Don’t get me wrong, I have a history with kitchen equipment – it’s a sad, sad story involving a large quantity of Red Bull, an all-nighter at University, an offer of 50p, a camera, a toaster, and my genitals. The problem is that the output of my culinary bodgejobs tend to be either inedible, burned, or contain more cheese than the average human is capable of dealing with.

It’s hard to deny that cookery is fun, though. Get in a kitchen, crack out all kinds of implausibly-shaped apparatus, put squishy and goopy and chewy things together, bung it in the oven, hope for the best. It’s like science, but with an end product that will either serve as your dinner or a cheaper alternative to Polyfilla.

So, if you’re like me and you feel that, for the sake of all involved, cookery is best done vicariously – it saves on cleanup, anyway – fear not, because the Internet is here to help.

It Begins: Epic Meal Time

Epic Meal Time is where it all started. A bunch of guys got together with a camera and made some brilliant, stupid food. The preview frame for each video contains a picture of the eldritch horror that is produced, along with its calorie count.

Previous creations include their riff on the turducken – the TurBacon Epic (79,046 calories, pictured above, and described as ‘a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig’), Fast Food Sushi (11,816 calories of I assure you that you really don’t want to know), and the Valentine’s Day special – 190,400 calories of ‘Super Sloppy Sundae‘.

I think we can rest assured that this is the kind of cookery that would give Jamie Oliver an aneurysm, and the rest of us a nasty case of angina. And why the hell not? It’s your body, and you should choose exactly what you want to put into it. If you can have a good time with your friends in the process, so much the better.

Epic Meal Time was brilliant, witty, and otherwise furiously entertaining for a long time. It got the idea that cooking could be a gentlemanly pursuit out there to a lot of eyeballs, and that has value. What ruined it though was, like so many things, its own success. Suddenly, the self-parodying bravado of this group of friends became actual bravado. A sponsorship deal and continuous references to ‘Internet Money’ took the metaphorical axe to the humour.

Behold: Epic Meal Time’s personal twist on gender balancing.

It wasn’t just that, though. You can be damn certain that if I’m getting the arse on at something on BadRep, there’s a gender angle too, and sure enough, there is. When the bravado became too genuine, the continuous (and already tenuous) references to ‘bitches’ went from problematic to outright misogynist. Attractive women started to feature in the videos – but only eating the food, never participating in its creation as part of the group. I can’t even remember a single video in which you hear a female voice.

Once it stopped being self-parodying and just became self-aggrandising, the shark had been jumped.

Scandinavia Steps In: Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time

A Swedish gentleman with the kind of facial hair not seen since the heady days of Technoviking decided that Sweden could do better without making any special effort.

With the ancient Swedish tradition of bacon tug-of-war, everyone’s a winner.

Our host regaled us with fairly uninspiring, everyday meals, prepared in a wonderfully over-the-top manner. Mayonnaise was eaten straight from the jar (“PRE DINNER SNACK. IT’S GOOD FOR YOU”). Butter was smeared by punching it. Cardboard packaging was opened with teeth. Water for boiling pasta was collected in the form of snow.

There’s undeniable machismo, but since this show is meant as a parody of Epic Meal Time, I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made for it being exaggeration for the sake of comedy. It doesn’t grate in the same way that Epic Meal Time started to.

Cooking is a better experience when combined with facial hair and shouting. Fetch yourself a horn of mead and check it out.

The obligatory, if unorthodox, musical: Vegan Black Metal Chef

Black metal conjures up imagery of teenagers in too much makeup running through the woods, filming themselves on their Dad’s camcorder, while they scream about the Grim Frostbitten North and wield ludicrous knives that they bought on eBay.

What it doesn’t conjure up, however, is vegan cuisine.

This is exactly the reason that Vegan Black Metal Chef is amazing.

The Dark Lords of the Deep are well-known for their vegan tastes.

The effort that goes into the Vegan Black Metal Chef kitchen is pretty mindblowing. The whole place is outfitted with studded black leather, occult symbols, skulls, you name it. The food isn’t particularly inspiring, but that might just be how I see vegan food. Fortunately, the food is far from the point.

