rgr-pop:

I want to include Kanye in my discussions of #feminist narcissism. Partially because I’m interested in queering Kanye conversations (which, I should note, is more than speculating about his gayness). It’s more, though, about how his narcissism is the most #radical narcissism in America. It’s about how inasmuch as women’s narcissism is pathologized, black men’s narcissism is even more vilified. And man, if Kanye hasn’t been vilified for a whole lot of self-obsession, a whole lot of vanity, a whole lot of oversharing that is so much an integral part of contemporary feminist politics. He is part of a narrative that is important to me.

Duh.

okay. yes. totally. and i want to talk about something that i think is (really really) related and if it’s not you can #feminist narcissism it. so: i would like to think about the way in which some white men indulge in an imaginary identification with (perhaps we just call it “appreciation of,” but) kanye or other narcissistic black rap stars as a way of maintaining a whole host of privileges—ie. unradical white male narcissism which includes spectacularizing themselves; emoting, emoting, emoting; and rampant capitalism—all while construing themselves as progressive, and even feminist. in case i am speaking in code: i mean that there are lots of privileged white men who identify with kanye, and embrace his narcissism, because it gives them license to indulge in ideologies and behaviors that progressive, feminist men are supposed to have given up in 1969. in fact, appreciating kanye can make them appear even more radical than if they liked indie rock. 

(Source: thekidsnotmyson)

on boredom with men’s privileged suffering

“this is not to deny the misogyny of flaubert’s text or the way in which flaubert fetishized his own sense of loss (through an imaginary identification with femininity) while simultaneously sharing his own period’s hostility toward women. nevertheless, if melancholy and boredom are both defined by a certain self-consciousness, in melancholy, self-consciousness is painful precisely because the perception of otherness comes at the cost of exclusivity. in boredom, by contrast, self-consiousness is more “vague” and “superficial”…more apt to bring into representation women’s experiences of everyday life. whereas melancholia is about loss and converting male loss into representational gains, boredom, at least in the twentieth century, is about excess, sensory stimulation, and shock (generated as much by the existence of others as by the media and overproduction). what is ever present in melancholia and seems palpably missing from boredom is thus an overriding sense of nostalgia for an exclusive fantasy of privileged suffering that separates self from others. in boredom, there is no sense of privilege or nobility. indeed, in the twentieth century boredom becomes both a ‘democratic affliction’ and a great leveler, bound up with changing definitions of work and leisure, art and mass culture, aesthetics and sexual difference.

boredom, in other words, is at once an empty and an overflowing conceptual category—empty because it has no ultimate, transcendent meaning; overflowing and excessive because even when it appears fixed it still contains within it definitions that are denied or suppressed.”

—patrice petro in “historical ennui, feminist boredom,” aftershocks of the new: feminism and film history     

sl33pcr33p:

Texts I enjoy getting

this is my nightmare. i’m like, dude, i don’t want to have to give you even more attention and then have to congratulate you for having and expressing feelings while you try to distract me from having mine. 

(Source: persephonette)

(ethbarrett)

vito acconci (with kathy dillon), conversions III, 1971

“…i am not sure that such a male body—one that involves vulnerability and is subject to penetratory gazes—exists or can even be performed. isn’t it possible, i wonder, that ‘opening himself to the other’ is a privilege acconci enjoys by virtue of his whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality, qualities that he can embody and momentarily make vulnerable in order to reinstall masculine claims on the conceptual category of ‘subjectivity’?” —jane blocker, what the body cost: desire, history, and performance 

yes, yes, it’s possible. let’s talk about how this works in couples therapy. also i love how the guy literally gets a congratulatory blowjob in return for his temporary feminization. this piece is really perfect, isn’t it, even though it’s absolutely the worst.  

"it must be a he, don’t you think? no woman would go on for that long so earnestly."

mikki, it doesn’t matter what she’s talking about. #vulnerabilityisaprivilege #omgshutup