Compromises, the Public Eye, & Political Expectations: why Beyoncé's not a terrorist and bell hooks isn't either

Last Friday I found out that bell hooks claimed that Beyoncé is a "terrorist". And my internet exploded. What follows is my collected thoughts on the matter. Before you proceed please read about/watch the panel discussion where the "terrorist" claim occurred.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am a white person writing about interactions between and about women of color. I recognize that I could be reading all this shit terribly and utterly wrong and that there are most certainly racial elements involved that I've undeveloped/nonexistent understanding of. My experiences as a white person have ill prepared me to discuss this. Please read Janet Mock, Beyoncé, and bell hooks work. And listen to/read Beyoncé's words. They are the authorities on their own experiences.

I'm troubled by hook's word choice but I optimistically see hook's “terrorist” comment as being not so much specifically about Beyoncé as it is leading to a conversation about "selling out" to make money/fame in the entertainment industry. And that the music/entertainment industry make this sort of selling the price of admission for any marginalized identity who wants to promote themselves or their work.

Women (and w.o.c esp) artists will have their expression of sexuality and bodily celebration twisted into objectification and fetishization by misogynist managers/producers/publishers/viewers. I personally think it is unreasonable to expect that all marginalized creators of art should refuse to release their work/images to people who are perpetuating the patriarchy. We'd have far fewer women and p.o.c. celebrities.

That would mean we as consumers of their content expect our idols to exhibit the politics we've come to associate with them at all times. Which is an odd impractical form for political idolization. And it is as unreasonable as any expectation viewers might have of a celebrity.

As someone who seeks to be radical as much as I can, I definitely take compromises the kyriarchy hands me. Because sometimes I am tired or I just really really want what that compromise will get me. This doesn't make me a terrorist. But it does mean I'm colluding with, support, validating the kyriarchy. Which is the point I assume hooks was trying to make about Beyonce's Time cover.

I don't think hooks intended to make a villain out of Beyoncé. But having pure or radical intent doesn't absolve anyone (hooks or Bey) of the effects of their work and presentation. Hook's words were still hurtful, regardless of her intent. And no matter how loudly Beyonce sings about how shitty the patriarchy is, I know that she wants fame and money too. And sometimes the money and fame she gets to do what the patriarchy wants wins out.

One of the things I am thankful for in the exchange between Mock and hooks is that Beyoncé's agency was discussed. I've been in far too many "feminist" conversations that involved implying or outright saying that women who do porn, sex work, or the work in the entertainment industry are "brainwashed" or have no idea what they are doing.

It's because both hooks and Mock avoid diminishing Beyoncé's agency in this way that believe that hooks is not really aiming at Beyoncé with her remark. It's not a great upgrade, but I prefer “terrorist” to “brainwashed” any day.

I could be reading it wrong, but really isn't hooks just using a celebrity as a controversial entry point to get people thinking and talking about more complex, pervasive issues? Now of course there's more radical and necessary work to do than to make a critical example of Beyoncé for not exhibiting feminist and anti-racist politics all of the time.

It isn't helping anyone's deconstruction of power structures and their insidiousness to call Beyoncé a terrorist. I assume that hook's use of the word “terrorist” was a misstep at best and at worst a provocative placeholder; a way to stop the conversation completely and force a the focus onto larger systematic forces at play. Now using a black woman and celebrity in this oversimplifying way is something I believe to not be in line with hook's politics. But I also don't expect hooks to always perfectly exhibit her politics.

Sometimes Beyoncé delivers messages about how beauty culture is damaging through gyrating madly or falsely claiming that it's girls who run the world. And sometimes bell hooks calls another progressive black woman in the public eye a “terrorist”. Everyone takes compromises and unfortunate shortcuts when it comes to expressing ourselves and our politics.

The conversation about the problematic elements of accepting sexualizing and patriarchal compromises to get your career going and to maintain successful in the entertainment industry is an important one. It's a choice many have to face and that no woman with a public career ever makes easily. And just because bell hooks chose not use her body or sexuality in the promotion of her work, doesn't mean that that choice is available or desirable to every woman who works in the public eye.

What hooks is missing in her “terrorist” claim is the recognition that her own gaining of fame and recognition as a black woman who didn't do those things is unfortunately incredibly rare and for many impossible because of the industry they work in.

Those who're able to criticize the system (in this case the music industry) from outside of it should not name call the people who are trying work within it to effect progressive changes. Selling out isn't a binary. I'm not saying that change from the inside system is the right way or even the best way to change things, or even that such efforts should be above critique. I think the effectiveness and inherent problems of such approaches should absolutely be discussed. But the name calling is unnecessary. There is other more radical work to be done. And more respectful (less sensational) ways to broach these issues.

So yes, bell, Beyoncé is in the masters house (the music industry) and has been definitely been handed some of the master's tools, but I've always been of the opinion that tools are can be repurposed. And Beyonce is definitely doing work to transform the expectations of the music industry with repurposed tools.