Black metal is another field of intense bravado. Though I don’t want to paint an entire subculture by the failings of its extremes, it’s hard to avoid the fact that black metal fandom is a subculture full of homophobia and transphobia, and is often popularly associated with Nazi music. It’s wonderful, then, that Vegan Black Metal Chef is so inherently subversive. It’s self-deprecating mockery in which you’re invited to laugh with someone at the sillier bits of their own subculture, and that makes it a pleasure to watch.

The extensive make-up is a  wonderful parallel here with more ‘traditional’ female-led cookery shows, particularly Nigella Lawson’s sexualised content where her appearance is pushed to the audience just as much, if not more, than the actual food. Vegan Black Metal Chef, it could be argued, takes host-over-food cookery content to the next level.

In any case, do you want to see a man in corpsepaint invoke Lovecraftian horrors over a bowl of Pad Thai? Of course you do. Vegan Black Metal Chef is for you.

Booze and brilliance: My Drunk Kitchen

As far as I’m concerned, My Drunk Kitchen is the best cooking show on the Internet right now. Hosted by Hannah Hart, it’s a very simple premise – drink booze and cook some stuff.

Shortly after this frame, the self-heating bag begins to billow smoke. If that isn’t selling you on My Drunk Kitchen, I don’t know what will.

It’s the first of the shows that I’ve covered here to feature a female host, and what I find particularly important is that it doesn’t fucking matter. There’s the occasional line that bugs me, but by and large the humour is genderless, and there’s no (or very little) cutesy look-at-me-I’m-a-girl-on-the-Internet-teehee. Hannah Hart is Hannah Hart, and she’s drinking beer and belching and overdoing it with the cheese and burning herself on the oven because fuck you, that’s why.

Far and away my favourite episode is the one where the good Ms. Hart tackles military Meals Ready to Eat – known as MREs – outdoors and clad in a bodgejobbed Braveheart-esque shawl.

It’s not going to teach you to cook. It’s going to make you grin repeatedly. Watch it.

And the rest

I’m absolutely certain that I’ve missed some gems. Have I neglected to mention your favourite homebrew cookery show? Let me know about it in the comments. If there are enough, and BadRep haven’t fired me for overuse of the term ‘bodgejob’, I’d love to write a followup with the fan favourites that I’m currently unfamiliar with.

Last week’s example was the trending topic “Tips for Ladies”. The online world took this tremendous opportunity to help guide women through life by posting thousands of tweets featuring the words ‘cooking’, ‘cleaning’, ‘clothes’ and advice on how to be more sexually available to men, all with exciting new adventures in spelling and grammar. (Don’t search for it. Just don’t. Your brain doesn’t need the trauma). Okay, look, here’s one at random and you can take my word for it that there are many pages of similar entries:

#TipsForLadies Cooking and Cleaning up does not make you a good woman.Your suppose to do that.

(I choose to read this as “Following society’s bullshit gender roles won’t make you a magnificent person – YOU are the one who must strive to transform yourself.” I choose to interpret it like this, because otherwise I would turn to drink most days.)

But then…

Then I noticed something new. It started small and grew as the rebellion began… BadRep’s very own Hannah Chutzpah brought the first one to my attention:

@MissEllieMae
#TipsForLadies Remember, when enacting nuclear fusion, the nickel isotope is more stable than the iron isotope.

I decided to write one of my own:

#TipsForLadies CERN’s results where neutrino speed appeared to break relativity were probably due to relativistic motion of the GPS clocks.

Markgraf weighed in:

#TipsForLadies Pheasants are easy both to capture and domesticate.

But it wasn’t just Team BadRep on the case.

@prattprattpratt
The way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach… unless your sword is kinda bendy upwards. #TipsForLadies

@GRILLEVERYTHING
#TipsForLadies When battling Gorgons, avoid turning into stone by only viewing your foe through a reflective surface.

@MsBathtub
#tipsforladies The ability to start a fire can mean the difference between life & death in survival situations.

(Ms Bathtub also quoted Rilke).

And another from Ellie Mae:

@MissEllieMae
#TipsForLadies Join a union. You’ll get paid more and have better working conditions.

Even Darth Vader’s PR team got in on the act:

@DeathStarPR
#TipsForLadies Don’t be a Bella Swan when you could be a Princess Leia. #StarWars

The line says "Remembered for 30 years, the same way Bella Swan won't be."

