a) The metro is not a hardcore venue. Cliff only knows why its considered a venue (except it's eerily like playing in an ACDC video...and I don't mean that to sound like a bad thing either). So I mean, it's not as if you shouldn't expect things like that occasionally. Goo is just another forum for the dissemination of artifacts of mass culture. So why is everyone so fucking shocked when they're confronted with something that - like it or not - is perfectly acceptable within society at large.
N.B - Just because it's something that's condoned by mainstream society, doesn't mean I'm saying that it's a good thing.
Oh, and by the way, they weren't fucking 'stripper's...which ties me in nicely to the next point...
b) Who the fuck are you to throw your opinion in on what these girls maybe considered a legitimate form of expression? Wake up, here's a thought: maybe they actually like putting on the show? Maybe they organised the whole thing themselves, from choreography, costumes and scoring, to promotion of their act and booking the show? Or maybe they have someone that does that for them, someone they HIRED for that explicit purpose? Maybe, just MAYBE, they even ENJOYED it?
See the big problem I have with the standard arguement that 'pornography is the objectification - and therefore oppression - of women' is that it effectively fails to view the very people it's supposed to be in support of as human. It denies a woman's free will to make choices about what she will and will not do with her body, in front of a camera or otherwise.
Before I go any further I'll just acknowledge the fact that, yes, this is a dangerous are for me to be sitting here commenting on like this. Because I have absolutely no first hand experience of the experience of (for the most part young) women in this contemporary first-world patriachy in which we live. That's unless you count being very close to a couple of really (to quote my english friends) 'switched on' young women as 'experience'. Girls who, as long as I have known them, have done their best to recognise and very actively subvert all the attempts of 'the man' to 'oppress' them. That's the simplest way I could put it, sorry if it sounds dumb. But I'm talking of course, about Ally Wilson and Rach Mackenzie. Funnily enough, both Rae and Al really dig porno too...
Ally's even posed naked for a few photographs before. (They're about three days walk through artistic expression county to taht fine line between 'ar't and 'porn'. I've seen them, trust me, 'good taste' isn't just a lame justification here). Did she do that because she was 'oppressed by scoiety' or something? Come on, those of you that know her would realise that polar bears would be ice skating in hell before Ally Marree bowed down to the man. She just considered it a legitimate form of artisitic expression, as did Emmallee, the girl that asked her to pose, took the photo and then displayed it in a DIY exhibition of her work that she put on. I know it's a cliche, but they're nothing but art. Making an already incredibly beautiful girl seem even more so.
Who is really oppressed by porn? The girl making a shitload of money by faking an orgasm? The dickhead with bad moustache who's acting like and absolute yutz and somehow thinks he's getting her off (who doesn't laugh at all that 'yeah you love it baby' shit...umm, no, she doesn't really, genius. She's ACTING). Or even the poor bastards who buy it and think it's some sort of substitute for the real thing?
I personally don't really dig porn. Not through any moral objection, it just doesn't do anything for me. Why bother when you could be doing the real thing? But I do know heaps of people of both sexes who do enjoy it on one level or another. They don't see it as 'oppression'. Some even genuinely get off on it. I know a couple of people who're even considering going in to business for themselves, manufacturing genuine lesbian 'erotica' (makes it sound classier than 'where the boys aren't 6'), aimed at women, instead of guys, just because they enjoy it themselves and consider there to be nothing really worthwhile around for homosexual women in terms of pornographic entertainment. The point is, I know smart, cool, open minded people who like porn.
Now, apply this 'oppression' arguement detailed above to the situation at Goo. Who's really being exploited there? Those girls who seemed to be enjoying themselves? (Yes, I was watching. It's one of my favourite things to do, watch the people dancing downstairs while I'm listening to completely different music than what they're shaking their booty too. Come on, it's funny...) Or the dickheads in the crowd who were like watching this show and thinking that just because those girls were up there dancing, they would want to fuck Mr J. Dickhead down their on the floor stearing at her chest?
No one I spoke to upstairs was reffering to the dancers as 'that' or 'them'. They were aware that we were dealing with people as opposed to ye olde fuckable slab o' meat.
Maybe Johnny 'Macca' Dickhead and his mates downstairs did think that. But who the fuck are they 'exploiting' or 'oppressing' but themselves? I mean what is a person like that ever going to get in terms of satisfaction? Oh sure, they'll get sex occasionally. But they're never going to know the incredible feelings you get from being in love with someone just for who they are, rather than being with them out of a combination of habit and the ease of a steady fuck. The penultimate experience of their whole emotionally devoid sex lives will be three minutes in a panel van out the back of the local post grand final piss up.
