You are reading I Blame The Patriarchy, the patriarchy-blaming blog that advances the radical feminist views of Twisty Faster, a gentleman farmer and spinster aunt eating dinner in Austin, Texas.
I Blame The Patriarchy is intended for advanced patriarchy-blamers. It is not a feminist primer. See Patriarchy-Blaming the Twisty Way for details.
"I couldn't get Twisty's point. It was so longwinded." -- The Blogosphere
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So good to hear your voice again! So very good.
I hope your recovery is as speedy and pain free as possible. We miss you around these parts.
goddamn. Just when I thought I couldn’t love you more. Let’s hit hippie hollow together sometime. I’ll meet you at the burning bush. bring the leftover vicodin.
Damn, girl. your guts…just because the luck of the genetic draw isn’t giving you much choice does not diminish your sheer gut-itude. Heal quickly and well, chica. Living is the very best revenge.
Welcome back!
Every morning I’ve been checking in to see if you’re up and about and taking pix. This morning I was rewarded by you and your bandages and drains in the bathroom mirror.
I wonder if you comprehend how very relieved we are. I hope you do.
Welcome back, spinster aunt.
There ARE many gazongal truths, Twisty. Thanks so much for sharing yours with us. When I am tempted to disparage my breasts I remind myself how much pleasure they give me, and that what I’m unconsciously comparing mine to ISN’T EVEN REAL (media images, bah).
P/S What this doesn’t alter is that I would still “so make out with you†(very very gently, when you’re ready, hypothetically). XOXO-Jennifer
Welcome back — let me add to the “I missed you!” chorus!
Hey, good to see you vertical, even if only for the couple moments it took to snap and upload the pic.
Looks like you will have differently angled scars? It might be interesting to see them holga-ized eventually.
(Sorry, not trying to be creepy, I just see art-ish possibilities in all kinds of things. Ignore me as needed.)
Rest, dream of tacos and romping pups.
I hope this means the recovery process is going well.
Symmetry is beautiful, Twisty, and so are you.
By the way, while you were gone, your Spamulator ate one of my brilliant comments. Get right on that, will ya?
Glad to see you back. I hope Bert is in the kitchen preparing something spicy and bringing canned wine to your bedside frequently.
I assume you’re at home again, and eating better than at the hospital. Good to see you back in form.
Welcome back, Twisty! Your picture provokes a question in this patriarchy-blamer’s little brain: does your gazonga-free status mean you can now go shirtless in public?
(And which answer to this question would piss me off more at the patriarchy?)
Great to see you floorpendicular. That first shower is the best one. Welcome back!
Whew. Ow. And I’m glad to see you up and witnessing again. Yeah, losing bits and getting scars in return is crappy. Fear is crappy. Cancer is crappy. Mortality is crappy. And I still think drainage devices are creepy as hell, though I’m so old I know they’re an improvement on that mess with the bottle of water and the pair of tubes at the bedside. Feh, fuck it all; take those pain meds right on schedule and heal up and enjoy the dogs and tacos and rancho and get on to that Airstream trip.
There are good reasons for staying alive, even when the only way to manage that is all this barbaric 21st-century medicine crappy crap. For the lot of us, you’re one of them. Keep on, and good healing and much pleasure to you.
Hello Twisty,
Hope you recover quickly.
Huzzah! You’re one step closer to scandalizing the country-club ladies. Wishing you plenty of rest and good drugs.
Wishing you strong drugs, hot chicken soup, and plenty of women to tell you in person how beautiful you are.
Chiming in to wish you the best, Twisty. I hope you’re blaming comfortably soon.
Yay! You’re up!
Twisty, you’re back! And you’re brave and beautiful. Thank you.
You’re alive! I’ll be sending dreams of non-hospital cuisine your way!
I’m glad you’re back and blamin’.
Wow. Glad you are back online.
Another thing: Those drain tubes totally suck ass, don’t they?
By the way, is that a piece of surgical tape on your belly button? WTF?
Here’s to a speedy recovery, or at least a pain-free recovery thanks to great drugs.
You are an inspiration.
twisty, your strength is astounding.
i’m glad you’re up and around again.
xoxo, jared
You are beautiful. This post reminds me of what a pleasure it is to check out your blog.
Have a fried oyster soon,
Jill
Back in just 4 days. Truly, thy compassion for us knows no bounds.
