Monthly Archive for July, 2005

I eat skin! Roasted chicken with leeks, potatoes, Brussel’s sprouts and a rose-raspberry-lime sauce

Americans have never heard of the Asian subcontinent, but I am pretty sure that even if they had, they wouldn’t give a fig for the plight of its female inhabitants-of-color. Which is why the only news that comes out of the region — or indeed, any other region — celebrates the male fixation on guns and bombs. Unless you peruse a bunch of Indian news websites while eating your dinner.

First stop, Northern Pakistan, where male godbags, always on the lookout for new and illegal ways to totally screw the ladies, have been hard at work striking blows for patriarchy. A bunch of asshole “tribal elders,” in a fit of nostalgia for the good old Taliban and its infectious, world-famous joie de vivre, have formally disinvited women from life’s rich pageant, barring them, either as voters or as candidates, from upcoming local council elections.

The Taliban, you may recall, is the group who popularized the humorous bumpersticker “Women. Can’t live with’em? Go ahead and shoot’em.”

Next, in Delhi, a “spurt in rape cases”; and its aftermath of PFT (Pure Female Terror) is being used as a pawn in an imbroglio between opposing factions in the government (secularists vs. fatwaists). At the furor’s epicenter is, what else, a pitiful helpless rape victim from some hick town who’s been oppressed by Muslim clerics. Brutalized by her father-in-law, Imrana was subsequently informed by her provincial panchayat that, since she’d had the nerve to get raped, she’d have to remove herself from the midst of her husband and five kids. She is apparently haram, which is Shariatese for “uncool”; Not only has this whimsical fatwa had rather a polarizing effect on the Indian populus, it has also turned the popular parlor game “blame-the-victim” into a sort of bloodsport. Since politicians the world over love nothing so much as giving a crap about pitiful helpless rape victims in front TV cameras, Imrana has become, à la Terry Schiavo, the most famous woman in India. Unlike Schiavo, who had the luxury of being brain-dead,  Imrana remains a sentient being, and appears to be suffering a nervous breakdown as her tragic life morphs relentlessly into public spectacle.

Onward to Chhattisgarh, India, where a “spurt” (the technical term) of “atrocities on women” has resulted from the habit of self-appointed witch-hunters to traipse through the countryside, point the fickle finger of fate at women they don’t like and shout “j’accuse!” The astonishing effect of this astonishing behavior is the torture and murder of the accused. In response, the Indian government is looking to make sorcery a felony, which they seem to think will protect women who don’t practice it from being accused of practicing it and thereby getting themselves brutalized.

Fun facts to know and tell: The UN has estimated that, since 1984, more than 2500 women have been murdered in India because their countrymen had the impression they were witches. Think this is just provincial hoodoo? Think again! Guess how many sorcerers have been murdered in the UK and Australia in the past 5 years? Four thousand!

Next week we travel to witch-plagued Australia, where women, in apparent droves, have taken to hovering over toilets!

UPDATE: Several alert readers have expressed the viewpoint that 4000 murdered witches in the UK and Australia seems a suspiciously high figure. It now appears that the UN report to which I allude does not exist. A bit of research shows that the website from which I got the statistic is a bit on the godbaggish side, and so must necessarily be suspect. If facts are your bag, see the comments section for details.

UPDATE II: Over 170 Pakistani women have issued a giant "fuck you" to the male douchebags who banned them from participation in elections, and have registered as candidates "with full enthusiasm."

Oprah flashes the Secret Sign of the Vulva to her fanatical cult followers, probably a signal to go see the new Tom Cruise movie (photo O Magazine, June 2005)

Despite the world’s vast reserves of sublimely crappy literature that remain largely unmocked by my giant brain, over there on the floor of the Twisty laboratory lie the remains of the June 2005 issue of O, the magazine of condescending consumerist heterosexual domesticity as prescribed by Oprah Winfrey.

Holy moly! I hate to admit it, but this magazine may be too big for one lone patriarchy-blaming blog. If, in handling the object, I had not sensed the toxins of white male supremacy leaching into my system through its poisoned ink, I believe I might have been able to spew out an impressive body of work on the thousand-and-one ways in which this single issue, with its sadistic leitmotifs and opprobrious subtexts, functions as a de facto instruction manual for the straight woman who pursues total assimilation by the patriarchal mothership. As it is, I only ingested only a few articles before I involuntarily emitted an unusual noise and chucked the thing against the wall. I’d osmosed enough patriarchy to compel me to check out my butt in the bathroom mirror, but not so much that I hated myself for discovering that I’d had my sweatpants on backwards all day. It was a close call.

