

Simply, as figures in the media and consumers / retweeters of media, need to rethink the way we categorize public figures. We bestow upon celebrities our seal of approval and then we taketh away, but the reality is we need to look at lots of variables to know if a person is a) a good human being, b) a feminist and c) not a criminal. 

It seems like all men need to do is throw a bone towards women and they're suddenly in the clear. Bloggers need to know this isn't enough. Not online and not in real life.  

The Internet is the quickest to vilify. If an actor (who happens to be a woman) says she’s not a feminist, we write dozens of responses, critiquing their ignorance or kicking them out of the Feminist Club that we’d put them in ourselves. Sometimes we call them feminist heroes because of something they said and sometimes we just decide they're the It Feminist and good for clicks. Just as wearing sneakers on the red carpet doesn’t guarantee you’re in feminist club, being a porn star who says he respects women doesn’t make you feminist. Being feminist just isn't enough anymore. 

Whether or not these allegations around Deen are true—and we’re standing with the women who say they were victims to what sounds like Deen’s sexual entitlement or dangerous blending of real world vs. porn world—we know that we need to treat this like a criminal case and not like an, "Turns out he's NOT so feminist anymore, you guys" headline.

Interacting with feminism online should be done in an ideological way, not in a way that works for page views.  When we pump content onto the Internet, even us feminist journalists and bloggers, we need to be ethical and responsible enough to say, “Do I actually know 10 reasons X is a feminist?" We should always be thinking about what we’re saying, why we’re saying it and what affect it has on society. Deen could possibly be very guilty; don't let all the headlines make you question the victims.

Poems by Jennifer L. Knox

Editor's note: these poems originally appeared in the old/previous Luna Luna

The New Twilight Zone: “Empty City”

The cloud cover enveloping our hull
splits, shifts to our back like a parachute,
and we descend to the city below. Its three
mighty rivers: now kinked, dribbling hoses.
The scent of seething biomass—brown mounds
going green again with psyched, thriving mold—
reaches us far up as we are—and look: plumes
of smoke snaking into the air there. Flames
and dry backyard blowup pools below coming
into focus, but too much sun to see the windows
in the buildings all have x’s in their eyes.
Between white lines dash-dash-dashing the roads:
not a car. The voice on the tower mic:
silent as a bee hive.

“Schenectady Is Most Definitely

a hyperbolic landscape full of empty swimming pools,
violent men with tight asses straining the seams of their acid
washed jeans, pizza swamps of molten cheese with slices,
like my heart, rrrrrripped out—like starfish missing arms,
but opposite—inverted—or something,” my voice trails
off but my hands keep miming a triangle shape in the air,
tee-peeing it pointy and knifey to show him the purport of that
invisible missing piece, its edge so etched in my brain, then
one hand slips down the other side like a bathtub spider so
I climb back up the spout…

                                               “Did you take your crazy pills?”

he asks. “I don’t have anything to swallow them with,” I reply,
about to cry. He pulls over, we get out, I follow him into
the branches of an overgrown cloud of a hedge, green
as animal eyes, to a blue pool hidden in the middle.
“Swallow them with that,” he points at the water.
“It’s full of chemicals,” I insist. “Not for years,”
he grins. I bend down to the water, “You’re like
an almanac—gulp gulp.” Somehow, again, I’d
missed the shy emptying and filling,
the husk, bud and bloom.

The End of NYC

I sat down on the F train across from a woman (?)—long stringy black wig, short dirty white skirt, bad plastic surgery, bulges like slugs shifting under her skin. Taking up her entire right calf: a tattoo of a woman’s face—a sad woman with her hair in rollers—thick lips and eyelids—lips curled back—teeth showing but not smiling. The hair rollers. The eyes rolled back. My mind told me that the woman across from me was a genius. I made eye contact with her. “That’s the best tattoo I’ve ever seen,” I said. She lit up, “Yes, I’ve got two! It only took him an hour, it’s my angel…” her words poured out without pause. Instantly, I understood she was nervous and desperately lonely—not the kind of woman who’d get an ironic tattoo. My eyes moved back to her calf. Those weren’t hair rollers‚ just sproingy ringlet curls. It was an angel, and the worst tattoo I’d ever seen. I felt the recognition of this fall across my face, and I saw her see it on my face. Like when Jack Nicholson in The Shining thinks he’s making out with the hot chick who just crawled out of the bathtub, and he looks in the mirror and sees she’s really dead. I’d like to think I didn’t look that horrified, when, for no reason she would ever understand, I turned on her and her angels.

