Monthly Archive for May, 2005

Field Guides: A Feminist Reading

Published by Twisty on May 30, 2005. 3 Comments

Damsel_blueringeddancer

The female is brown! Male blue-ringed dancer, Argia sedula. Photographed by Twisty in Blanco County, TX May 24, 2005

I reveal no secrets when I confide that science is no bastion of feminist thought. This can be demonstrated in any number of ways, most recently and notoriously by Harvard honcho Larry Summers’ pronouncement on the innate inferiority of the female mind, but today I draw the reader’s attention to a slightly less flashy example: the conventions of the field guide.

If you’ve never seen one — and if you are not a hopeless nerd, there’s no reason you should have — a field guide is a compendium of the identifying characteristics of the extant species of the order or suborder under discussion, comprising photographs and descriptive blurbs used to aid the natural historian in expanding her zoological horizons when she takes to the countryside with her binoculars and notebooks and snake bite kits and, if she is wise, sandwiches.

I am an amateur nerd, so I possess a buttload of these handy books, and keep one or two of’em on my person at all times. I’m sure it would surprise you if it had escaped my notice that, in describing birds or damselflies or snakes, authors of field guides tend to regard the male example as the default. Discussion of the female is almost without exception relegated to some ancillary paragraph, where her characteristics are presented in terms of their divergence from the male “standard.” Sometimes the females are not even represented in the photos.

This convention has no particular scientific benefit and contributes nothing to the epic scope of human knowledge (and, when your specimen is female and there’s no picture to be found, is in fact a big pain in the ass). The practice is merely the reflection of a wider sexist bias, which regards the female of any species as a variant of normal.

It may seem a fine point, but these little digs add up.

Posted in El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

MediocrityWatch ‘05

Published by Twisty on May 29, 2005. 2 Comments

Lennysquiggy

I can’t remember which one was Squiggy

It’s fun and easy to mock the Huffington Post, the new mega-metablog of cutting-edge Hollywood thought (oxymoron), so let’s get started!

I’m not saying there’s nothing worth reading on that thing (I enjoyed this piece by some apparently famous guy named Adam McKay, who writes with some competence that which no lefty can resist: one of those futile, reasoned appeals to the deranged right that they come to their senses for their own good), but really, who but the most afflicted fan gives a crap about how some 2nd-tier TV actor feels about the political situation in Africa? He who requires Christine Lahti’s views on current events must also require a hole in the head.

Incidentally, who the heck is Arianna Huffington, anyway? Besides, as The New York Times calls her, "a bold-face name" who ran against the Governator? I mean, what’s with the accent?

Currently and comically, the Huffington Post features the musings of a TV sitcom writer who uses the platform to deplore, apparently without irony, the appalling mediocrity of today’s TV sitcoms. Agreeing with the author’s premise isn’t difficult, especially when you consider that if the guy’s somewhat uncertain relationship with the nuances of the English language is typical for his species, it’s no wonder network comedy is in the crapper. For instance, he titles his post "Wither Squiggy." Does he demand Squiggy’s desiccation? Does he mean to reintroduce the extinct interrogative adverb, as in "Whither Squiggy?" Or is he calling Squiggy a castrated goat? I realize it’s the 21st Century, a perilous time for the American intellect, and that standards are slipping, and that the president says "nukular," and Johnny Can’t Read, but shouldn’t "has writing skills" still be one of the main qualifications for "writer"?

Which brings me to the point of all this: If everybody who isn’t a credentialed logician would just avoid the phrase "it begs the question" when what they really mean is "it raises the question," the world would at least give the appearance of being a much less stupid place. Every time I hear this term abused by some supposedly educated pundit it is as a dagger through my heart. Which is a felony, though, sadly, not much enforced.

Posted in Easy Persiflage. Bite me, Chad.

Sex

Published by Twisty on May 28, 2005. 20 Comments

Readers may recall a recent vituperative essay in which I identified the global preoccupation with sex as a sort of pandemic hysteria. I brandished my acute grasp of the obvious with the cunning observation that our culture is obsessed with sex. Obsessed, I opined, to the extent that people who aren’t obsessed with sex are considered nutbags. Synchronicitously, a recent article in Salon about those wacky asexuals touches on this very issue. Asexuality, it turns out, is highly dangerous!

