misogyny – Memphis Flyer

October is a month of terror.

Aside from the pumpkin spice, the candy corn, and the premature Christmas tracks, there is a real terror we never look in the eye.

That terror is that of the erasure of Native culture and history that Native people are reminded of yet again, and that terror is violence.

Take last week for, example. Yandy.com, an online apparel retailer, promoted and immediately removed the Brave Red Maiden costume from its website after receiving criticism on social media for sexualizing the characters in The Handmaid’s Tale. Users on social media were quick to express their anger over the costume, and Yandy soon released a statement to claim it was not their intent to offend.

While the costume based off of a fictional dystopian narrative is no longer sold in their online store, Yandy, as other costume markets, continues to carry “sexy Indian costumes.” In 2017, Yandy’s chief financial officer Jeff Watton said that the company made $150,000 per year from the Native American “costumes” and would not stop selling them because they were very profitable.

Unfortunately, Yandy and other similar companies will continue to profit from the exploitation and trauma of the Native American community, in particular native women, despite native communities calling for these products to be taken down. But these calls are not answered by the public — by us — and these recent events have only further shown that “selective” feminism, which is exclusionary and best described as just maintaining white supremacy, would rather prioritize and protect the image of fictional characters than recognize how the fetishization of indigenous women contributes to the sexual violence that they experience.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice and many federal government studies, Native American women have the highest rates of rape and sexual assault — and are more likely to experience sexual violence — than other women in the U.S. Ninety-seven percent of the sexual violence committed against Native women has been by non-Native persons. However, tribal courts for many decades have not been able to prosecute crimes committed by non-Native people. Often, rape cases were passed to the U.S. Justice Department, but there wasn’t much hope that the cases would be investigated. In 2011, 65 percent of rape cases passed to the U.S. courts were, in fact, not prosecuted at all. A provision in the Violence Against Women Act in 2013 gave some jurisdictional authority to tribal courts to prosecute these crimes committed by non-Native people, but this jurisdiction was still limited. Many tribal courts couldn’t exercise this jurisdiction because of the regulations under the act that require funding that tribal criminal justice systems do not have.

So how does a retail company based in Arizona have anything to do with this sexual violence against Native women? These “costumes” are more than just fabric put together that someone believes they innocently wear one day of the year. They support the hyper-sexualization of Native women’s bodies. This fetishization contributes to rape culture. It enforces the idea that Native women can be commodified, which not only points to the way that people who perpetrate this violence think, but also the normalization of a legacy of violence against Native people’s bodies and lands by settlers.

Yandy is not an isolated company. It is one of many companies that use aspects of Native culture for the sole purpose of profit. From clothes associated with Native culture to sage, dream-catchers, and other items incorporated into non-Native popular culture, these pieces contribute to the idea that Native culture is a monolith and is something of the past that can be “borrowed” for non-Native consumption. This erases the lived experiences of Native people today, whose lands, water, and other resources continue to be stripped from them. Additionally, these practices contribute to growing rates of Native women who experience sexual violence and are going missing.

As we enter October, we must remember that this is an ongoing trauma and re-trauma that Native people are experiencing. At the same time, Native people are engaging in an ongoing resistance that is often overshadowed, or in actuality, ignored in the mainstream coverage of activism and social justice work. The attention that Yandy gave to the backlash of the The Handmaid’s Tale costume shows that we need to continue to challenge feminist movements, as they have historically been exclusionary to black, brown, and Native struggles, and this past week has shown that it hasn’t changed. If feminism does not include indigenous sovereignty, it is synonymous to white supremacy.

Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona Memphian pursuing an Urban Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies degree at Rhodes.

Joe & friends

Politics is the ultimate reality show. That’s especially true in Memphis this election year thanks to the mud-slinging antics of former Judge turned TV arbitrator Joe Brown, who recently accused his political opponent, District Attorney Amy Weirich of being gay and in the closet. Brown’s subsequent apology for the attempted public shaming generously allows that gays have nothing to be ashamed of, blaming the victim of the intended gay smear because she doesn’t do more to support LGBT rights.