Hive Minds

Riding in the car with my mother, I never graduated from the back seat to the front. Whenever I tried to climbing in next to her (“This is stupid—I’m riding up front”), she’d howl and swipe at me until I caved. That was how she defended her space. We drove around like that until I got my driver’s license: us two, locked in the dust-mote mottled skies of our own minds, counting things. Me: syllables and the shadows of telephone poles falling across the car. Her: I don’t know. She can’t describe her OCD to me—only that it has to do with numbers—some inexplicable tally she’s been running all her life. I imagine it like a spider’s web, easily disturbed, then dispersed by the breath of other people. Whatever its shape, it’s the only thing that’s ever soothed her.

One stalk of corn can’t bear fruit by itself. It needs other stalks around to pollinate. Even a single row won’t cut it. Indians knew to grow them in circles, my boyfriend tells me. And sunflowers, his father adds, grown in a row will take turns bending north, then south, etc. down the line to give each other a shot at the light. We’re in the garden after dinner. Suddenly I envy anything that moves itself to accommodate another: a subtle shift to the left or right, self preservation that could pass for love.

____________________________________________________

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of Days of Shame and Failure (Bloof Books, 2015). Her other books, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Drunk by Noon, and A Gringo Like Me are also available from Bloof. Her poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series (1997, 2003, 2006, and 2011), as well as in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present and Best American Erotic Poems.

Stop Saying "I Have A Boyfriend"

BY ALECIA LYNN EBERHARDT

I enjoy “going out.” I like dancing, I like music, I like drinking, I like spending time with friends. And I like meeting new people, chatting with them, making friends. I also understand that many people (men and women) go to bars and clubs in hopes of meeting a romantic/sexual partner, and of course, there is nothing wrong with this, in theory.

That’s why, if someone attempts conversation with me, I try not to immediately write them off as a “creep.” I welcome conversation and believe that the more people in my life with whom I can converse, the better off I’ll be. However (as most women know) there sometimes comes a point in a conversation with a man where it becomes necessary to draw the line and indicate that you are in no way, by any means, at all interested in pursuing anything further. There are also times when it is clear that friendly conversation is not in the cards (i.e., those men who substitute grabbing your hips and attempting to “dance” with you for a polite introduction). This is about those times.

If you do a Google search for “how to avoid being hit on at a bar,” you’ll get several articles with “helpful” tips on skirting conversation with men you are not interested in. The majority of these list pretending to have (or actually having) a boyfriend/fiance/husband as the number one method for avoiding creeps (second to “pretending to be a lesbian” or “pretending to be crazy,” a la Jenna Marbles). In response to my complaints about men creeping on me at dance clubs in college, an ex-boyfriend of mine used to get cranky that I refused to whip out this cure-all excuse (one of many reasons he is an ex).

Yes, this may be the easiest and quickest way to get someone to leave you alone, but the problems associated with using this excuse far outweigh the benefits. There is a quotation that I’ve seen floating around Tumblr recently (reblogged by many of my amazing feminist Tumblr-friends) that goes as follows:

Male privilege is “I have a boyfriend” being the only thing that can actually stop someone from hitting on you because they respect another male-bodied person more than they respect your rejection/lack of interest.

This amazingly puts into one sentence what I have been attempting to explain to ex-boyfriends and friends (male and female) for years, mostly unsuccessfully. The idea that a woman should only be left alone if she is “taken” or “spoken for” (terms that make my brain twitch) completely removes the level of respect that should be expected toward that woman. It completely removes the agency of the woman, her ability to speak for herself and make her own decisions regarding when and where the conversation begins or ends. It is basically a real-life example of feminist theory at work--women (along with women’s choices, desires, etc.) being considered supplemental to or secondary to men, be it the man with whom she is interacting or the man to whom she “belongs” (see the theory of Simone de Beauvoir, the story of Adam and Eve, etc.). And the worst part of the whole situation is that we’re doing this to ourselves.

This tactic also brings up the question of the alternative. If the woman in question was boyfriend-free, would she automatically be swooning in the arms of the creep harassing her? Unlikely. So why do we keep using these excuses? We’re not teaching men anything about the consequences of their behavior (i.e. polite, real conversation warrants a response while unwanted come-ons do not). We’re merely taking the easy exit, and, simultaneously, indicating to men that we agree, single girls are “fair game” for harassment.

So what can we do? I think the solution is simple--we simply stop using excuses. If a man is coming on to you (and you are not interested--if you are, go for it, girl!), respond with something like this: “I’m not interested.” Don’t apologize and don’t excuse yourself. If they question your response (which is likely), persist--”No, I said I’m not interested.”