Advocates of sex obsession — by whom I mean the entirety of the male population, as well as that new crop of saucy gals who believe that orgasm ‘empowers’ them — hype the idea that copulation is as essential to human health as pizza pie. They cite the hard-wired urge to reproduce as natural selection’s way of ensuring the success of the species. People should be obsessed with sex, they argue, because that’s what Nature intended. Sex is natural.

Yeah. Natural like a fox! The sex = health equation is a load of dicksmoke.

The biological imperative argument may support the occasional reproductive boink, but it hardly makes the case for nonstop hottt sexxx as the loftiest pinnacle of human endeavor. As far as procreation is concerned, sex is superfluous. Neither is it required for orgasm, or even intimacy. Nor is it the founding principle of love. Sex has not become society’s governing motif just because it’s “natural.”

Nope, the global sex fetish, once you cut through all the crap about bonding and fulfilling biological destinies and making a gift of your genes to posterity–Nature could give a fig for you and your genes — is an entirely arbitrary construct used for control and ritual domination. It’s a culture virus, the egoist conceit of — that’s right — patriarchy.

Sex as the ultimate human raison d’être is, in fact, a cornerstone of the male supremacist agenda. After all, men seem to be the only ones afflicted with this overarching need to copulate. That’s because, as every girl who has ever met a teenage boy knows, they get sick and die if they can’t fuck! You know! Blueballs! They die from blueballs, a condition in which the ungratified boy suffers piteously disfiguring boils, brain lesions, spina bifida, blindness, and psychosis before his miserable, frustrated life is extinguished by the spontaneous combustion of his toxically elevated testosterone.

But no woman needs sex. She may like it, and because of that she may want it from time to time, but if there were no patriarchy — by which I mean, if she were not a member of the sex class — her submission to ritual domination would remain, like the whipped cream on a mocha frappuccino at Starbucks, entirely optional. But there is patriarchy, and she is a member of the sex class, and as such, expression of her sexuality is permitted only in terms of male prurience. It is her sacred duty to prevent blueballs, and what’s more she’d better like it, or she’s a frigid crazy bitch lesbian who thinks she’s above a good ass-whuppin.

So is it any wonder that sexperts are circling the wagons against the notion of asexuality as a legitimate orientation? As we have seen, patriarchy relies for its continued success on precise regulation of penis placement. But like the frigid crazy bitch lesbians, asexuals are bucking the system. Their idea that rutting is boring or meaningless or revolting is antithetical to the patriarchal position, so naturally efforts to quash this seditious shit are well under way. The Salon article gets this astonishing remark out of a prominent male sex therapist: “[...] to say that someone is ‘asexual’ is tantamount to saying that they’re not a human being.” And this fuckard is by no means alone. Big mental health cheeses place enormous importance on screwing, and judge that, at best, the asexual has “issues,” and at worst, a dangerous anti-social psychosis. The medical establishment wants to cure these poor, sick, uncooperative bastards.

Hey homos! Sound familiar?

Posted in Men Hate You and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.

Dinner From Another Planet

Published by Twisty on May 27, 2005. 4 Comments

Spinach salad with sprouts and bacon

Spinach salad with assorted pious sprouted legumes and smoked bacon

Chicken with leeks and potatoes

Roasted chicken, potatoes, and leeks with wine juice

The aisles of the Central Market on South Lamar are at all times bulging with the buffest, most sinewy women on earth. They are the Vigorocracy, that class of Austin women with enough time for physical fitness and enough money for $8-a-pound bell peppers.

I can’t say where they get their dough, but I do know that they didn’t get buff and sinewy by eating food that tastes good.

Which is why yesterday, when I asked the butcher for a chicken breast with the skin on, he was startled. He had never sold such a thing before. He scanned me for signs that I might be some kind of escapee. I explained that I am from the planet Obstreperogon, where chicken skin, with its luscious subcutaneous fat, is one of the three major food groups (the other two: tacos, Dr. Pepper). On Obstreperogon nobody wants to live so long that they get put in a home and made to wear diapers.

Also on Obstreperogon, people who show little or no interest in delicious food are considered mentally ill. There is legislation prohibiting them from getting married or adopting foster children. And there are huge court battles over food education. Many people don’t want their kids learning about Kraft Macaroni and Cheese or Hot Pockets. They are afraid that the kids, intoxicated by artificial flavorings, will be lured into a life of etiolate banality by the siren call of convenience.