The June issue contains a “special report” on, what else, men. But this is Oprah’s magazine; no mere reportage here. No. In fact, Oprah’s vital and clairvoyant information will “change forever the way you think about men” (emphasis mine). That is, if you had previously thought of men as sentient beings, you no longer will. It turns out that men are “Neanderthals,” and if your life’s dream is to amass a repertoire of bogus tips and tricks that promise to make life with the “monosyllabic male of your choice” bearable, you’ve come to the right place.

Having studied in my lab the magazine’s advertising, content, and tone (in searching the rich canon of women’s magazines, the aficionado of patriarchal propaganda will be hard-pressed to find a match for O’s tone: a bizarre coalescence of the authoritative, the slumber-partyal, the glib, and the insipid), I have determined that the magical world of Oprah is populated by just such a species of tip-and-trick-seeking woman. She is in her 30s, white, middle class, desperately miserable, with a deep sense of isolation from her distant, inscrutable man, and a pathological compulsion to shop. Judging by Oprah’s near-universal appeal, such women must exist in droves, the inevitable product of the dominant culture’s disdain for them as receptacles, as well as its enthusiasm for producing both distant, inscrutable men and shopping malls. But Oprah can save them! Every page is like a bright yellow box of Empowerment Bonbons (You’re Special! You’re Strong!), but with Crispy Cockroach Centers (Now change your impossibly inadequate self into a sleek, professional man’s woman! Here’s how!).

According to Oprah–well, not the celestial Oprah Herself, but the more earthly harem of avuncular shrinks and sassy sexperts and shopping editors through whom Oprah speaks–the white heterosexual woman must study, and study hard, to become a tool of the patriarchy. She must manipulate. She must buy the right bathing suit. She must say the right things at the right times. She must flush her non-relationship interests down the crapper and express a fascination for his non-relationship interests. Like the 4th Earl of Chesterfield once said, no doubt addressing his irate Pops after getting sent down from Cambridge, “the knowledge of the world is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various editions of them.”

So too must the Oprah Woman employ a repertoire of cunning techniques to bring about the desired result (which result appears to be the ability to tolerate her miserable oppression). Here are a few samples of the cunning techniques. I swear I didn’t make any of’em up. How do these people write this crap with a straight face? It’s 2005!

• Don’t try to talk to him during football season.
• If he tries to cook, get out of the kitchen until it’s time to clean up.
• Don’t be argumentative.
• Admire him for being tough.
• Shut up.
• Acquaint yourself with the career of Peyton Manning.
• “Meet every protest and argument he makes, no matter how ridiculously false, with the observation that he is absolutely correct…in boxing this is called rope-a-dope.”
• Rent a Steven Seagal movie.
• Accept that the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is one of his favorite things.
• If you want him to fix the shower drip, whatever you do don’t nag; instead, remove the shower head, bring it to him and say “uh-oh, stupid me, I tried to fix it myself but now the drip is worse!” Then offer to bring him his power drill.
• If you want to comfort your man, don’t try to soothe him with a home-baked pie; for the lovagod, tell him how powerful he is.

The centerfold of O The Oprah Magazine is a calendar for the month of June. On it is a picture of Young Elvis posing on a surfboard. Printed in each square, so you’ll have an extra little slice of patriarchy every day, is either a professionally-crafted, patriarchy-affirming inspirational quotation (“He looked at me, bestowing beauty, and I took it for my own”) or patronizing words of advice (“Men often feel compelled to help fix whatever is bothering you. So unless you’re ready to hear solutions regarding your annoying coworker, save the moans for your female friends.”).

Here’s a good one: “Whatever you need to say to the man in your life, don’t hem and haw. Just say it before he’s tempted to tune out–men appreciate brevity.”

How is it possible to read a thing like that and not be an idiot? I mean, the act of reading it literally confers upon the reader actual idiocy. Either you believe that by moulding your behavior to encompass this odious Dr Phillian worldview your life will improve, which makes you an idiot, or you are reading it in spite of knowing that it’s horseshit, which makes you an even bigger idiot. Idiot, I tell you, either way.

And by “you” I of course mean “me.”

Addendum: naturally, because I am an idiot, I forgot to address the one issue I set out to address, namely, why do women who like syllables hook up with men who don’t like syllables? Or if, after discovering that the dearth of syllables in their lives is killing them quietly, why don’t they just leave the anti-syllabite motherfuckers? It’s because of Oprah-fucking-Winfrey, that’s why, and all the rest of patriarchy’s brown-nosing buttmunches. Yaaah!

Addendum II: Thanks to Deana Jo for this link to Flea’s take on this very same issue of O. She undertakes to apply the advice contained in an article entitled "How To Get Through To A Man," with hilarious results!