The only surprising thing about this dustup is that people were surprised. It’s not like Weirich is the first person Judge Joe has accused of being gay on the “down low.” Judge Joe’s long history as an arbiter of proper gender conduct suggests he has a serious problem with women, especially if they don’t have a man. Why you may ask? Because women without men raise boys who act like women, which more or less implies that there must be something wrong with the way women act in the first place. For fifteen seasons the celebrity judge presided over a make believe courtroom, slut-shaming and ball-busting his way to becoming America’s second favorite TV judge, just ahead of The People’s Court‘s Marilyn Milian, but well behind Judge Judy. But there’s a dirty little not-so-secret secret about popular courtroom programming. It’s nothing like an actual courtroom, and critics have long worried that it warps viewers’ sense of how our legal system actually works. The combative and openly biased behavior TV judges regularly engage in to score big on a daytime/late night reality shows would merit disciplinary action in the real world.

This is a gavel, which is sometimes called a skank hammer.

This is a gavel, which is sometimes called a “skank hammer.”

Court shows are typically confrontational reality TV, and that kind of programming has always trucked in manufactured drama, aggression, poorsploitation and heterosexist culture-bating. And like I said, when it came to bringing in the ratings, Judge Joe was always a big #2, swirling around the commode of trash television.

Here are just a few of the wacky things the tough-loving judge has said about women. And Men who act like women.

Poor Snidely Whiplash. He was probably raised in a single parent home without a man to teach him man things.

Poor Snidely Whiplash. He was probably raised in a single parent home without a man to teach him man things.

1. Men are Weak, Women are Weaker: Judge Joe Brown describes himself as a “Defender of Womanhood,” and a “Promoter of Manhood.” It’s practically the guy’s motto. And what’s wrong with defending womanhood and promoting manhood, anyway? Isn’t that chivalry, or something? It’s certainly Medieval, right?

The cast of the musical Camelot explains the true meaning of chivalry.

I’m not going to spend too much time with this because it’s pretty self-explanatory and the other entries are solid examples of just how screwed up an idea it is. By making this his mission Judge Joe is basically saying that women require a strong man to protect them from weaker men and also from intrinsic weaknesses of the feminine kind. When Joe talks about promoting manhood what he’s actually promoting is anti-girlishness in men.

2. Thugs are bad because they act like women and homosexuals aren’t strong role models: Judge Joe thinks men have “too many puny ‘role models.’” In April, 2012, at a “Men’s Day program” held in in the Hathaway-Howard Fine Arts Center on the Pine Bluff Campus of the University of Arkansas, he supported his unified puny dude theory by listing numerous examples of unmanly male role models: “prima donna” athletes, “uninformed” journalists, “self-serving” politicians, homosexuals in the entertainment industry,” and… wait, what? Why are homosexuals puny role models? And more importantly, what would “prima donna” athlete and openly gay defensive end Michael Sams have to say about that?

Clearly a ‘gangbanger.” Probably a woman.

But wait, there’s more.

“Gangbangers and would-be thugs are really nothing but girls, not men,” he continued. “Boys with bling don’t have jobs because they think some woman somewhere will be silly enough to support them. It requires moral and physical courage to be a real man, and that’s why you need an education. People need your leadership.”

The shorter Joe: It takes moral and physical courage to not be a girl. Ladies, take note.

3. Pretty women are insecure and easier to deal with than ugly women: “I don’t deal with ugly women,” Judge Joe told some adoring fans one night after he had been drinking.

Beauty is only skin deep but life’s too short for ugly chicks.

A widely-shared video clip shows Brown seating young ladies on his knee and pontificating on the differences between pretty and ugly women. So why does Judge Joe prefer pretty girls? Because,““Pretty women are insecure,” and therefore easier to deal with.