And I felt a little better. Found Feminism is often about finding voices fighting back in unexpected places, and that’s exactly what I hope people take away from this. In the online environment, we are surrounded by people too young, inexperienced or just plain bigoted to spread anything but the easiest, most poisonous dreck society has to peddle. The answer is to speak up. Use comedy, use popular trends, but even if it’s just you and just once, speak up for equality. And we’ll leave little beacons of hope in the places most easily reached by the most people.

Twitter is regularly a hopeless mess of misogyny – I could pick a new trending topic every week.

That just means we have to engage with it MORE.

Smith’s photographs of the Slits mudlarking in the grounds of their Surrey recording studio became a defining image of the band, notably through being used on the cover of their debut album Cut. This article looks briefly at the controversy generated by the images themselves, and how it relates to subsequent and current presentation of women in the UK music press.

Under the Cover

The space provided by punk for female as well as well as male self-expression and emancipation can be overstated – see Helen Reddington’s research on the persistence of entrenched chauvinist and sexist attitudes – but the Slits were unarguably, in the words of Caroline Coon, ‘driving a coach and various guitars straight through… the concept of The Family and female domesticity’. One of the first prominent bands to spring from the art-squats of punk west London, the Slits’ early music and performance was a squall of untrained, instinctive energy, and their casually confrontational appearance and behavior drew negative reactions ranging from media disapproval to violent hostility. Although tending to recoil from any overtly political espousal of feminism, the band bluntly advocated female independence and empowerment, encouraging girls to form bands and to define themselves by their actions rather than their relationships.

‘We’re just not interested in questions about Women’s Liberation… You either think chauvinism’s shit or you don’t. We think it’s shit… Girls shouldn’t hang around with people who give them aggro about what they want to do. If they do they’re idiots.’
– Slits guitarist Viv Albertine, June 1977

The image on the Cut cover fits into the Slits’ more general disruptions and subversions of accepted feminine tropes, including their punk-inspired adoption of fetish and bondage gear as deconstructed parts of an everyday wardrobe, and their plain-speaking on sex and sexuality. The band’s proto-Goth contemporary Siouxsie Sioux remarked that they ‘weren’t glamorous, they were very earthy’. The Slits’ aesthetic and behaviour onstage and off was repeatedly referenced in terms of wildness and ferocity, reinforcing their performance of an exoticised, ‘untamed’ sexuality, which on the album cover clashed with the band’s bucolic backdrop to create an arresting mash-up of English Rose and Amazon.

Covered in Controversy

Having in their earlier career declined several offers from labels intent on exploiting the novelty aspect of a girl band, and battled with industry men who expected female musicians to ‘kowtow or flutter your eyelids’, the band’s stated aim for the cover of their debut was to ‘show that women could be sexy without dressing in a prescribed way. Sexy, in a natural way, and naked, without being pornographic’. Their bassist Tessa Pollitt described the cover as ‘one of the most liberating things I have done’, claiming that the band were ‘celebrating the freedoms we were creating’. The cover divided opinion at the time of its release, dismissed by some as a cynically sexualized ploy, and ridiculed by others because of the group’s deviation from a conventionally desirable body shape (Smith’s photographs were taken at a point when the Slits had succumbed to the regular eating and sleeping hours of studio life, away from the chaotic amphetamine-fuelled living to which they’d grown accustomed, leaving them looking softer and more rounded than expected by those policing punk angularity – a particularly frustrating slant of attack given punk’s early attempts to transcend these kind of prescriptive aesthetics).

Music writer Vivien Goldman embraced the Cut cover as a defiant reclamation of the female body, and Pauline Black, who went on to form 2-Tone band the Selecter, saw it as ‘so joyous, innocent and natural that it just seemed like a celebration of womanhood rather than any cheap titillation’. It still has the power to spark disagreement: Roni Sarig in The Secret History Of Rock waxes lyrical that the cover ‘confounded notions of sexuality and civility and positioned the group as modern primitive feminist rebels – girls not afraid to be natural, sexual and formidable’, while the author of the Punk77 website makes the counter-claim that the image in fact undermines Sarig’s idea ‘that they were one of the first all female bands to avoid being ‘marketed as sex objects’… They had their tits out. For instance I was 16 when this album came out… I and many others didn’t see it as anything but three nudes on a cover!’

