Don Hall highlights Feminist Fatale's 11 Commandments of Pop Culture Feminism. He finds the cognitive dissonance over the whole list of "isms" at the end. I, personally, wound up raising my question here:
5. Thou shalt vote with thy wallet (also known as the "I will not pay $12 to see ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell' commandment.")6. Thou shalt consume shitty forms of media (i.e. tabloids, reality TV) to be aware of what the "mainstream media" is saying about (and to) women and girls.
Excuse me? Which is it, to consume or not to consume? Should you avoid I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell or should you consume it to see what they're saying about women and girls? When is buying a tabloid considered espionage, and when is it considered propping up the enemy?
I mean, I agree with most of the commandments. And in fact I agree pretty strongly with Commandment 5. Commandment 6 has never crossed my mind. The only Reality TV I like watching is RuPaul's Drag Race. Why? Because it's good. But I don't buy National Enquirer to see what "the mainstream" has to say. I don't listen to Taylor Swift to see what Kanye West was so mad about. I consume the culture I want to support, and that's that. I also don't watch Bill O'Reilly to see what the spin cycle has to say about the news.
Don't we make the mainstream culture mainstream in our assumption that we need to know what's going on with it? Don't we empower them with our viewership, not just our money (seeing as, especially with television, our viewership is money)?
Anyways, the rest of the list (except the over-use of the Bechdel Test) is pretty solid, and good activism advice. I just don't see what Commandment 6 is doing there, let alone what it's doing there right after Commandment 5.