It’s time to bury Bones

Because plastic women are the best women!
(image by Dave at morgueFile)

Not real bones, mind you.  But the TV show Bones.  It began broadcasting back in 2005, and, as per the write-up on IMDB, is about “a forensic anthropologist and a cocky FBI agent build a team to investigate death causes.”  It’s in season 9 already.  I’ve seen almost all the episodes.  I say almost all because I have no idea if there were any episodes after episode 14 in season 9: The Master in the Slop.  The end of that show convinced me that I should never ever watch it again.

Why?  Well, if you saw it, you might know why.

The plot was interesting, someone being set up for a murder they didn’t commit, chess, pigs.  What more do you want in an episode?  Well, perhaps you might want a lack of rampant sexism.

In this lovely episode, Dr. Brennan (Bones) is upset that Dr. Camille Saroyan is receiving an award.  The award is for “Outstanding Women of Science,” and it’s from “Science Monthly.”  But Dr. Saroyan is concerned because she knows that Dr. Brennan expects the award.  To try to mitigate the situation, Dr. Saroyan contacts the institution offering the award and asks if it can be shared between herself, Brennan, and their artist/computer whiz Angela Montenegro.

The women hear back.  The publication has chosen to “honor” all three of the women…actually, they’ve chosen to “honor” 12 women!  You see, they’ve decided to have the “12 Outstanding Women of Science.”

So far, this doesn’t sound so bad, right?  And then they produce the “humorous” twist...the “honor” being bestowed upon 12 brilliant women is that they get to wear bikinis (with pictures of male scientists on the breasts!) and have a photo shoot “showing a lot of skin.” 

Well, who the hell would agree to that?  According to Brennan, all the “brilliant” women.

When Saroyan points out that, “We’ll be hanging in labs all across the country,” Brennan argues that it will simply show that at the Smithsonian, “….pulchritude is as abundant as brilliance…I never thought I would be honored in this way.”  

Wait.  What the fuck?

It’s an honor to pose in a bikini for men to look at you?  Really?  Being ogled and turned into a sex object shows pulchritude?  And this is an important thing to show?  Because Brennan, Saroyan, and Montenegro all think that this is a huge honor that they’re being allowed to help the publication stay solvent by turning into Playboy Bunnies?

I mean, they’re only a lap dance away from really earning some money for the magazine…and think about how much extra the Smithsonian could pull in if they went full monty!

What makes this even worse, I think, is that when I looked up the episode and read user reviews on tv.com, most of them make no mention of the sexism.  They focus on lack of realism, stereotypes, and failed gags.  No one thought it was horrific that being a scientist and a woman meant that the woman would need to prostitute herself for the sake of a publication.  No one seemed to find it painful that three intelligent women would throw themselves into bikinis so that men across the country could ogle them.  No one mentioned that it was sending a horrible, horrible message – that being smart isn’t enough.  You also have to be willing to show some skin to get anywhere.  Brennan even mentions that if they don’t do it, the “honor” will go to three other women, and she can’t possibly let that happen.

I say again: what the fuck?

I am willing to put up with a lot of stupid shit in TV shows.  It’s TV after all.  Most of the time, I’m not watching it for high quality, but for amusement and perhaps some mystery.  But when it’s personally offensive, the amusement is gone. 

So what time is it?  It’s time to bury Bones.  Let the ratings go to hell.  It’s going to get put to rest after season 10 anyway, but maybe we can encourage them to end it a bit sooner than that…

Let’s rape ourselves! (Or, more appropriately titled, why do women feel the need to blame women?)

This mannequin better watch out
or Dick Black might get her!

Image by Pedro J Perez, morgueFile

 

Many a year ago, a wise man named Jonathan Swift suggested that perhaps we need to eat babies.  Eating babies, he said, would solve so many of societies’ ills.  We’d have food.  We’d have less population.  Babies wouldn’t go to waste!  The poor could get rich selling their offspring, which they didn’t really need or want anyway.  It was a total win-win situation.