Anyway: unpeeled chicken roasted until crisp in a hot, hot convection oven. Go!

Posted in Bloodsport and Morsel Institute. Bite me, Chad.

The Slothful Gourmet

Published by Twisty on May 25, 2005. 0 Comments

Porky_creek

Of the many pressing responsibilities visited upon the modern spinster aunt, splashing around in idyllic Hill Country swimming holes with the young relative (and afterwards repairing to a shady grove for a light lunch that was prepared by somebody else) is among the most challenging. Yesterday I was able to complete the aforementioned project in a mere three-and-a-half hours, and was back in the lime green recliner with a book of bell hooks essays in plenty of time to watch Bertie Wooster in that witty, sentimental doctor show on Fox.

Springroll_cm

I am pleased to report that this feat of spinster aunthood was accomplished with the aid of shrimp spring rolls from Central Market, which–after factoring in ease-of-use, fat content, palatability, and the degree of sloth their implementation allows you to get away with–don’t suck. At first I was reluctant to try them because of their apparent connection to the sushi department. I mean, let’s face it; grocery store sushi flouts laws of physics by managing to be both gummy and desiccated at the same time. But the spring rolls were glossy and not unfresh-like. Minty, basily, shrimpy, carroty, vermicelli-y. The only flaw was the slightly sub-par peanut sauce, but lazy mofos buying spring rolls in grocery stores can’t have everything.

Posted in Austin, Easy Persiflage, El Rancho Deluxe and Morsel Institute. Bite me, Chad.

Gulag Guantánamo

Published by Twisty on May 25, 2005. 0 Comments

Patriarchy’s Big Party Bonfire is emitting particularly toxic fumes today: I give you Amnesty International’s Report 2005. Will I spoil the ending for you if I reveal their conclusion that the global situation stinks?

The report’s introduction features remarks by AI’s secretary general, Irene Khan, who describes white male supremacist response to recent events in Darfur as “the lethal combination of indifference, erosion and impunity that marks the human rights landscape today. Human rights are not only a promise unfulfilled, they are a promise betrayed.”

Of interest is Khan’s observation that the fun-loving Christian Bush administration is doing everything in its power to globally abolish human rights by supporting the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere. The U.S., she writes, “sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide. When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity and audacity.”

You know Patriarchy Lie #1? That’s the one that says “from here on in, us white guys will be calculating the value of various human beings, and once we act on our conclusions, you rabble will know no end of personal fulfillment!” If you believe this lie — and almost everybody does, on some level, or this shit could not continue — you know that the promise of your better life hinges on stripping essential little bits of humanity from fellow members of your species. Over the years, some of this helpful differentiating has resulted in:

  • genocides, such as that of native Americans
  • slavery, such as that of Africans in America*
  • the permanent status of women as a sex class
  • imprisonment of the mentally ill
  • vilification of the poor
  • legalized discrimination against homosexuals
  • illegal but persistent discrimination against anyone who isn’t a straight white male
  • Wal-Mart

*(In 21st century USA, genocides, like jobs, have been moved offshore, and African slaves have been replaced by Mexican illegals.)

The implementation of state-sanctioned differentiation between the value of human beings is the process by which Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and the Hutu genocidières and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Miloševi? and all the other best-selling murderers of the past 75 years were able to secure the misery and deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Like those guys, the Bush administration claims it’s helluva tough. It says it can distinguish between good guys and bad guys, and that if they get rid of all the bad guys, the good guys will live long and prosper. Homosexuals and Koran-readin’ terrorists and stuffy educated liberals and ugly women, prepare to be thrown!

But has the oppressor’s promise been fulfilled? Has the assault on gay marriage made straight white families richer or smarter or less obese? Has the war on drugs cured addiction? Has the torture of political prisoners made the world safe for democracy?

In other words, has the practice of differentiation procured a better life for the lucky few who manage to comply with their beloved patriarchy’s rigorous standards of homogeneity? Sure, if you count as a better life the opportunity to furnish your house with cheap crap from China, or the opportunity to go shoot motherfuckers in Iraq, or the opportunity to be taught that creationism is hard science.

