‘Feminist Lezzy Heaven’

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Lea DeLaria in the Netflix series ‘Orange Is the New Black’

“It’s like I’ve died and gone to feminist lezzy heaven. I’ve been a professional lesbian for over 30 years — before that I freelanced — but my entire career has been about that, putting a human face on what a butch is.”
— Lea DeLaria, star of Orange Is the New Black

A TV series about women’s prison is “feminist lezzy heaven,” and Orange Is the New Black is a cultural phenomenon — like HBO’s Girls — primarily because of critical praise for its feminist themes. Typical is Amanda Duberman’s gushy enthusiasm at Huffington Post:

Perfectly written, hilarious and culturally relevant, the series chronicling a diverse group of women behind bars proved to be a feminist triumph. . . .
The male characters are either punchlines or morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism. The first season’s plot lines recognized transgender identity, sexual fluidity, race relations and the triumphant potential of sisterhood.

A show that portrays men only as “morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism” must be praised, you see, because this is what feminism is all about: Demonizing men as the source of all evil in society.

Never mind, of course, that  Orange Is the New Black was adapted from the memoir of Piper Kerman, a born-rich woman who graduated from Smith College and was sent to prison for money laundering for a heroin smuggler who was Kerman’s lesbian lover.

You can read Kerman’s own self-pitying account, in which she portrays herself as a victim of federal mandatory-minimum sentencing laws: “Without mandatory minimums, Piper would almost certainly have been sentenced to probation and community service.”

Well, boo hoo hoo.

Other people have suffered far worse fates than doing 13 months in prison for money laundering, but those other people don’t have rich families and elite educations (Smith College annual tuition, $44,450) and so they don’t write memoirs that become TV shows.

Feminism’s victimhood narrative requires us to ignore contradictions and paradoxes. Instead we must pretend that a simple common-sense interpretation of facts — “Hey, maybe dating a heroin smuggler is a bad idea” — is too unsophisticated to be a valid judgment. Piper Kerman is a woman, and when bad things happen to a woman, there must be a feminist morality tale in there somewhere, right? God forbid that we should interpret “sexual equality” in such a way that women are viewed as responsible for their own choices.

Of course, no fan of Orange Is the New Black cares what I think, because I’m just a morally reprehensible gatekeeper of sexism.





 

 

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102 comments

  1. “Without mandatory minimums, Piper would almost certainly have been sentenced to probation and community service.”

    Unless she was male, in which case it would be straight to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

    Feminists love to complain about women not being “represented” in equal numbers. So why not in jail?

  3. “The male characters are either punchlines or morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism.”

    This is true, I’ve seen the show. All the male prison guards are sadists, perverts, or incompetent.

    The drug mule heroine’s upper-middle-class beta boyfriend is depicted as a joke and a creep. The poor fool actually proposes marriage to his girlfriend after he learns she is going to prison, and doen’t pursue other women while she is incarcerated. But we’re supposed to think he’s a bad guy because he gets jealous at the idea of his fiancee enjoying lezzy adventures behind bars.

    The show leaves you in no doubt that he’s just not as exciting or sexy or cool as all the hot lesbian jailbird bad girls.

  5. It’s pathetic that Larry Smith suffers himself to be humiliated for public entertainment.

  7. The lovely Miss DeLaria wrote:

    I’ve been a professional lesbian for over 30 years — before that I freelanced — but my entire career has been about that, putting a human face on what a butch is.”

    Uhhh, a professional lesbian? As in, she was paid to be a lesbian? Who knew!

  8. I haven’t seen the show. I read the description on Netflix and it just didn’t seem interesting.

    That being said, I don’t think it makes much sense to have draconian drug laws and permissive liquor laws.

  9. Stacy, I could think of worse people to be lesbians with than Laura Prepon, IYKWIMAITYD. #Woof!

  10. Yep. The issue that someone made bad choices and must be responsible for them, like getting involved with a drug mule, really grates on some people.

  13. How ’bout Portia deRossi, or even Anne Heche, if she still goes that way?

    One thing you can say about Ellen Degeneres: she’s got great taste in women!

  14. I wonder: can I apply for that job? I’ve even got my own, uhh, strap on! 🙂

    But, I’d like to make it clear: you couldn’t pay me enough to have to work Miss DeLaria!

  15. You know, I think I see a glimpse of the future. We draft Miss Delaria, and put her in the infantry (Problem # 1, women in combat, solved!) (Problem #2, queers in the military, solved!), send her to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban (Problem # 3, the Islamists, solved! because those bad boys would run away as fast as they could upon seeing her), and shazamm! all of President Obama’s policy choices are vindicated!

    I anticipate thorough denunciations from Zohydro and the guy who used to be the late President Nixon.

  16. Miss Duberman wrote:

    The male characters are either punchlines or morally reprehensible gatekeepers of sexism.

    And this distinguishes it from how (white) male characters are depicted in other shows how?

  17. I think we are looking at this in the wrong way. Forget the man-hating sisterhood theme for a minute. Here is a woman who went to prison on a drug charge and she used that to make a fortune. Think what we could do to that pesky income inequality problem is everyone in a similar situation did the same.

  19. I’ve read about this show—I’ve never watched an episode though… Is there a theme of ‘situational homosexuality’ or ‘inherent’ bisexuality’ or ‘survival sex’ here? I gather it’s not yer typical lesbian prison porno…

  21. No, you’re a killjoy, and a sexist. And your fear of feminists is pathological. I’d equate it to Hitler’s fear of the Jews.

    The white male boomer world that we’re all living in needs to be systematically taken apart, and crushed, and for that alone I’m glad there are women’s groups.

    It’s also good that there’s a program like this that showcases how completely dysfunctional, our prison system, and is now being used as a source of slave labor for rich capitalist swine.

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