Feminist Futures Lecture Series: Winter 2017
Hurts So Good: “Rapey” Music as Fetish
By Ummni Khan
January 17, 2017 1:00-2:30p.m., Room 2017 Dunton Tower
Abstract:
The concept of “rapey music” has recently emerged as a social problem in feminist and mainstream contexts. Rapey music references songs that critics perceive as artefacts of “rape culture” because they allegedly perpetuate sexual violence, misogyny and rape myths. This article draws on the concept of “fetishism” to analyze accusations that certain songs are rapey, and argues that such songs can be recuperated through a kink lens. In the first part, I review the burgeoning category of songs that have been condemned in feminist media analyses, and the weak evidence that connects certain songs to sexual coercion, arguing that the terms “rapey” and “rape culture” operate as negative fetish concepts. I then analyze the disproportionate and more vehement targeting of Black performers, contending that a racialized fetishization underlies this phenomenon. In the last part, I defend music branded as “rape culture” by suggesting that its pleasurable dynamic can be understood through a non-normative kinky fetish framework.
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Tracing the History of Trans and Gender Variant Filmmakers
Speaker: Laura Horak
February 14, 2017 1:00-2:30p.m., Room 2017 Dunton Tower
Abstract:
Most surveys of transgender cinema focus on representations of trans people, rather than works made by trans people. This talk will survey the history of trans and gender variant people creating audiovisual media, from the beginning of cinema through today. From the professional gender impersonators of the stage who crossed into film during the medium’s first decades, to self-identified transvestite and transsexual filmmakers like Ed Wood and Christine Jorgensen of the mid-twentieth century, to the enormous upsurge in trans filmmaking that began in the 1990s, the talk will explore the rich and complex history of trans and gender variant filmmaking. It also explores the untraceable gender variant filmmakers who worked in film and television without their gender history becoming known and those who made home movies that have been lost to history.