{"id":15222,"date":"2012-03-26T04:48:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T11:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15222"},"modified":"2012-03-26T05:00:56","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T12:00:56","slug":"a-likely-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15222","title":{"rendered":"A Likely Feminist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t think Tulisa Contostavlos is a household name in New Zealand (or the US). \u00a0Certainly the only reason that I&#8217;d heard of her is because I spent last winter developing a my knowledge of British comedians, discovered the awesomeness that is Simon Amstell and watched a lot of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. \u00a0For those who don&#8217;t know she was part of a British group called N-Dubz, she judged British X-factor, and she&#8217;s about to release a solo album.<\/p>\n<p>And it turns out that she&#8217;s awesome. Recently, a scum-bag ex-boyfriend of hers released a sex-tape. \u00a0Horrifically, this is an occupational hazard for women like Tulisa. \u00a0And if they have a scumbag ex-boyfriend prepared to release a sex-tape, young female celebrities are trapped in a web of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, judgement.\u00a0 Women in her position have had their careers threatened, and been forced to offer ridiculous &#8216;apologies&#8217; to keep their job. \u00a0It is very difficult for the young women caught in this web of judgement to respond to it without reinforcing some of the ideas they&#8217;re being attacked with.<\/p>\n<p>Tulisa didn&#8217;t respond with a press statement forced by her management or employers, but with another video &#8211; where she is straight up, direct and refuses to be shamed by toxic ideas about women&#8217;s sexuality:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qVaW3rfCwq8?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lybio.net\/tulisa-talks\/people\/\">Transcript<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just go watch the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>***********<\/p>\n<p>My appreciation for this awesome video was slightly marred because I learned about it in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/lifeandstyle\/2012\/mar\/24\/tulisa-contostavlos-feminisms-new-hero\">this article<\/a> from the guardian website. \u00a0Because the author is not content in celebrating Tulisa&#8217;s response. \u00a0She also emphasises how &#8216;unlikely&#8217; it is that Tulisa would provide a feminist response.<\/p>\n<p>Tulisa \u00a0has talked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.digitalspy.co.uk\/showbiz\/news\/a210578\/n-dubzs-tulisa-i-attempted-suicide.html\">explicitly<\/a>; about being in an abusive relationship as a teenager and the effect that had on her well-being. \u00a0I&#8217;m just looking at interviews linked on wikipedia and she is very explicit about misogyny and the effect that it has had on her life. \u00a0And yet the article doesn&#8217;t even feel the need to explain or justify why she thinks Tulisa is an &#8216;unlikely&#8217; feminist.<\/p>\n<p>Because when a\u00a0commissioning editor at the Observer describes Tulisa as an &#8216;unlikely&#8217; feminist &#8211; the subtext is pretty close to being text. It would be uncouth to be explicit about the class-differences which underly the author&#8217;s supposed surprise. \u00a0After all this is Britain and you can hear Tulisa&#8217;s voice &#8211; and on the guardian website no more explanation than that is needed.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s really important to make the subterranean explicit. \u00a0That&#8217;s the only way to recognise these off hand lines \u00a0as an effort to claim feminism as the exclusive property of middle-class women. This is both an assumption of what feminism is, an expression of what the author wants it to be, and act of maintaining those borders; for the author feminism is a movement that only recognises middle-class women&#8217;s expression of their experiences, and allows people to be shocked when working-class women express themselves at all.<\/p>\n<p>The best response of course, is to watch Tulisa&#8217;s video again and say that there&#8217;s nothing unlikely or\u00a0surprising\u00a0about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t think Tulisa Contostavlos is a household name in New Zealand (or the US). \u00a0Certainly the only reason that I&#8217;d heard of her is because I spent last winter developing a my knowledge of British comedians, discovered the awesomeness &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15222\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15222"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15227,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15222\/revisions\/15227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}