More King Kong than Kate Moss
“Punk is an exercise in fun with well-establishes codes, notably when it comes to gender” (Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory).
Punk is also about not being too careful – if at all. Being willing to be wrong, to go too far, to provoke. Waking you up not with a gentle nudge on the shoulder but with a bucket of ice water to the face. In this context, punk is whatever can’t be marketed back at you, weaponised from rage to product and sold back to you as a pacifier for the Good Capitalist Soldier. Punk is the proud out-group, not for sale.
Reading King Kong Theory without having read or seen Baise-moi, or having heard of Virginie Despentes before. Here the book and film are at times translated as Rape Me, though a more direct translation is Fuck Me. As this first book, King Kong Theory mentions her rape, but in a social critical way. The structure of King Kong is a constant camera movement zooming out to a long shot so wide that exposes everything around the frame. One chapter about her rape when she was a teenager ends up being an analysis of how women are taught to think about rape. Another chapter on her time as a sex worker becomes an overview of the structures that regulate the perception of prostitution while using it to maintain a status quo. Every chapter of King Kong Theory dissects a facet of the relationships between men and women in a capitalist environment that breeds conflict and violence for profit, from rape to prostitution to porn, in the nuanced yet essentially punk voice that distinguishes Depsentes’ writing.
“The figure of the loser in the femininity contest is not just one I find sympathetic – she is crucial to me. The same goes for social, economic or political losers. I prefer people who don’t make the grade.”
The double standard, or the double-bind as she calls it, between men and women is nothing new, from pink razors and tampon taxes to social roles, but Despentes points out paradigms where women of different appearances and behaviours, or relationships to men, are subject to even more scrutiny.
Dualities and double standards: in the rape public discourse, women are both made to feel like it’s the most traumatic thing that can happen to them, the violence never to be fully recovered from, and are also told that violence against the men that raped them is not acceptable.
“I’m not angry with myself for not daring to kill one of them. I’m angry at a society that educated me without teaching me to wound a man if he tries to fuck me against my will, especially when this same society has drummed into me the idea that it is a crime I should never get over.”
Another double-bind: Women finding a husband that will be the sole provider for the family while she is content with the housewife and mother role is nothing if not encouraged, letting her be economically dependent on a man while she performs her wifely duties in return, but a woman choosing to do sex work and choose her own terms about what she does with her body and how much she charges men for it is seen as morally abhorrent and shameful.
“If the prostitutional contract becomes commonplace, the marriage contract can be clearly seen for what it is: an indenture in which the woman signs up to perform a certain number of duties to ensure her husband’s comfort at rock-bottom rates. Notably sexual duties.”
This double standard is ironically clear in Despentes as well, who notes in almost every essay that capitalism is the essential context of these issues and it’s a system that by design oppresses women while at the same time feeds and weaponises men’s sexual drive against them to amplify their consumerist behaviours. At the same time, when writing about her time as a sex worker she attributes the system of exchanging money as the ultimate liberator. Early on she writes about being part of the first generation of women in France to open a bank account with a man’s permission, yet what this highlights is that especially in the post-war era, women’s rights were tied to, and facilitated by, capitalist interests. The independent woman as an entirely new consumer group, whose rights to earn and spend money feed directly the capitalist system, as Mad Men so refreshingly explored in its first season.
“This sex belonged to me alone, it didn’t depreciate with each time and use, and it could turn a profit. I was once again in a situation of hyper femininity, but this time, I was making cold hard cash.”
She contrasts her sex worker persona with her writer persona, noting the feeling of doing a tour of sex clubs as the latter and the social expectations in that setting. “I was immediately aware how much easier it would have been to go there as a hooker on the arm of a client. No hang-ups: I’m here because it’s my job, I do what people don’t do, that’s what I’m paid for. Pure punk” (65). Even in that empowered position, afforded by the fringe independent business structure, her role is still defined by her relationship to the men, and while she notes her “manly” character and appearance, her time as a prostitute changed both those aspects towards a much more feminine image, as she calls it herself, becoming now more Kate Moss than King Kong. In a way, she was never more “womanly” as when she was a sex worker; the role of the woman being directly defined by her sexual relationships with men. “After several years of diligent, genuine research, I finally came to a conclusion: womanhood is whoredom” (111).
I don’t know which Virginie Despentes is more punk, the hooker or the writer.
“You can be my black Kate Moss tonight.”
Maybe there is something inherently punk about King Kong. In “Black Skinhead” Kanye West uses the same figure: “They see a black man with a white woman at the top floor they gon’ come to kill King Kong.” The lyric premiered at SNL when the song wasn’t yet finished, still rough and unpolished, in what is without a doubt the most punk live performance after Sid Vicious’ death. What is even more interesting in this comparison is the wider Kanye context. No other black artist has explored more the paradigm of black success in a hyper-capitalist world; the opulence flaunted in his joint album with Jay-Z, Watch the Throne, is the epitome of celebrating black excellence through wealth that was not too long ago exclusive to white men in America. Just listen to “Murder to Excellence.” They took for themselves what no one was ever going to give them because of the social roles they were born in. Pure punk.