The necessary unpacking of slut shaming

During the recent and highly contentious exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor I had the opportunity to have lots of interesting and valuable discussions surrounding appropriation, objectification, and sexual expression. Through these discussions I was able to codify my political stance when it comes to slut shaming.

By far the most simple & frequent critique of Sinead's letter was that she was engaging in slut shaming. I understand where the need for this critique comes. It is important but I chose not to write about the slut shaming aspects of the letter in my post and instead made notes about my resistance to use the term.

Slowly I came to realize that my resistance came from a feeling of incompleteness and that it wasn't just this instance of internet people shouting "slut shaming!" that felt incomplete.

I shy away from the using the term "slut shaming" not because I don't recognize and want others to see the sexist behavior it identifies but because I believe the term itself can and has in some instances become a catch-all for very general array of the sex-related oppression women face. In radical contexts catch-alls can easily become problematic excuses to stop defining and going into the complex detail for that oppression. A catch-all runs the risk of overgeneralizing things that are complex and need complex definitions.

In the example I cite in a previous post a friend was asked by "concerned" parents to cover up her "dangerous" breasts so the group of young girls she was traveling with would be "safe" from lusty European men.

We agree that this behavior is both ridiculous and disgusting. We discussed this a potential slut shaming.

Slut shaming as defined by wikipedia is: "the act of making any person feel guilty or inferior for certain sexual behaviors or desires that deviate from traditional or orthodox gender expectations."

Based on her account and this definition I don't think it was. Or at least not just that. To me it was straight up sexual harassment and body policing at the hands of trusted authority figures. In fact they way she was dressing had little-nothing to do with her expressing her sexuality. It was the parents that assumed her clothing choices were "sexual", so how could it have been slut shaming?

When slut shaming is identified those doing the identifying run the risk of making the mistaken assumption that the subject of the bullying/harassment/shaming is indeed expressing their sexuality. Regardless of what they are wearing we can't know for certain that someone is expressing their sexuality unless they tell us explicitly.

The language of slut shaming is especially problematic in light of recent efforts of some groups to reclaim the word "slut" as an identity.

When "slut" becomes an identity (as some are struggling for it to become through its reclamation) it separates women into categories of sluts/nonsluts. This distinction divides feminists communities and does nothing beyond support individual declarations of identities (which should not be the primary/only function of feminism). 

Instead of dividing women based on sexual identities let's acknowledge that we are all humans and we all experience desire. Do we really need a label that denotes that some of us are willing to express the sexual ones?

When slut becomes an identity the harassment/shaming that is related to the expression of sexuality become about identity. The body/behavior policing, the sexual harassment and the gross slew of things referred to as slut shaming isn't about the identities of those targeted (beyond the fact that they are women). It's about their behaviors and expressions.

Slut shaming is not about "you are wrong" but are about "you are doing it wrong". And by "it" I mean womanhood. Slut shaming is about tacitly enforcing the misogynist rules of womanhood. If we want to be radical (get at the root of things) we need to dig in and figure out what specifically is being denied and why. We can't just be satisfied by just calling oppressive behavior "slut shaming" because it's not just about the (slut/nonslut) identity of the person being shamed, it's also about how that shaming fits into the broader context of oppression.

It's not enough to see the objectifying oppression of a woman and call it "slut shaming". It's a great first step, but it is just a start. In order to combat the complex nature of sexist oppression
we need to continue making space in our politics for corresponding complexity.

An Open Letter to anyone confused or enraged by the exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor

I usually don't write much about pop culture, but the confusion and divisiveness surrounding the recent exchange between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor has been so intense both in what I have read and within myself that I had to write something about it.

First, I don't think it allows for much room for complexity when those of us watching and commenting on the exchange between these two women to call it a "feud". It only serves to generate further animosity to encourage divisiveness between two people. There is a conflict here but calling it a feud and taking up sides does nothing to encourage resolution.

Because I do not wish to add any fuel to the perception of their exchange as a feud I need to state immediately that I wish to take the side of neither party. Or rather I want to take both their sides because this is not a case of one musician against another. It is a case of all creators and women against the oppressive force of patriarchy and the vicious capitalist exploits of the music industry.

I have not seen and have no desire to see the Wrecking Ball video. I generally avoid Cyrus's work if I can. I find her oeuvre boring and vulgar. I don't find her work vulgar because of the sex/nudity. The amount of sexuality isn't vulgar, the way she replicates the patriarchy and appropriates black/hood culture when doing so is what disgusts me.

When she performed at the VMAs I made a few disapproving tweets and left it at that. I helped that many amazing feminist and anti-racist writers immediately identified the offensively problematic elements of that performance (literal objectification of WOC and unabashed appropriation of black culture to name a VERY few). I even thought it a strange sort of fortune that the problematic elements of that performance where were so obviously racist that even those with little exposure to anti-oppression could notice (kind of like how Seth McFarlane's Oscar hosting was SO sexist that people DID notice and were disgusted).