I was really glad to see today’s post.
You are more beautiful every day. Shine on.
Twisty, you rocketh mightily and are a beacon of strength and grace. Really glad to see you back. Warm wishes for quick healing, little pain, good drugs and cheer from companions of choice.
Good, You’re upright. I hope I can catch some of your courage when I need it.
Glad you’re back Twisty. In the absence of your inspiration, my patriarchy-blaming had started to slip into simply patriarchy-whining some days.
Hey CafeSiren: Come up to Ontario…everyone can legally go shirtless here, gazongas or no!
Though I’ve never had a mastectomy, I have had a breast reduction, and GOD DAMN does breast surgery hurt like hell. Lots o’ nerves in them there gazongas. I hope your pain fades as quickly as possible, and that the meds they give you for it are A) effective and B) have no unpleasant side effects. Quick healing to you…
Not just a brave and inspiring blogger, but a brave and inspiring spinster aunt. You, for lack of a better word, rock.
You make me proud to be a spinster aunt.
Damn, it’s good to see you again. I wish you the speediest of recoveries. The tacos await you.
Blame on!
I was so happy and relieved when I checked in this morning and found a stunning self-portrait of the magnificent you, rather than that nasty bottle of magnesium citrate. I missed you.
So glad that you are back. So full of hopes for a pain-free and speedy recovery for you.
Awesome photo!
I’m so glad to see you, camera in hand. I hope you have folks giving you foot massages, or whatever feels good right now.
I’m relieved that you’re well enough to be up and posting and photographing. Holy shit, do I hate drain tubes. But I love you, Twisty! We all do. Recover quickly, and take good care of yourself.
Welcome back, Twisty. I hope you’re not in too much pain.
I’m with JMS.
hang in there!
Wow, Twisty. I can’t imagine what it must be like to go through that once, let alone twice. I hope your near and dear are waiting on you hand and foot.
Also, I’m surprised, but while the bruising and bandages and drainage stuff and all that medical ick looks absolutely godawful, what I can see of the other side actually looks just fine! Not to mention that you have beautiful arms. I hope like hell you beat this cancer bullshit and god knows the surgery and pain and worry is something I wish you had never had to suffer but in a weird and probably totally selfish way I’m somehow relieved, honestly, to see that the recovery not only doesn’t look disfiguring, it looks sensational. Beautiful with dignity, as Johnson says.
Welcome back, Twisty, many wishes for a speedy and relatively painless recovery!
Holy crap, Aunt Twisty, that looks like it hurts. I fervently hope your obstreperal lobe was not in any way damaged during this ordeal, either by a clumsy surgeon or the unholy chemicals pumped into you.
I blame the patriarchy for a medical establishment that can remove a prostate with little visible damage save the occasional lost boner (and oh, how the patriarchy cries over those lost boners), but carries out a boobalectoomy with such carnage that it looks like W thought insurgents were hiding in your mammaries.
This is my first time clicking the blame button. I must confess it’s sweeter than even Maker’s Mark.
You can be beautiful with big gazongas, small gazongas, or no gazongas. Glad you are on the road to recovery.
Thanks for updating us. If necessary, while you drain and recover and all, you could post assignments for blamers in the field. There are many here who would gladly shoulder their share of the blaming burden while you are taking care of yourself.
I’m so glad you’re back, Twisty. I’ve been thinking about you every day.
Damn, that’s a big watch! I hope the thing administers drugs, and on a timely basis.
Congratulations on your symmetry.
I offer a toast to your persistently fearless nature, wit and wicked charm.
You look great! (I”m SO glad you’re back!)
What they all said. Here’s to boob-free symmetry with minimal pain.
I’m hoping that you experience and easy recovery and a cancer-free future.
All my best– you’re an inspiration to me.
best wishes in the recovery. blame on.
Welcome back, and I’m glad you’re OK. The picture is amazing.
I missed you. I am glad you are back. It rained here, and made everything green. It’s cool, and lovely, and there are many birds calling — but there are no tacos. Or at least no good ones. I hope that’s because you are now getting to eat them all.
So glad you’re back…have missed you. Hope the drugs are very good.
That room looks hospitally, I hope this shot is you getting dressed to go home. I further hope you are breathing easy and have plenty of dangerous drugs.
