Friday, April 08, 2016

GFE - FU patriarchy

I had to laugh at James Poniewozik's NYTimes review of "The Girlfriend Experience" - the term, also GFE, describes men paying prostitutes to pretend to be their girlfriends over a long period of time. Basically like traditional marriage except it's even easier to "divorce" the woman when you get tired of her and want to trade her in for a newer, younger model.

What cracked me up was the male critic - of course the critic is male, based on a rough estimate I would say 95% of all paid critics of all media are male - writes this:
Christine joins Avery to meet a client, assuming an alias, and discovers that she’s not just good at role-playing but also drawn to it. There’s money, of course — thousands a night — but also a feeling of control. You gradually get the sense that the guarded, composed Christine sees all relationships as transactional. (“You’re like a female Ted Bundy,” a client tells her. He sort of means it as a compliment.)
Leave it to a man, writing about a show created and run by men, to look at a prostitution scenario and compare the prostitute to a psycho-killer, instead of her wealthy, often married customers.  

I so fucking hate living in a patriarchy sometimes I could scream.