This week however, with Sinead's open letter and Miley's response there is less obvious stuff going on. It's unfortunately extremely public and very contentious. This is a hard knot of colliding and intersecting oppressions.

If you have not done so please read Sinead's letter to Miley now because I'm going to respond to specific components.


Before I get to the critiquing part I want to commend Sinead for trying to warn Miley about the predatory and exploitative nature of the music industry (and let's be honest the world at large). I am open to the reality that this realization might come as a "duh" to Miley (whose been around the industry her whole life), but it IS one that anyone working within that industry would benefit from remembering and strategizing against.

So yeah. I'm all for Sinead's call for Miley to be vigilant about the ways in which the music industry is trying to exploit her (we should ALL be more vigilant about the ways in which patriarchal capitalist systems are looking to exploit us), but that is where my support stops. And where Sinead begins doing some pretty subtle and serious concern trolling. I recognize the bravery and concern it takes to attempt and intervention but it needs to be done respectfully and in several ways this Sinead's open letter just wasn't.

My biggest beefs can be boiled down to two basic complaints:

1.) The use of "prostitution" as a linguistic scare tactic. It completely throws sex workers under the bus to use their profession as a means of degrading comparison. I'm harkened back to the maddening distinction Tyra banks so loved to tout when it came to shaming any contestant of ANTM who'd had any history at all of stripping/exotic dancing. Using the language of prostitution in this derogatory fashion creates a hierarchy of women who are either worthy of human decency or who aren't and clearly those who "sell themselves" as Sinead puts it are less worthy of human treatment, which means... protection apparently which bring me to my second point

2.) "You ought be protected as a precious young lady".

In this we find the most glaring example of concern trolling and victim blaming. All of my fears that were stirred up by Sinead's use of the word "prostitution" were suddenly confirmed. For Sinead "lady"=someone worth saving/protection=someone not a prostitute. In conversation about the letter yesterday a friend was brave enough to share with me that Sinead's letter had reminded her of a time when on a trip through europe with friends she had been asked by their parents to cover up her breasts more carefully because they might attract dangerous attention from men.

The problem in Sinead's call for protection & my friend's story are the same: that women are somehow inciting the violence and oppression that exists in the world. And that if they just behaved as proper ladies (and covered up) they would be "protected".

This idea is sexist and exclusionary. The idea that she should be "protected" is bunk. It denies her agency and does nothing to challenge the reality that the world is dangerous in ways beyond the control or any one person (protector or protected). Protection and preventative measures only go so far and are only available to those who can afford them (whether the cost be in $ or in compliance to "ladyship"). When we live in a culture that perpetuates it all the time there is no way sure way to protect against being harmed by the violence of predatory and patriarchal exploitation.

I have more one smallish cut of beef about all of this. Why did this letter need to be open and public? In some sense Sinead's making public her disapproval for Miley's work creates a perfect beacon of faux-rightouesness for everyone who thinks that sex and sexual express is something women need to be protected from.

I find Miley's responses to Sinead deeply disrespectful and abusive in ways that are pretty fucking obvious. Just because I have some beefs with Sinead's letter and approach doesn't mean I think she need to be bullied by Cyrus and her supporters.

I know scarce little about Sinead's mental/emotional health and relationship to the music industry. I chose not to focus on those things in this piece. Many are defending Sinead's misstep on the bases of the trauma the music industry inflicted on her. And yes. Trauma is valid. Totally and completely. But victims and survivors of trauma don't get a special pass to shame/boss/save others who have had or are having similar experiences.

I understand that seeing people make choices that might hurt them in the long run is painful. And yes, speaking up in those instances can be life saving, but interventions like this can and must be done with complete respect for the agency of the people we are trying to reach. We can't think we can save them, or that we can know their experience better than they do.

The dismantling of the patriarchy will not be accomplished by ignoring the agency of others, using sex work as a specter of shame and/or calling for protection for some women. Real prevention and harm reduction starts when we require everyone to confront and take responsibility for the violence and oppression they either directly participate in or are complicity endorsing in themselves and their communities by not speaking up. None of us are exclusively victims or perpetrators. We are all uniquely harmed by and responsible for the oppressions that exist in this world.

Sinead fails to communicate this in her letter. Her derogatory use of "prostitution", her calling for Miley's protection, highlight the uncomfortable cultural tension between the confining roles that patriarchy allows women to inhabit: the whore or the (protected) virgin/lady.

Due to Sinead's unfortunate missteps her open letter ends up echoing the privileged anti-sex work activists blindly shouting "save yourself" at sex workers. It's well meant but deeply condescending, and full of impractical solutions to the symptoms of our larger condition of patriarchal and capitalist oppression.



Postscript and preview of future post: 

I've heard the cries of "slut shaming" about Sinead's letter and intend to address "slut shaming" in an upcoming post. Please stay tuned.