So, young onions, it’s beginning to look as if patriarchy has pretty much botched shit up. 30,000 people still starve to death every day. We still have global warming. We still have Peak Oil. There’s no cure for AIDS or cancer or Alzheimer’s. Meanwhile, rapists are getting government-sponsored Viagra. Awesome.

Posted in Patriarchy, my patriarchy. Bite me, Chad.

Twisty Mirrored in Lilliputian Frog

Published by Twisty on May 24, 2005. 3 Comments

Frog_cricket_blanchards
Blanchard’s Cricket Frog, Acris crepitans blanchardi, pictured at roughly three times its actual size. Photographed by Twisty in Blanco County, May 2005.

I admit it; I Blame The Patriarchy has been egregiously light on frog content lately. This contingency reflects an unfortunate convergence of disparate and inflexible cosmic forces. For instance, the non-frog-related demands of spinster aunthood–such as the obligation to lounge on decks with pitchers of margaritas–are many. Furthermore, it cannot be said that the amphibians of Central Texas are not a fairly aloof bunch. But this morning I pried, with some effort, the Twisty kiester off the lime green recliner, saddled up the dog, and did hie to my country seat, El Rancho Deluxe. My mission: to stalk the elusive A. crepitans.

The excellent stream traversing the northern third of El Rancho Deluxe more or less throbs with these microscopic chappies–at less than an inch long, they are extremely wee–all year long. It is a pleasure to see them leaping hither and yon in such plenitude, since frogs are generally an indicator of riparian robustness, and I am totally pro-riparian.

The species is already extinct or endangered in much of the Monsanto-ized Midwest.

And what of the cricket frog’s natural history? Nothing too dramatic, I’m afraid. They lounge on riverbanks impersonating stones until you come galumphing along, and then they plip into the shallows. Their lives are otherwise spent feasting on invertebrates. They disdain to stray further than a yard or two from the water. They make a noise like two marbles knocked together.

You will note that the habits and customs of this species have much in common with those of the author.

Posted in Austin, El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

MediocrityWatch05

Published by Twisty on May 23, 2005. 2 Comments

Darth_mm

A few questions:

Why do soft drink companies keep poisoning perfectly good soda with cherry and vanilla?

Why do large teenage boys ride those tiny bicycles?

And finally, is it just me, or is the Darth Vader mystique losing, more or less, its luster? Lately whenever I’m out swinging a dead cat my follow-through is impeded by the ubiquitous Lord of the Dark Side taking a comedic turn as a spokestoon. He shills for Cingular, he puts the death-choke on a talking M&M, and he appears unable to prevail in a staring contest with a papier-mâché Burger King.

Speaking of death chokes, I was forced to channel-flip last night, and it was inevitable that I should land, for a time, on the heretofore-unviewed-by-me Star Wars clone movie. Years of “Worst. Movie. Ever.” hype assiduously promulgated by greater minds than mine had failed to adequately prepare me.

I don’t know about you, but when my boyfriend starts throwing shit around the room and wails about how he has just singlehandedly massacred an entire trailer park full of aliens in a vengeful rage, I’m all like “Whoa, red flag! Later, Kujo!” But what does sylphy cipher Natalie Portman do when mopey young Aryan Anakin Skywalker makes exactly that confession? “To be angry,” she says vacantly, for she is a human fortune cookie,“is to be human.” And she strokes his little Darth Vader cheek. And she marries him. In a dress that looks like one of those macramé slings used for potted philodendrons in the 70’s.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about that clone movie.

Posted in Easy Persiflage. Bite me, Chad.

Texas State Senate Royally Screws 10% Of Population

Published by Twisty on May 22, 2005. 2 Comments

Markarian

Chanteuse-turned-gay-sexpert Mary Ann Markarian, who informed the state senate that homosexuality is illegal in Texas, relaxes casually on the bank of the River Styx with Jesus and two red-headed step-children

 Quelle surprise, the Texas State Senate has passed HJR6, otherwise known as the Gay Hate Bill. It’s the gay-hatin’ sensation that’s sweepin’ the nation! HJR6, which bans gay marriage, is vile on countless levels, one of the most idiotic of which is that gay marriage is already illegal in Texas, and one of the most sickening of which [via PinkDome] is that it’s such a beloved slice of Wonderbread in The Aryan Brotherhood’s loaf (remember the killer attack dogs?), and one of the most disenheartening of which is that this will be the first time a specific group has ever been pointedly earmarked for public scorn by the Constitution.

