“…take the sandwich out of her mouth and go for a goddamn fucking walk”: On Olivia Munn, Feminism, and Cultural Criticism

Prior to this week, I never really had an opinion in regard to Olivia Munn, late of G4’s Attack of the Show and currently working to earn a permanent role as a Daily Show correspondent. I’d heard her name before, mostly from my husband, who is both a gamer and an aspiring game journalist, and mostly in the context of gamer boys fairly universally finding Munn hot, as a conventionally-attractive female unlikely to give her boyfriend shit for playing video games, and even — GASP — playing those games herself.

This rationale made sense to me. Indeed, my first date with said husband involved plans to see a movie, plans that were rapidly scrapped when I arrived at his apartment to discover he had a Nintendo 64 and I independently decided we should stay there and order in dinner so I could play me some Mario. I have been informed since that my behavior that night earned me beaucoup potential-girlfriend points, though if I’m being honest, at the time I was far more interested in the video game than the dude. What can I say? I’d been living without a game console for three years.

Even conservative estimates seem to indicate that lady gamers represent a growing minority of the gaming population. The most popular statistic is that women make up 40% of all video-game players , and some studies specific to online gaming actually put women in the lead. You’d never know it, however, since gaming culture is nigh-universally spoken to and by men; this is changing, but female voices are still rare, and usually met with surprise, dismissal, or disdain (unless, of course, they are Hot). Many games themselves are often sexist and lacking in female characters with any depth beyond their cup size (of course, there are exceptions, I know, but I am generalizing for a reason). Since women only make up about 12% of the industry designing and producing these games (sometimes in horrifying circumstances) this is hardly surprising — men make games for men, and if women happen to play them, that’s okay, I guess, as long as they don’t expect us to change anything for them.

For the most part, women who participate in the games industry and in gaming culture do so in spite of the predominating maleness, which says something about women’s commitment to gaming. Of course, many of these women are also entirely capable of internalizing the prevailing misogyny. While at PAX East last March, I had the terrible misfortune of attending the “Girls & Games” panel, which purported to discuss the role of women in the industry, but quickly devolved into the panelists — all women — turning into misogyny apologists, avoiding the more difficult questions, many of them asked by men with a greater investment in feminism than the panel itself, with a shrugging “hey, stuff is sexist, get used to it, whatevs!” or responding to inquiries for advice on getting into the industry with useless “work hard and stay in school!” hokum. (At one point, one of the panelists even suggested that women were at fault for gender inequality in game production and design, for failing to “believe” in themselves enough. It was shortly after this comment that I walked out of the room in search of a palate-cleanser for THAT what-the-fuckery.)

All of this is to say that there is some degree of immediate camaraderie between lady gamers; we share some common ground, some common experiences, and I daresay we tend to want to support one another rather than tear one another down. Hence, my opinion on Olivia Munn, a woman working very publicly in a male-dominated industry, was apathetic with a seasoning of optimism — I’ve only seen her infrequently, but I want to support her because, frankly, we need more smart women in game culture.

This week, my opinion has changed — unfortunately — exclusively because of Munn’s own words. Bitch has a nice summation of the whole ordeal, but I will supply my own short version here. First Jezebel ran a post pointing out some problematic things Munn has said in interviews, and a couple weeks later, a post on what they termed The Daily Show’s “woman problem” — that is, their problem in hiring and keeping an equitable number of women on staff, which discussed Munn’s addition in a more diplomatic way. From here, there evolved an ongoing conversation about sexism and hiring practices and not-so-thinly-veiled suggestions that Munn’s hiring may have been as much about her being on the cover of Playboy as her comedic talents. Who knows? The Daily Show has asserted they had no idea of her dabblings in nudery, and that may well be true. But Munn herself has responded with some really problematic and — notably — unfunny comments of her own. We’ll start with this one:

“I never tried to use anything besides my own sweat and blood and talent to get somewhere. I think that anyone who’s out there trying to bring down why any woman would get anywhere, or why we’re different, just needs to fucking turn her fucking computer off, take the sandwich out of her mouth and go for a goddamn fucking walk. You know what? Just walk it off, bitch. Just walk it off, bitch.”(Source) [Obscenities lovingly restored by yours truly.]

Cough. Well. Where to begin.

