Feminism, Rape Culture and...HBO Executives

To begin, I am 37 years old. I am now officially "old". I'm also a supporter of our country's first amendment and an artist and morally supportive of the arts on a general scale. After the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and Miley Cyrus' "twerking" tour de force performance, I found myself extraordinarily grumpy. NOT with Miley; not with the sexualization of today's teens and the debate that that performance sparked; but with people in my age range whose comments I saw flying with wild, RAGING abandon all over Facebook about the completely shitty example that this young artist was setting for today's teens and tweens (and...younger!) Ok, well, I got it. I got where that viewpoint came from and especially from parents. But yes, the tried and true and simple statement of "well, if you don't want your kids to watch it, change the fucking channel" seemed to me to be the only respectable answer. To debate whether or not that performance was "art" is a completely subjective argument and you can get almost nowhere with it. The whole verbal masturbation of rage that I saw from these parents seemed to me to be an excuse to slut-shame and I'm not with that. In MY opinion, it was art. Also in MY opinion, it was stupid and lame and completely not my taste. WHICH DOES NOT DISQUALIFY IT FROM BEING CONSIDERED ART. And for people to find it offensive; well that CERTAINLY doesn't disqualify it from being considered art.

When I was a teenager, (yeah, I just wrote that; fucking kill me), we had Riot Grrrls, we had Courtney Love baring her breasts on stage while screaming over her guitar, we had Kim Gordon (that eternal goddess) telling men that they'd better not fucking objectify her in "Swimsuit Issue".  And of course, there were parents who found all of these performances/songs/viewpoints offensive and of course, it was part of our culture of change.

Culture constantly evolves. And the sexualization of women; how we view sex in general is the ever-present hot button. You can try but you can't stop it.

I support all of these women. When I saw photographs of Rihanna at the 2014 CFDA Awards in a completely translucent, shimmery dress with nothing but a g-string on underneath, I thought it was fabulous. Bodies are beautiful and women should not be ashamed of them and our nipples should no longer be taboo in this hypocritical society, in which men can walk around topless virtually anywhere.

I LOVE, absolutely LOVE every delicious scene on HBO's 'Girls' in which Lena Dunham struts around in nothing but her own glorious, god-given, clothless body. There's no shame to it and I find that beautiful. If I HAD a teenage daughter, I swear I would force her to watch those scenes with me. I want ALL girls to have that kind of pride in their own bodies.

There are different interpretations of what feminism is/was and will be. Not every example in past and present pop-culture that I list above is MY kind of feminism, certainly, but it is part of the evolution of feminism as a whole.

But I'm struggling. I struggle when I read things like this from performer and "singer" Lana Del Rey: “Whenever people bring up feminism, I'm like, god. I'm just not really that interested. I'm more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities.”

Way to individuate yourself, Lana. She's not just a pretty face! She's also an idiot who would love for you to believe otherwise by name-dropping Serbian physicists and the technical advancements of space rockets. Go to the back of the car and shut up, Lana.

If you have a vagina, you're INVOLVED sweetheart, whether you want to be or not.

You can not be "bored" by feminism. ESPECIALLY not now. It is required reading, folks. The term "rape-culture" is now in existence in our lexicon and that is fucked up, in and of itself.
Colleges across this country have taken a sort of Lana-Del-Rey-like ambivalence in their guidelines for dealing with sexual assault on campus. There is now a White House task force that has been formed to deal with this problem. However effective or ineffective that may end up being, the point is that there is a GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED TASK FORCE in regards to sexual assault on college campuses! Wake up and smell the pepper spray: There is NO excuse not to care about this issue.

I'm not scared of nipples, transparent dresses or nymphets dancing provocatively on my teevee screen. I'm scared of sexual assault becoming a more acceptable form of MALE sexual expression. I'm frightened as HELL of it being interpreted as "sexual" or "expression", period.

This leads me back to HBO. 'Game of Thrones'; a show that I LOVE, a show with masterful production and some masterful acting, has become my white whale as of late.
I've never been a prude about the show's obvious, in-your-face nudity and sexuality. I found it completely gratuitous but did I care? Not really. Not until the April 20th, 2014 episode. I'm not even thinking about the episode's most talked about scene of Jaime Lannister's rape of his sister Cersei. I could possibly justify that scene as a writer, given the conflicting, complex dynamics of their relationship; Jaime's feelings of impotence since losing his arm...yada yada yada. I'm not Carl Jung or Freud and if that scene DID offend you as a woman, I completely understand.
What drove me over the edge into complete and total RAGE; (we're talking jumping up on the couch on my feet, tears in my eyes, screaming at the top of my lungs/neighbors be DAMNED rage) was the rape-ORGY at Craster's Keep (or Rape Village, as I like to call it). There was nothing particularly serviceable to the plot about this scene; we already knew that these men were monsters. Instead, it was a thinly veiled excuse to indulge the audience in sexual violence-porn. It was one of the worst things I've ever seen on television. And I thought I was alone in my rage over this particular scene, seeing as the majority of the water cooler talk the next day centered around the Jaime/Cersei rape.
There was NOTHING about this that I could logically or artistically justify.
But a recent Jezebel piece made me feel a bit less alone: http://jezebel.com/game-of-thrones-sex-and-hbo-where-did-tvs-sexual-pion-1586508636
Sexual violence is not an imaginary ploy for attention, but sexual violence-porn on television CLEARLY is. I've had enough.
I've never wanted so badly to see male television execs go the way of Varys in my life (google it). And I watch a LOT of television.

We have enough of this in our culture. We have teens and college students alike videotaping and posting rapes and gang rapes online and boasting of their crimes. Why must we supply them with yet more masturbation material for violence against women?

I feel sick. But I'd rather feel sick than ambivalent. It's time for women to stop feeling ashamed to be termed feminists and instead embrace it as armour. Get off the bench: We're tougher than we look and we're tougher than you think we might seem. And if you feel embarrassed about that, then you're on the wrong fucking team.