Bad Cover Versions

As for the women-in-the-music-press discussion, so far so same-old. Cazz Blase’s recent article on the UK music press maintained that it is marketed, sold and created primarily by and for men. The NME, which in 2009 appointed Krissi Murison as its first female editor, is actually not too bad as far as the balance of genders among its staff goes – although the relative positions women occupy, and how this translates to coverage and presentation of female musicians, are different debates. In 2010, Aoife Barry gave an overview of the underrepresentation of female musicians on the covers of music magazines, emphasizing the egregiousness of Q in particular:

Why not count how many women you can see on the covers of Q magazine this year (two solo covers: Cheryl Cole and Lady Gaga – and two group shots: Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen together in a group shot; and Lady Gaga again in a group shot). The reason I mention Q is that the response to ‘there aren’t enough women on the covers of music magazines’ is often ‘but that’s because it reflects the amount of women working in music’. This is not true – particularly in the case of Q, which covers mainstream rock, indie and pop music. In fact, the female musicians it covers are usually from the pop arena. And you cannot argue that the pop realm is oestrogen-free.

While, as Barry admits, ‘there may not be a great conspiracy to keep women off the covers of music magazines and give them minimal coverage on the inside pages’, it is frequently the case that when women are featured, so is a latent or overt sexualizing of them which does not affect their male counterparts to the same degree.

One has to factor in, of course, the degree to which coverage of bands will depend upon commercial trends in rock and indie; the musical greywash which occurred under late Britpop saw a sidelining of female artists which appeared to reach its dull conclusion in the post-Libertines profusion of almost invariably male ‘landfill indie’ groups. This connection is made explicit in Q’s concern with catering for a target demographic supposedly ‘inspired by the rock’n’roll swagger of Liam, Noel, Blur and the whole Britpop scene’, a remit which perhaps explains last October’s gobsmackingly retrograde Kasabian cover while doing little to excuse it.

Covering Up?

Smith’s shot of the Slits in all their unphotoshopped glory differs from Q‘s cover in several obvious respects – its subjects muddy rather than glossy, wearing unselfconscious grins rather than careful high-maintenance pouts, and, crucially, having shaped the image via their own concept and direction rather than following a top-down marketing or editorial strategy. It’s true that the NME has never been an impregnable bastion of women’s liberation – even on that Slits cover, there’s the dubious strapline referring to them as the paper’s ‘Page One girls’ – and I’m sure that just as many readers saw the cover as wank material as chin-strokingly believed it to be ‘confounding notions of sexuality and civility’. A happy few may even have done both. But the upfront disheveled self-confidence the Slits display is still striking and even looks quaint in an era where the last comparable Empowered and Liberated woman on an NME cover was, who, Beth Ditto? Whose appearance, and the ensuing debates on whether it constituted ’empowerment’ or ‘objectification’, proved that non-standard naked women were still controversial in 2007.

Cazz Blaze, citing the music press’ recession-induced drift towards conservatism, characterized by an increasing reliance on sponsorship and advertising, predicts little room for improvement in opportunities for women to express their emancipation rather than their objectification. Her characterization of online music publications like The Quietus as more conscientious about women as artists, readers, and writers, is an interesting point. It ties in with the idea of the internet as a space where female engagement with music can be expressed and explored without being dismissed as exclusively sex-centred or derided as juvenile inanity, and where female musicians themselves can harness the internet’s capacity for unregulated self-expression and audience interaction, frequently in ways which circumvent or combat industry and media-led imperatives on how women are meant to appear.

Despite the internet’s progressive potential for allowing female artists control over their own presentation, the reception of and reaction to that presentation remains beyond their control. After punk, and after riot grrl, the jury is still out on the political uses of the naked female form, and on their degree of effectiveness. Do images like those of Ditto and the Slits deconstruct and demystify the female body? How constructively do they inform debates on body image and female sexuality? In the eyes of observers male and female, are they validating alternative ways of being attractive, or are they merely putting forward an alternative cut of meat?

And, of course, should we be concerned at all with how a musician looks as opposed to how she – or he – sounds?