Gay marriage, you will recall, would be just and fair. But legislators are duty-bound to divert attention from their failure to do any actual good in the world. What to do, what to do? Wait! I know! No cheap ploy rouses the ultraright rabble like a spot of gay-bashing! An ancient sport, always a crowd-pleaser! In most cases the pleased crowd in question are unable to coherently articulate what really tighties their whities about homosexuals, but do they seem to grasp, however vaguely, that their beloved jesusbag patriarchy can’t survive if people are allowed to go around making personal decisions willy-nilly, without paternalistic state intervention, about penis placement.

According to In The Pink Texas, testimony in the Senate committee by "Mistress of the Dark" Mary Ann Markarian, a woman who has clearly inhaled more than her share of dicksmoke, breathed new life into the Art of the Asinine with this stunning remark:

"The average male homosexual has hundreds of sex partners in his lifetime – 43 percent of male homosexuals had 500 or more partners. If homosexuality is legalized in Texas, it will increase and it will grow, sending the wrong message to our schoolchildren. Deaths will increase because of different diseases.”

Sex sex sex. Dude, I’ve had it up to here with sex as the pandemic human idée fixe. Were you aware that, in Ohio, inserting a tampon is “sexual conduct”?* Male supremacists dream of nothing but rutting. They’re either trying to do it themselves or trying to keep other people from doing it, or doing/not doing it and lying about it, or trying to buy it or sell it or videotape it, or blowing the whistle on people who aren’t supposed to be doing or buying or selling or videotaping it, or telling people who aren’t doing it that they are doing it, or telling people who are doing it that they’re doing it wrong.

People who dare not to be obsessed with it have to join support groups.

It’s a prong-or-be-pronged world.
__________________________

* via 100 Monkeys Typing

Posted in Patriarchy, my patriarchy. Bite me, Chad.

Pregnant Teen Emerges Victorious Over Fucktard Sexist Hypocrisy

Published by Twisty on May 19, 2005. 3 Comments

Alysha_cosby

This is what I’m talking about: an Alabama high school senior, forbidden to participate in graduation , went to the ceremony, called out her own name, and walked across the stage anyway. She was removed, along with her mother and aunt, by police. This girl’s name is Alysha Cosby, and she is my hero.

Why was Alysha banned from graduation? Because she is pregnant, and there are few spectacles as offensive to the delicate white American eye as an unmarried pregnant black teenager. She has shamelessly had teen sex, which is insult enough, but her blackness makes her thoroughly intolerable. She has to be punished.

Thus did Alysha Cosby’s school, which is run by misoygnist Catholic barbarians, reduce Alysha, an honor roll student, to the status of her uterus. They ostrasized her, first by forcing her to switch to homeschooling as soon as they found out about the pregnancy, then by making with the graduation ban, and finally bringing it on home with the crowd-pleasing police intervention. Why stop there, Catholic barbarians? Why not sew a scarlet “A” on her blazer? Or how about tar and feathers? Or you could dust off the good old pillory. Or just stone her to death in the public square!

It is one of our culture’s most cherished pastimes, punishing young women for pregnancy. This is completely insane, given that in our patriarchal state women are, at every turn, denied access to means that would allow them to prevent pregnancy. Women are the sex class. We are the whores and the baby machines. From the cradle we are taught to submit. Sex education is a joke. Birth control offends the Baby Jesus. Current nutbag legislation will make abortions even more difficult for teenagers to obtain.

In a patriarchy, women do not control intercourse. Mandatory female submission to intercourse is the dirty secret of our species. Womens’ reproductive organs are the property of the male supremacist state, which tells us when, how, where, and by whom they can be used. Deviate from protocol and you’ll wish you were dead. Which is why Alysha Cosby’s fuck-the-establishment graduation stroll was nothing short of heroic.

Just as Janet Jackson had to take the heat for Justin Timberlake’s exuberant Superbowl pawing, it goes without saying that the boy who fertilized the egg in question, also a graduating senior, was welcomed at the ceremony with open arms.  Nice.

Thanks Feministing for the link.

UPDATE: For some reason this post has been a magnet for comment spam, so comments are now closed. If you got somthin’ to say about it, email me direckly.

Posted in Patriarchy, my patriarchy. Bite me, Chad.