“Oh, so you have a boyfriend?”

“I said, I’m not interested.”

“So you’re a lesbian, then?”

“Actually, I’m not interested.”

“You seem crazy.”

“Nope, just not interested.”

Et cetera. You could even, if you were feeling particularly outspoken, engage in a bit of debate with the man in question. “Why is it that you think that just because I’m not interested, there must be an excuse? Why is it not an option that I’m simply not looking for a sexual encounter and/or something about the way that you approached me indicated to me that you have very little respect for women and therefore I would never be interested in having a sexual encounter with you regardless of my sexuality or relationship status?” (Or, ya know, switch it up as you see fit.) Questioning them back (if you have the energy) puts you back on an even playing field. I’m not saying this is easy. I’ve gotten into my fair share of arguments with men during what were supposed to be fun nights out with friends over whether or not I have the “right” to tell them to buzz off, boyfriend notwithstanding. However, there are a few reasons I continue:

1. So that maybe, possibly, the man I’m speaking to, or other men observing the encounter, may learn something about the agency of women,

2. So that maybe, possibly I might be inspiring other women observing to do the same so that one day, we can be a huge kickass collective of ladies standing up for our right to go crazy on the dance floor without being hassled, and

3. So that I can go home that night, sweaty and tired and happy, and know that I gave myself all the respect that I deserve.

Editor's Note: This is republished from our old site, lunalunamag.com

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Alecia is a logophile and a library bandit wanted in several states. In addition to feminist rants, she also writes essays, short stories, bad poetry, recipes and very detailed to-do lists. She currently resides in a little blue cabin in Woodstock with one fiance, one Dachshund and one pleasantly plump cat. Find her tweeting @alecialynn.

Which Lana Del Rey Song Is Your Life Anthem? Here's Ours

BY NADIA GERASSIMENKO

At Luna Luna Magazine, Lana Del Rey is our patron saint, our muse, our guardian fallen angel. Her persona mystifies us, her aura entrances us, and her dark energy compels us. It's Lana’s heavy, downcast, vulnerable neo-ambient vibes we adore so much. And the songs, like those of childhood youth, feel like they were uncannily orchestrated just for us. So, we all decided to share our thoughts and feelings about which of LDR's songs we feel profoundly connected with—our own life anthems. 

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Alaina Leary on Summertime Sadness

I connect with it for so many reasons. The first time I heard it, it was actually my cousin singing the lyrics over and over again, and this was in the summer of 2014. I felt that it was the perfect way to capture how *she* was feeling at the time. My cousin and I are very close, but she lives in Texas and only visits a few times a year. Her parents both passed away, and she feels really distant from the family besides me. So hearing those lyrics from her lips was really striking. We were walking in the dark and she was just singing “I've got that summertime, summertime sadness” over and over again while my dad and her husband walked ahead of us a few paces. A few days later I heard the full song on the radio, and I loved it. I really relate it to my cousin, not necessarily me, but I began to relate to parts of the song myself.

“I'm feelin’ electric tonight / Cruising down the coast goin’ ‘bout 99 / Got my bad baby by my heavenly side / I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight.” In the fall after that summer, I had to read Play it as It Lays by Joan Didion for class. The protagonist reminded me of a combination of my cousin and I, but a lot more outwardly vapid. I loved reading her story, though—the protagonist was cynical, and sad, and had no outward control of her life. I think we all feel that way sometimes. The character would get in her car and just drive as fast as possible. She had to get an abortion and this was during a time when abortions weren't legal, and women didn't have many rights. I felt that song was so attached to her, and although I've never gone through an abortion, I am a rape survivor, and I can relate to that feeling and that lyric, about just wanting to drive away from your problems. It's all about control, to me, the song and the character, and they're one and the same in my mind.

Patricia Grisafi on Gods and Monsters

Every so often, I get the urge to self-destruct in the most extravagant ways. I’ll fantasize about quitting my job in a fiery rage, getting drunk in some dark corner of the East Village, sending hostile letters to friends and enemies, picking fights in the street, crashing a concert and screaming on the stage, and then going to Alaska for a week and working on an alpaca farm. In my fantasy, the alpaca farm will soothe whatever perverse imp got inside, and I’ll return home rested, with beautiful skin.

Lana Del Rey’s Gods and Monsters speaks to me, especially when I start to feel emotionally itchy. The song details a woman’s quest to find experience at any cost. For the woman, self-destruction is necessary in order to live a full, authentic life: “In the land of Gods and Monsters / I was an angel / Looking to get fucked hard.” While she might be referring to rough sex—it’s Lana, after all—she’s also referring to a journey in which she dares life to happen in all its dirty, beautiful, terrifying, and transcendent splendor. She’s the brave author of her own voyage from innocence to experience.