For a while it was. Then, when I started to pay attention to the chat, I started noticing some of the childish bravado, the internet tough-guys, mouthing off constantly. To them everyone is a “noob” or a “fag” or a “gay”; despite the chat admins and the auto-kick on certain buzzwords, people always managed to get the insults into the chat. Being called a “noob” for months on end gets tedious, especially when it is meant with such malice, said specifically to twist the knife and offend. Although I was never called any other heinous insults, I saw them all the time and it just made me sick with rage constantly. If I spoke up, I would receive a barrage of hatred poured in my face and most likely be targeted to be shot out of the sky.

Regrettably the disparities didn’t end there; female players had it pretty tough too. Despite the fact one of the top three players was a woman, the only thing anyone focussed on was the fact she is an exotic dancer in the real world. Automatically she was a “bitch” or a “slut” or a “slag”. Because obviously no woman could ever be legitimately better than her male counterparts without having done something deceptive or untoward, right? Ugh. What was the point in this sort of behaviour?

Occasionally, people defended themselves claiming it was “just banter” between the different ‘companies’ (of which there are three) or ‘clans’. More often than not it was just cruel, over-the-top and downright pathetic. Never before have I seen so many keyboard hard-nuts, of all ages, just ejaculating hatred everywhere.

The worst is yet to come though! Now we get to the issue of race. A friend of mine also plays this game. He’s a lot more into it and is a higher level than me and is pretty well-known on the server. Back in March this year he decided to change his name, and pretend he was retiring his account so he could have a bit of anonymous play. His new name was in Arabic characters. He played the game in the same fashion he had done before. Suddenly, just because he had an Arabic name, he was the most reviled player on the server.

I dare not repeat some of the insults that he got (that the chat admins allowed) because they were quite disgusting and appalling. He was at war with half his home Company within three days just trying to teach his attackers a lesson. His ex-clan mates insulted him, his friends made racist remarks; it was the worst case of inherent racism in Brits I have ever seen outside of an EDL rally.

A few weeks later, he revealed himself under his original name combined with his Arabic name. Just as miraculously as the rate they turned on him, wave upon wave of apologies came pouring through.

Now not all MMOs are like this, but as I said, I’m pretty reticent towards social gaming and this is just my experience of one. Unfortunately it was the first one I played, so I’ve been put off again! I am not sure if there are any conclusions we can draw from this, though. Perhaps that competition breeds a culture of anonymous internet bullying? Do people think they can get away with it just because they’re behind a computer? Are these the sort of opinions people really have but they censor themselves in real life? Either way, in some cases at least, the ideal of equality is pretty distant in the ‘social’ aspect of some MMOs, I fear. And that is not an easy medium to break into in order to educate. So for now, I suspect those of us who believe in equality might have to do a bit of MMO-hopping to find a community that isn’t full of bigots. My motto: don’t get comfortable until you’ve met the neighbours! Next time, I’ll talk about something more positive – I promise!

• Rai, at the tender age of 23, has been gaming for 15 years and writing for 10 – perfect combination! Watch this space for more Gamer Diary.

Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck

Anyhow, on to finer things.

Now, I particularly love Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck in the revamped Battlestar Galatica. And that in itself would be a Found Feminism, if it weren’t already enormously obvious, especially after everyone (well, some bloke) got their knickers in a twist over Starbuck being played by a woman.

For reference, a good interview with Ron Moore, the director, on that decision is here.

We can rejoice in that decision, and also now in the existence of (new) Starbuck as an internet meme.

Which brings me rather meanderingly to the actual Found Feminism. This hashtag: #thingsstarbuckwouldntsay, started off on Twitter by Katee herself.

Personal favourites, hand picked by fellow Bad Repper and Sci Fi nerd, Steve:

Does this flightsuit clash with my highlights?

I’m sure you’re all going the right way, … men always have a better sense of direction.

How many calories are in this drink?

I can’t go yet. I’m finishing my makeup!

Could Things Starbuck Wouldn’t Say be a Skippy’s List for Found Feminism?

So say we all.

• Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day? Share it here – send your finds to [email protected]!

Here are some examples of standard fare, from apparently male users. Apologies. They’re pretty grim.

#aGOODWOMAN knows how to shut the fuck up!!!!!!