Sadly, though, the brilliance of Swift is long gone.  Or at least, it appears to be when you are foolish enough to read anything written by Roxanne Jones.  Roxanne Jones, who somehow won the 2010 Woman of the Year award from Women in Sports and Events, wrote two pieces that I had hoped – prayed even! – were satire.  And sadly, for both myself and all women in the world, they were not.

The first one appeared back around Thanksgiving.

In the article, titled “Young men, get a ‘yes’ text before sex,” she begins by telling her son to “watch out for stupid girls…they are trouble.”  Oh my, as a certain famous and funny performer has said a few times.  She goes on to complain about women who are “party girls…who thrive on attention.”  These girls, she says, are not asking to be raped.  But, then she says, what you need to do is to get a girl to text you “yes” before she has sex with you.  This, she somehow believes, will solve the problem of rape on college campuses.

Yes, this awesome woman states “Never have sex with a girl unless she’s sent you a text that proves the sexual relationship is consensual.”  Wow.  Why isn’t she out there, campaigning for this to be made into a law?

Because it’s stupid as fuck.

Seriously, this harkens back to 1999 when an Italian appeals court ruled that a woman wearing jeans couldn’t be raped because “it is common knowledge…that jeans cannot even be partly removed without the effective help of the person wearing them…and it is impossible if the victim is struggling with all her might.” 

Let me just clear this up – there doesn’t have to be a struggle for it to be rape.  A woman can say no, but if fear is there (a weapon, a threat, anything) or if the woman is unable to fight (drunk, asleep, whatever), then it’s still rape!  It does not matter if she fights back.  It does not matter if she texts a yes.  How easy would it be for a guy, holding a gun on a woman, to make her text that message?  How easy would it be to put roofies in a girl’s drink, get her phone, and then text that to yourself?  Who the fuck would honestly consider a text all the permission they need?

Jones, at the end of her article, once again says that men shouldn’t rape drunk women.  But right before she makes that point, she again points out that “true equality means that we are also held accountable for our actions.  Partying and drinking until you are no longer in control of your body or mind instantly sets you up to become a victim of rape or bodily harm – or even to die.”  Yes, true, but the same is true for men – at least the death part is.  But it doesn’t matter.  People can do stupid things.  They do do stupid things.  But to bring that up – to say that “nobody wants to be a stupid girl” – implies that women are asking for it.  It says straight out that women should not be able to get drunk, like men can get drunk, without being “instantly set up” to be raped and murdered.

But Jones doesn’t stop there.

In December, she got up on her soapbox again and suggested that false rape accusers should be sued.  

Now, I’m all for justice.  It is very true that some women have lied about being raped.  However, that being said, Jones even admits that some things that can make rape cases not go to court can be as simple as the fact that “the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect or suffer injuries, was not threatened with a weapon or the victim and perpetrator had a previous relationship.”  In all those cases, the rape charge might be dismissed, and the case might be considered a false accusation.  In fact, according to GOP candidate Dick Black, spousal rape shouldn’t be a crime, and you can’t really call it rape if someone is wearing a nightie.  

Jones ends her article by telling us that “we have a long way to go before there’s justice for all.”  But she’s not referring to the rape victims who have had their cases dismissed because there wasn’t enough physical injury. She’s referring to those falsely accused of rape.

Again, I’m all for justice.  If someone is falsely accused and their reputation is destroyed, they deserve their day in court and their name restored.  However, what about those who are actually raped and can’t get their day in court?  How can you ignore the 87,000 “forcible rapes” that the FBI has on record in 2012?  How can you ignore the non-forcible rapes, where lives were just as destroyed?

I would love to see Jones stripped of her “Woman of the Year” award.  Her writing is not for women.  Her views are not for women.  She feels horrible for the “innocent men [who] end up in prison or with lives shattered” but seems to ignore the women who wind up in their own mental (and sometimes physical) prisons.