Well duh! Anybody who’s ever tried to exploit somebody’s weakness for personal satisfaction knows that.

4. If you act gay, you’re gay. And it might be contagious: Once upon a time Cracked, the humor magazine turned online list-factory decided to infiltrate the weird world of cheaply-manufactured court TV. The storyline Cracked developed was irresistible: A man asked his friend to hire strippers for his bachelor party. Only the man hired male strippers and now the groom to be isn’t just single, he’s gay. Ridiculous, right? So ridiculous, in fact, that every major Hollywood courtroom wanted them.

Its possible that this list is a Cracked ripoff. Okay, this list is a Cracked ripoff

It’s possible that this list is a “Cracked” ripoff. Okay, this list is a “Cracked” ripoff

Cracked took its case to Judge Joe who, before ruling in favor of the plaintiff, attempted an outing of the defendant: “If you hired these people, obviously you might like what they have to offer…If there was a time for you to come out of the closet, this is the time for you to do it.” It’s unclear what bearing the defendant’s sexual orientation had on the case or the plaintiff’s amazing transformation.

5. Single mothers are to blame for pretty much everything: A 15-year old male student accused of pushing a female classmate told Judge Joe he’d been called a “bitch.” Judge Joe’s response: “Maybe you were acting like one. Sounds like it to me. You’ve got earrings in your ears.”

Then Brown dressed down the boy’s mother: “You know what your problem is lady? Let’s get to you first so I’ll get it out of the way. There is no man in this boy’s life to give him man training. You’re the mother and you condone him going off and doing such physical injury to this young woman woman [cross talk]. Be quiet! [Crosstalk]. Now mam. He does not have a man in his life to give him man training. You take the position in writing that you condone what he did to this young lady… When there is no man in a boy’s life and his mother says his transgressions violently on other females is okay, where do I go from there but to say maybe, maybe what’s going on is because these single mothers with a lot of babies at home don’t want the man around, and then teach their sons to do the same bloody thing. And I’m looking at him with two earrings in his ears, and I’m listening to what she has said he was called, reading what the school report says and I’m thinking to myself that was a pretty apt description of this aggressive young girl over here. Not that one [the actual girl], the young girl standing to your left [the boy.]

Judge Joe, in the spirit of every schoolyard bully ever, called the teen boy a “sissy.” That was just the warm up for an epic rant about manliness and the failings of women. “You punk,” he continued. “You spineless, girl-acting, unmanly little cretin, what’s wrong with you? Then you’re gonna try to demonstrate some kind of attitude toward me? Roll your eyes? C’mon. Play girl. I’m getting a good demonstration. And you give me this nasty unmanly attitude about some young lady provoked you, using some language against you… Man’s got an obligation to protect womanhood. That has been my lifetime avocation. Protecting womanhood and promoting manhood.”

Hitting and pushing is troubling behavior. Seeding gender insecurity is clearly the solution!

6. If you don’t stand up straight you might be on the down low: After accusing a male defendant, whose activities had nothing to do with sex or sexuality of being potentially gay on the down low Judge Joe decided to stir the pot until it boiled. “What I used to see was, when there was a man standing at the podium, what he was doing was behaving in a certain way,” he said. “And I saw the young ladies and they would act in a certain way. And what’s interesting is over the last twelve years I’ve been doing this particular arbitration thing I’m doing right now, and considering [crosstalk]… Be quiet! The 20 years I have done this before I have noticed an interesting transition. The boys are beginning to act like the girls used to in terms of their body language, rolling eyes, head up, hand on hip, moving around. Women, since time immemorial have talked over someone who’s tried to address them and you are talking over me just like you are a woman. So when you start acting like one, sounding like one, moving like one, then I’m going to put it out there.”

Happens all the time.

After provoking the defendant in ways unbecoming in an actual courtroom and making presumptive comments about the defendant’s mother, Judge Joe called the LAPD to arrest the defendant for mirroring his own bad, womanly behavior.