First, the idea that Munn’s having not intentionally exploited her appearance to get ahead somehow enables her to exist outside of a culture deeply embedded with sexism is disingenuous in the extreme. That, or she is wildly deluded about her own superhuman ability to shape reality. Whether Munn intended it or not, and whether she herself would prefer to succeed based exclusively on her talent or not, she lives and works in a culture that rewards conventional attractiveness. Simply saying “that’s crap!” doesn’t change it. Fucking hell, I wish it did. Arguing that Munn’s appearance may have been a factor does not automatically imply that Munn herself is untalented. It simply means her success is affected by several intersecting influences.

Secondly, Munn’s final words here are a buffet of misogyny, complete with a large slice of “bitch” for dessert. Are we really going down the path of shaming women for thinking critically, and writing about it — for being brainy and speaking their minds? And then, as if that weren’t enough, shaming them for eating food? Shut up, stop eating, and go outside; that sounds oddly familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it.

What’s more:

“We’re all human beings in this world,” she continued. “We’re all trying to make it from point A to point B, and just trying to fucking make it. So I think it’s really a disservice to all women when there are women out there who try to compartmentalize us as human beings, saying ‘women’ and ‘men,’ because I’m just out there.” (Source)

Okay, I LOLed. Yes, it’s feminists who insist upon “compartmentalizing” people into gender roles. You’ve got me. No, really, tell me another.

It’s almost a relief, really, to reach this level of absurdity. Does Munn really truly believe her gender has nothing to do with her success? Was it just coincidence that Playboy wanted her on their cover? I suppose the trauma of that photoshoot — no equivocation here — and the subsequent trauma of the photoshoot for her book cover, had absolutely nothing to do with her being female? Sure, Playboy pulls that take-your-clothes-off shit with men all the time. Munn is doing a bang-up job of discrediting her own arguments, such that there’s not much else for me to say.

Sara Reihani explains, in her Bitch post:

…[I]n the interview with Salon, Munn says “these women [Jezebel bloggers] sit behind this very thin veil that I can see right through, this idea that ‘we stand up for women.’ If you stand up for women, then don’t bash me.” This quote reveals a strict adherence to what I’ll call the Palin Feminist Fallacy: the idea that if a woman does something, it is automatically a feminist action. Being “okay” with a sexist remark doesn’t mean that it’s automatically no longer sexist, and being a female who makes misogynistic jokes doesn’t somehow cancel out the misogyny.

Indeed. Oh wait, you want more?

…[A] rather unflattering image of Munn has emerged from the kerbloffle… Frankly, she seems like kind of an asshole, or at best, an ignorant person who says ignorant things. She really likes one of the most popular corollaries to the Palin Feminist Fallacy: My Gay Friend, also known as I Know Black People, which goes like this: “I’m allowed to make racist/homophobic jokes because I have a friend of that minority.” Munn told the Daily Beast that “[…] See, I date different guys of different religions and races so I can always make the joke. I date the blacks, I date the Mexicans. I date ‘em all for comedy. You can’t buy that kind of gold. Having sex with a guy once is worth it.”

Yeah, uh, I think that’s enough.

I’ve said before, in numerous spaces, that I don’t identify myself as a feminist. There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one is that I don’t see feminism as something one is, but as something one does. I have often longed for a verb form of feminism, because I would use it all the time. Munn’s many troubling quotes above are not merely post-feminist — her words and ideas are cavalierly anti-feminist. Her repeated assertions, delivered with such disgust and disdain, that the critical discussion of gender and culture is without merit? That’s an anti-feminist action. Now, Munn doesn’t have to be feminist, or even to give a shit about feminism. But demanding the silence of women who feel differently isn’t simply anti-feminist, but anti-woman. Or, as Munn may prefer, anti-human-being. Munn’s panicked defensiveness seeks not to only quiet those who she believes are “bashing” her, but everyone everywhere who wants to have thoughtful discussions about gender and society. That conversation doesn’t stop because one person isn’t interested in it. If Munn feels the way she does, she probably would have been better served to simply ignore the criticism, and then people like me could continue to think of her as a benign compatriot in a male-driven world. Because this isn’t just about Munn; we all have to survive in this culture, and some of us are trying to make it better. Some of us would rather we live in a society where our gender didn’t have some bearing on our success or failure. Some of us would rather live in a society where a woman like Munn wasn’t made to feel pressured and violated into crossing her own personal boundaries, by men who feel wholly entitled to do so. In fact, Munn would have benefited from taking her own advice with regard to the Jezebel criticism, and to “walk it off.”

“…bitch.”

Image from nsfmc on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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