The line “Living like Jim Morrison / Headed towards a fucked up holiday” resonates with me not because I particularly like Jim Morrison, but I like the myth of glorious destruction that he represents. We all want to take fucked up holidays, even if it’s just too many glasses of Malbec and tall tales at the local pub or writing the word “bitch” on the kitchen floor in mustard and then sobbing in it for a few hours. In another reality, Del Rey surely owns a boutique travel agency; “Fucked Up Holidays by Lana” would make a killing. I know I’d book a trip.

Trista Edwards on This Is What Makes Us Girls

I’ve hit my thirtieth year. Yes, this is young, but I do reflect on that ethereal mood of caprice and impulse of my 20s—an era of my life that is, in fact, gone. The thing is, I often still feel 20—consumed by whimsy and wanderlust with skeptic eye on authority and a disdain for rules. Lana’s This Is What Makes Us Girls has always represented this feeling for me. This song is so particularly youthful. It is for those girls who drink too much, dance on tables, break into the hotel pool. It is for those girls who only have time to care about the here and now. The girls Lana sings about in this song have always been me and not me. The girl that I am and the girl I want to be. While I have done my share of “bad girl” antics, I always feel I can be as “bad” as the girls in this song. I look up to them. They are my heroes that constantly remind me as I let the surrounding world, career, and age wrap certain restrictions around me I will never lose my lust for breaking into a pool that’s not mine, to strip down to my bikini, drink cheap beer as I float around to the sounds of a nearby radio, and smile up into the sky thinking how even the slightest rebellion feels so good. 

Photo credit to The Stadium Love

I always imagine the opening lines as Lana calling me to action—“Remember how we used to party up all night / Sneaking out and looking for a taste of real life / Drinking in the small town firelight.” There is something about having a night of complete disregard and that conquest for “real life.” To me this song is about the chase. Winning doesn’t matter; it is about the seeking, the doing, the living, the transgressing.

This song also encapsulates beauty of demise. It also illustrates the decline of youth and the destructive powers of love, both romantic and of girlhood bonds. I feel this particular moment in our lives is a sick passion we both desire and repent. It is that moment of realization that you can’t have it all. Lana sings “This is what makes us girls / We don’t stick together ‘cause we put our love first / Don’t cry about him, don’t cry about him / It’s all gonna happen.”  It does all happen; we learn sacrifice and that sacrifice is always parts of ourselves. This song reminds me of all my former selves from my younger years and makes me not forget to be one of those selves from time to time.

Nadia Gerassimenko on Ride

The way I interpret Ride by Lana Del Rey is that she’s a lost soul trying to find herself and her ground whether it is through the people—particularly older, experienced men—she meets or through her impromptu travels without a set destination. Wishing, hoping that something or someone could fill the hungry void inside her, that feeling of home she’s missing. She’s different, paradoxical even. She belongs to everyone and yet to no one. She wants to know what home feels like, but she needs her freedom too. There’s a continuous dichotomy between her two very different selves. The one that wants to belong. And the other that wants to be free. Can the two be able to co-exist one day and end “the war in…[her] mind?”

I’ve always felt lost myself. Like I didn’t belong in this world, in this time, in this society. If for a moment I would experience peace and contentedness with my life and my immediate milieu, the sensation would be fleeting and I would eventually revert back to feeling insatiable and melancholic. Perhaps it didn’t help me to be made of two contradictory natures. One being the down-to-earth, restrained, tentative pragmatist fighting with the dreamy, creative, and unconventional maverick. I cannot help but relate to one particular segment of the lyrics the most in Ride: “I'm tired of feeling like I'm fucking crazy / I'm tired of driving 'til I see stars in my eyes / It's all I've got to keep myself sane, baby / So I just ride, I just ride.” The exasperation of trying to control the constant, conflicting chatter in my mind. The exhaustion of trying to find the balance between my yin and yang and discover my true self and accept and love me as I am. Be one with myself and everything around me. But I am not one to ever give up, so like Lana, I just ride.

Illustration credit to Adrian Kozlowski

In the end, the Lana in Ride found her persons—the misfits, the free people, the on-the-roaders, just like her. With them by her side, she found herself. She admits she’s crazy, but she is free. She accepted herself wholly. And if ever she feels at war with herself, she knows what to do. (“I just ride.”) I also found myself, my harmony and happiness, my oneness with the universe. I learned that it is something I must find within me and that it’s always a work in progress. One cannot feel happy and complete all the time. 