“Even the most batshit crazy guy in hip-hop isn’t treated as badly as a woman.”
The essence of punk is a rejection of authority structures, in particular those that impose their moralities as forms of protection. The exact opposite of punk would then be “health and safety,” because of its inherent message of I know what’s best for you. This infantilization and condescension spills out from patriarchal structures that still have a steady hold on women’s oppression, however subtle. “A government that sets itself up as an all-powerful mother is a fascistic government. Citizens of a dictatorship revert to being babies: they are fed, changed and kept in a crib by an ever-present power that knows everything, is capable of anything, and wields complete power over them for their own good” (28). Consider then the punk attitude of calling rape culture what it is but refusing to find a safe space within it. Despentes’ feminism is not only about harsh truths, but also about fatalistically denying symbolic, insignificant change. In this punk feminism, a woman’s response to rape culture isn’t to lock herself in so she is safe, but to accept that rape is part of a system she already lives in and that it will not stop happening without the whole system burning to the ground.
“We were told ‘…it’s a dangerous world, you might get raped’, and we said, ‘well, give us the right to take the risk of being raped.’”
King Kong Theory is about being rebellious towards a system of oppression without ever considering violence against it a step too far. If anything, it’s necessary. Despentes contextualises the title by saying she’s more King Kong than Kate Moss – a woman who is still a woman outside the framework determined by men, which of course has sex as a primary factor. The idealised Kate Moss figure exists only for the male gaze, it’s there to be looked at and lusted after, though interestingly, not touched. Not the idea, at least. “In a capitalist surveillance society, man is just another consumer” (28) and the aim is to keep them hungry, not satisfied. The object of their desire has to always be slightly out of reach, to keep them on edge, to keep them working, to keep them spending. “The only good consumer is an anxious consumer” (26).
A key element of King Kong: in late-stage capitalism, men are also oppressed by the forces feminism is fighting, though they are given a marginal claim to power in order to perpetuate the oppression. This punk feminism wants to liberate women from male oppression, but also men from their self-inflicted violence. “When do we get men’s liberation?” (125).
“When prostitutes are prevented from working in decent conditions, it is women who suffer most, but it is also a way of controlling men’s sexuality. Getting their leg over whenever they feel like it shouldn’t be easy and fun. Their sexuality remains a problem. Another double-bind: cities are plastered with images intended to make men horny, but consummation must remain problematic and guilt-ridden.”
Placing feminism in a capitalist context and giving it the punk voice it needs – as opposed to the tame, toothless writings of intellectuals like Beauvoir, who feel they have to cater to the male-centred paradigm of presenting ideas, for fear of not being taken seriously – also allows Despentes to make the most urgent point in no uncertain or negotiable terms: feminism is fighting for men too. The myopic and often ignorant view that feminism is trying to destroy men has given rise to “men’s rights activists” and all sorts of other dangerous bullshit.
The current male dissatisfaction which leads to insecurity and violence isn’t a result of women making almost as much money as them or women having more freedom then before, but because the capitalist socio-economic landscape has reached a point where it works against them unless they’re at the microscopic minority at the very top. “When you defend your male privileges, you sound like doormen in grand hotels who act like they own the place…arrogant flunkeys, nothing more” (122).
“In literature written by women, examples of insolence or hostility towards men are extremely rare. Censored. Even as a member of the sex, I’m not allowed to be angry about this. Colette, Duras, Beauvoir, Yourcenar, Sagan, a whole canon of female authors anxious to prove their credentials, to reassure the men, to apologise for writing by endlessly repeating how much they have no desire – whatever they might write – to fuck them over. We all know that if you don’t, the baying pack will tear you to pieces.”
No beating around the bush: women’s oppression has long been tangled with the oppression of both women and men by the elite capitalists, so modern feminism has to include men. We have started talking openly about toxic masculinity and any resistance to tearing it down is nothing more than internalised loathing passed down by generations who thought they were in control. We aren’t. Men are locked in the idea of masculinity that eats at us from the inside and is projected outwards in violence against women – and non-heterosexual men: “the fear of being faggots” (124).
Being a punk and a feminist converge in the ultimate sentiment of King Kong Theory. “Feminism is a collective venture, for women, for men, for others. It’s about blowing the whole fucking thing sky high” (127). It’s not a book to take to your book club and discuss it over tea; it’s a book to roll up and stick in your back pocket on the way to the riot.