#agoodwoman is always ready to give head!

#Agoodwoman cooks for u when u get in from work and gets up and cooks breakfast when u leavin to go to work

when y’all cheat, expect for it to be over… when us men cheat, you have to be forgiving and give us another chance… #rulesforgirls

#rulesforgirls When we say we wana watch football, that means no cleaning,no talking,NO FORM OF INTERACTION.We will Chris Brown you.

#ihatefemaleswho slap they boyfriend thinkin he wont hit you back

And my two favourites, from the same guy:

#IHateFemales Who want to be men. God gave you the best gift ever bitch, acknowledge it!

You tell her! Why on earth would she want to be a man? *scratches head*

#IHateFemales Who don’t see the beauty in them & still don’t take care of their bodies & looking decent.

Why can’t she see how beautiful she is? And maybe get a wax?

These make for depressing reading, and when you’re faced with a whole screenful and 60 more appear in a few minutes, it’s easy to feel hopeless.  But I don’t think what we’re watching is a misogynist Twitter takeover as some people have suggested. So what’s going on? I’ll start with some theories I have encountered and explain why I don’t think they’ll do as an answer.

A) “There are just more sexist idiots on Twitter / the internet than in Real Life”

I was at an event recently where Yasmin Alibhai-Brown spoke briefly about her recent run-in with Twitter, and was disappointed that the insight she chose to pass on to the room of feminists was to be careful of using Twitter because it’s filling up with horrible geeky misogynists.

Not really relevant, but I love it.

This comment on a blog post about hashtags clarified it for me: “I wish I understood how and why stupid hashtags become trending topics.”

Um. Because they’re popular?

Sorry everyone, I know you don’t want to hear this, but Twitter is people with misogynist views, at least if the trending topics are anything to go by. I would hazard that Twitter might feel like a feminist space that has been invaded by these ‘orrible ‘ashtags because you follow feminists. But we’re in the minority, just like in Real Life.

It’s much easier to craft your own media bubble online than offline, but it’s basically the same thing. If you read the Guardian, and hang out with other people who read the Guardian, then Guardian-y sort of opinions are going to appear to be the norm. Whereas the norm, in circulation figures at least, is actually the Sun. And then the Daily Mail.

Like I said, sorry.

B) “Because black people are more sexist than white people”

Click on a sexist trending topic hashtag. Everyone in the hashtag stream is African American. Therefore…

Just, whoa there. Wait a second. Since when are ALL BLACK PEOPLE represented by a subsection of a social network? Following that logic you might think that every single white person owns an iPad. And besides, there’s plenty of misogyny to be found in ‘white’ hashtags streams too – some of the trolling on #mooreandme for example – and on Twitter in general. Sexism isn’t restricted to hashtags.

I’ve seen a number of people describe trending topics hashtag streams as the ‘dark undercurrent’ or ‘dark side’ of Twitter.  I don’t think for a second that they were referring to the ethnicity of the users but I think it’s illuminating nonetheless. There are some fascinating (and sometimes toe-curling) discussions going on at the moment about ‘blacktags’ or ‘black people twitter‘ which I recommend checking out, in particular this comment.

I think it’s safe to say that there is greater uptake of the attitudes and poses of hip hop and R&B – genres notorious for misogyny and heavily polarised gender stereotypes – in the young African American twitter demographic than there is in, say, the middle-aged white British demographic, and that’s probably part of it.

But before you try and tell me that black people invented sexism (that must be why wholesome family entertainers like Jim Davidson hate them so much!) I recommend reading this 1994 article on misogyny and gangsta rap by bell hooks.

C) “Because the web encourages people to be shitheads”

There is definitely some truth in this one, and I can’t put it more eloquently than this.

I think it’s also about the hashtag format. It’s a joke, and there’s an age-old link between cheap gags and crude gender stereotypes. See also: your mum jokes, mother-in-law jokes, women driver jokes, blonde jokes, Essex girl jokes, nun jokes… Comedy, to some extent, encourages (or allows?)  people to voice more controversial opinions than they might in another context.

But I can’t help feeling that there’s more to it than a web 2.0 Bernard Manning routine. In Part 2 I’ll throw in my two cents about why sexist hashtags are so overwhelmingly popular.

Part 2 is now online here.