Take that into acount, and you can't help but pity Macca and his mates. I mean, so long as they don't actually treat a woman the way they percieve her. And that does happen and it's fucking LAME.But for the most part, the smarter gender doesn't let these sort of guys get that close.
Now there are valid arguements against ideas that are implict within some forms of pornography: violence against women, rape, etc. I'm not denying that there is material out there that doesn't promote - either subtly or overtly - those attitudes. Ever seen a girl with needle tracks down her arms sucking some fat ugly guys dick while she's got the shakes for the smack that this on camera blowjob is paying for? I have. I almost cried afterwards.
That's why I support the Eros foundation's campaign for the extablishment of the NVE (non violent erotica) classification. Because we need something that promotes the genuine forms of pornographic entertainment that stimulate both the brain and the rude bits, and seperates it from the harmful stuff (ie kiddie porn, simulated rape movies), and the crap.
Even then, some people get off on forms of violence. By this I mean stuff like bondage and sado-masochism. That's cool if everyone's being safe and happy. (see Ally's straight edge and sexuality for the idea of equal levels of consent. She defines it better than I can). But anyway, like, well made pornography is nothing really more than people fucking in whatever combinations for other people's entertainment, without exploitation of either sex. (There is such a thing as gay porn, and apparently it's much worse for exploitation). And like, is there anything really wrong with that?
So long as I'm not being confronted with it, then hey, go for you life. So long as people aren't being forced to view it in a public arena. Like, I'm all for kids being into porn if that's their thing, just don't make me sit down and watch it because I personally don't really dig it.
But what we were confronted with at shutdown was not pornography.
What would have been the reaction if it was guys up on stage? (now, I know that's a standard arguement used by 'the man' to justify sexist billboards and whatnot, but just because it's been co-opted and perverted, doesn't mean it's not a valid point). Or guys and girls?
The thing is, like, it sucks that you were confronted with it. But hey, that's the metro. There's probably a thousand and one other more overt and nasty manifestations of patriachal oppression going on on the dance floor. Everything from aspersions being cast on people's sexual morals (or supposed lack thereof) because of what they were wearing ('look at that top, what a slut!'), to unwanted groping or plying someone with alcohol to make them 'easier'.
I might as well make it clear that this piece isn't justification for my own ogling. It might have been if the dancers had cool hair cuts/colours and tatas and were like wearing skate shorts and coalesce tshirts or something. Because, in terms of sexual attraction - I'm not going to deny that exists because it does and there's nothing wrong with it - blondes in bikinis just do absolutely nothing for me. Perhaps unsurprisingly I find hardcore kids way more attractive.
There is nothing wrong with sex. Sex is great. If you haven't tried it and you're interested, then I recommend it, because it's hella fun. It's certainly nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, repression of sexuality - something that goes on heaps within hardcore - is in fact a form of oppression. Within contemporary capitalist societies, sex is something that is frowned upon and not spoken about in polite company on one hand, and used to sell us cars and reality television on the other.
It's an expression of patriachy that a girl can't enjoy sex without being called a slut.
Sex is something that we as human beings should be able to enjoy on an egalitarian basis. Which is why, I'm not opposed to the idea of consensual pornographic acts. So long - as I said above - that people like myself who don't really dig it aren't having it shoved in our faces.
So it is lame that it happened, yes. But when is the metro going to respect a bunch of hardcore kids' beliefs? (a case could be made for 'why should they anyway' as well) You were not forced to watch it. You could have just concentrated on countingall the new tatts on the guys from VOD. Some people enjoyed it on whatever level. Others like our mate macca, mentioned above, seriously got off on it. That's lame. But anyone with a shread of humanity as well as intelligence can't really do anything but pity them.
And what the fuck are you getting so worked up about, really? Because, by calling them 'oppressed' and 'exploited' you're making this big assumption that those girls down there on the mainstage don't possess their own free wil. You imply that they're just meekly submitting to patriachal conventions like they don't have a choice. Isn't that the worst of hypocrisy in itself? If you view - like I do - every human being, as first and foremost a person regardless of gender, sexuality, lifestyle choices (see only dopes use dope, or something like that anyway), then why don't you give them the credit to be able to make decisions themselves about what they do and do not do with regard to their bodies, their sexuality, and the way they express there own artisitc leanings, personality, as well as said sexuality?
You are not smarter than them. You are not entitled to dictate the limits of their behaviour. If you respect them as a person, then give them the opportunity to set their own moral standards and limitations. You may not agree, but what is this oppression we all fight about? What can it be easily defined as for someone who doesn't know what it means? How about this: "enforcing a set of moral and social guidelines upon other people without their consent".
Now, what was the definition of 'hypocrite' again?