Leza Cantoral on Brooklyn Baby

A year and a half ago I hopped on a train to New York City. I lied to my parents and said I was going to check out colleges but really I was going for love. I knew he was the one. Well, I was pretty damn sure that he was. We were outside the train station staring at each other, finally in the flesh after months of phone conversations that extended deep into the night, and I was chain smoking for lack of a better coping method. He noticed my feet in their sandals and could not believe how tiny they were. He asked me if he could see and I slipped my foot out of its sandal and he knelt down and held my foot that was not much larger than his hand. He stared at it incredulously and made some cute remarks I do not remember now. An old black man passed by and saw the little tableau and simply exclaimed “Aw hell no!” As if we were engaging in some seriously kinky behavior. Fourth wall was broken and we both burst out laughing. That night we did the deed and the next day it was like we had always been together.

He’s the one that introduced me to Lana Del Rey. He could not believe I had not heard her. He said “You must have heard Summertime Sadness on the radio. Lana is totally your girl.” He played Ultraviolence for me and I fell in love HARD. I will forever associate that whole album with moving to New York and falling in love. That whole summer all I listened to was Lana Del Rey. There were certain songs and certain lines in particular that I really connected with.

The line that always made me choke up was: “They judge me like a picture book / By the colors, like they forgot to read.” From Brooklyn Baby. It was hard not to cry every time I heard it.

The Mirror Has Two Faces by Jessica Buhman

That line is the story of my life from day one. As a Mexican-American-bisexual-Jewish girl, I have never felt like I fit in and I have always been judged by my surface. When I was in Mexico I was too white, and when I moved here I was not white enough. I am always terrified in social situations so I drink too much and act extroverted to calm down and often end up coming off as a loud-mouthed exhibitionist. I love deep conversation so I make eye contact and that scares people. People are either put off or drawn to me. There is no in between. I have always been judged in some way or another and it drives me nuts. It always breaks my heart that people cannot see that my intentions are good and that I just want to connect. My surface is just my body, it is not my soul.

That summer was a great awakening for me. Being loved and accepted by him shattered a spell of sadness and alienation that had enveloped me in an angry fog for many years. I felt happy. I felt like myself. I could be myself with him and I saw that he accepted me as I was. I had reached a point, right before embarking on my trip to NYC, where I had finally finished a long overdue BA thesis and kicked the most abusive boyfriend I had ever dated, in a long cycle of abusive boyfriends, to the curb. It was a massive turning point for me.

Lana was like my spiritual midwife. I was reborn with Ultraviolence as my soundtrack. I felt like I was me and I had my voice back and I blissfully would sing along to Brooklyn Baby as we drove in his car. I felt new and happy and free and I would always grin when I sang, “Yeah my boyfriend’s pretty cool, but he’s not as cool as me, ‘cause I’m a Brooklyn baby.”

Tiffany Chaney on Once Upon a Dream

Several songs of Lana Del Rey's resonate with me deeply. I feel as a wandering soul holding a moment that is broken and reflective intimately to my chest, moving forward and yet backward at the same time. The songs are layered. I have so much of her work to explore. I found myself recently listening to newer releases (especially while writing) and am getting to know those better. I associate aspects of Summertime Sadness (I love “sizzling like a snare”) and Burning Desire with past loves and those poetic time periods of my life. The one song that I will play over and over again is Once Upon a Dream, Lana's version that was done for Maleficent.

“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream / I know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam / And I know it's true that visions are seldom all they seem.” This gets me. It's her intonations of “I know you...” It's in the *atmosphere* of such a supposedly simple song. It's cyclical like time and memory...All so familiar, this walk. I feel the alto within my chest, reverberating. Something old here at work. Like past lives. Like the too familiar patterns we enact with others, how entangled we are. How I feel when I sing the song, empowering, knowing, bittersweet, and timeless…

It is hard to choose, but Lana's music is about flowing through it all—adding a new layer of understanding every time you revisit a moment...Why you are haunted and why you continue to let yourself be.

I know you—sometimes I feel like I've known others so much more than myself…Being the listener. Have I truly listened to myself, though? Yes, and no. Have I walked with myself? How am I looking at this? Dream or no, lifetimes ago or not...Visions are seldom all they seem. It's in the humming of the song. That ancient buzzing within the chest...Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar says it right: “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.” Yes, this is the same thing.

(I feel so much at once, especially as an empath or as a Highly Sensitive Person or a poet or whatever you want to call it…This is about the path of feeling for me.)