The following is lifted from the SLAC (Sydney Ladies Artists Club) website. For those of you who missed last week’s Jelly Wrestling Extravaganza, we offer you a second chance!
The idea, cooked up by Lisa, was to try and get as many ladies into the pub as possible. We reckon this will change the entire dynamic of the event. It’s a valiant demonstration of the power of audience participation! So keep next Wednesday night in yer diary, ladies! (Of course, men welcome too…)
It’s wet, it’s wild, it’s the contentious gender spectacle of live jelly wrestling!
SLAC joins forces with Bilateral Petersham for a second round of soft-porn sightseeing at the infamous Oxford Tavern. Soak up the view (& flying jelly) from front row in the back room. Enjoy strip shows between rounds by consummate performers with truly impressive command of their hamstrings. But best of all, be there as we collectively effect a subtle intervention in the event dynamics and displace the primacy of the heterosexual male gaze… we’re going to stack the joint with Sydney Ladies, Artists or otherwise!
where: The Oxford Tavern, corner New Canterbury Rd & Crystal St Petersham
when: Wednesday 10th May 9pm
$7 door chargebring your lady friends!
Yeah! Let’s smash the patriarchy!
..but why do things by half, shouldn’t the ladies be walking around poking the eyes out of these vicious evil heterosexual men? I’m coming, if only to promote the degenderising and deheterosexualising of the concept of the gaze.
Our house have been there a couple of times, they don’t have a problem with a bunch of women turning up. Also they’ve got the cheapest housewine out of all the locals.
Oh Tully Tully Tully, so many books (well, two) that I need to lend you. Also, last I heard, you were not a woman!?
You and Lucas both must read ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women & the Rise of Raunch Culture’ by Ariel Levy. I can lend. It is the counter-argument to SLAC’s idea of what is achieved when women look at women. Also, given Lucas’ really spot-on account of how actually un-sexy it is to see a woman ‘going through the motions’ rather than really enjoying herself, I’m not sure why anyone would want to support this.
You know that book isn’t the bible,
My old housemate Poppy read the book twice and ran me through all the arguments. Ultimately I heard a bunch of discussion on ‘raunch culture’ by women who had never really been part of a culture anything like that described in the book. I understand that liberation is separate to excessive displays of male or co-opted female chauvinism. I understand that sexuality is about needs and desires, not meaningless displays of sexual power.
Going to see Jelly wrestling may be meaningless for some, but it wont be for me. I’m intrigued, there will be naked women so I’ll probably be stimulated, there will (probably) be some open-minded people there and I don’t know what the effect will be.
Do you need tobe a woman to talk about the male gaze? last I heard it was a concept as well as an experience. I have seen and experienced similar forms of female gaze towards men. There are some gender issues that women are not prepared to be pluralist about in a post first-wave feminist world.
Oh GODDD!!!!
I just spent AGES trying to find some great article I read 2 yeas ago by some ethnographer student who was DOING JELLLY WRESTLING as part of her research. and i can’t bloody find it!!!!
anyway – tully etc. I havne’t read “raunch culture” – but I have a read a LOT of really interesting informative critical challenging and FUN research by and about female strippers and the gender politics of perve.
There’s have been 2 feminist waves in my lifetime before that the first one was in the 19th century. So i guess we’re like post third wave. but I’d prefer to take some pluralist position to accepting that people are curious and confused everywhere rather than labelling everything under some called of zeitgeist.
do you rekcon i can get from Ryde to petersham in under 60 minutes?
hey georgia: what’s the second book you were going to suggest?
Susan Faludi’s ‘Backlash’, just for good measure. I read it (having started it a number of times) recently, after reading Levy’s book, and it’s helpful to see what the backlash against feminism that occured in the eighties did to prepare the soil for raunch culture. Levy’s book admittedly is about the US, not Australia, but it’s still of enormous value. I don’t hold the bible in any sort high esteem, so I’m not sure why Tull has made that comment! It was just brilliant to find that someone had written the book I realised needed to be written, when I was a first year at uni some years ago! I feel that what she says in it is really urgently important.
I LOVE YOU GEORGIA!!!! :)
Well I’ve got a copy of ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs…’ to bring along on wednesday night and keep this moving. Perhaps the housewine will do it some favours, it seems kind of screechy-preachy at a glance. Like Tully I’m all for open-minded & playful forays into sexual politicking, and a plural PRACTICE of feminism by men & women, queer & straight, on the ground in daily life. And I doubt you could get more quotidian than the Oxford…
Even better, I wondered whether I could get quotidian in the oxford, and it suggests that we makes the visits daily. How about that then.
for anyone interested there will be a spot on this SLAC/BP excursion on community radio 2SER’s Overdrive program today monday the 8th around 4pm, with a special playing of interviews with the Sex Bomb jelly wrestlers from a radio documentary on the topic made by host Daz Chandler… tune on in!
tully has started a similar but unrelated debate over here:
http://community.livejournal.com/feminist/2547126.html#cutid1