Twisty -
I’ve read you for a long while, because you’re smart and funny. Over that time, I’ve come to realize that you’re much, much more than that.
Your intense beauty burns my eyes, but I don’t want to turn away, even if you take a picture of me and make fun of my astonished stare.
Get well quick.
~ de Selby
PS: I promise not to visit.
Thanks for sharing part of your experience with us.
Wabi-sabi: Japanese term indicating the surficial marks of wear, age, or use that signify the deeper beauty of a thing beloved for its history, familiarity, or utility.
Contrast with western ideals of grandeur, perfection, newness, and surface gloss.
Wabi-sabi was once characterized in a King of the Hill episode as “the imperfection that makes a thing more beautiful.” (Bobby was learning the art of growing perfect roses for flower shows. His rose had an aphid or black spot on one petal or something.)
Though my attempt to explain is lousy, I suppose anyone can google wabi-sabi and find better info. It’s a concept worth looking into.
(In any case, that will be, I promise, the last time I compare Twisty to a rose or useful object.)
T is for the tackiness you skewer
W is for the wacky way you blame
I is for indignant voice we treasure
S is for symmetrical all the same
T is for your Testy Texas accent
Y is for Your beauty, and what’s more
Put them all together they spell TWISTY!
The sassy spinster aunt we all adore!
(A brand new entry for Public Cans of Austin. )
This is how it’s done. For all of us looking for the way:
This is how it’s done.
Thank you Twisty.
Twisty, so happy (and not surprised) to see you standing. Sending you my absolute best fortifying vibes and wishes for a full recovery. I hope you’re back on the tacos and canned wine beat as soon as boobularly possible. In the meantime, I’ll be hanging out at the Institute for Varmint Research. I’m seeing so many new beautiful creatures lately. Thinking of you. xoxox
You look beautiful and fierce. I would so not mess with you.
Enjoy your painkillers, be well.
Thank you for the stunning update. Still hard at it even under such conditions. There aren’t words to describe what an inspiration you are, they’ve been co-opted by Hallmark. Take care.
What they all said. Be well and better soon.
not only are you a fantastic blogger, you’re a great photographer too.
be well. i’m thinking of you.
Tacos to Twisty!
oh honey, so glad to see you back here–up there–full frontal fabulous. Gentle, speedy recovery, beautiful one.
Twisty,
You’re going to think I’m really weird, but I’m going to say this anyway. Last night, I had a dream that you were fine and dandy, and up and about. This morning (UK time) I wake up and check, and there’s a new post from you, which was made during the time I was asleep. I’m a little bit freaked out by it. I promise I’m not an internet obsessive stalker type.
It is so good to see your latest post, and I’m really glad that your recovery appears to be going well. My mom had one boob ‘done’ just over 10 years ago and the hospital made her carry her drainage receptacle around in a supermarket carrier bag wherever she went, so I’m glad to see the technology has moved on.
I look forward to reading future blame!
Rawk. You’re vertical and making art. Good signs.
CafeSiren, I read an article some months back in Ireland’s Gay Community News about a lesbian who had breast cancer quite young–35, I think–and required a full double radical mastectomy to prevent recurrence in the one and development in the other breast. She delighted in her gazongal-free existence by running road races shirtless, to the consternation of many. She was tres badass (but still doesn’t hold a candle to our Twisty!).
The Twisty abdomen looks good and flat-ish.
One trusts that gas at least is already moving past the ex gonads and fairly painlessly withall.
One is unable to contemplate winter life without one’s warming pads of pectoral glandular fat and so a summer amputation appears retrospectively a very cunning plan, what.
Best wishes for a complication-free recovery from the cuts but thank christ at least one of the Austin World Dominiation Army has given up the fight; the *Tour de France is once again open for finding good odds about several competitors without the godlike Lance all over it.
*disclaimer: I only like the Tour for the betting, so don’t confuse me with fools who consider cycling to be any more noble than, oh, plucking live chooks through barbed wire mesh.
Oh, I am so glad you’re back! Wishing you a very gentle and a recovery as pain-free as possible.
Welcome home Twisty! Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Welcome home. I hope Burt behaves himself around you.
Hey, at least you are not a lawyer in Galveston! See: http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=746
What a strangely jaunty photo! “Here I am, all footloose and fancy free, with my big ol’ bandage and my lovely, lovely drain. I can only stop long enough to snap this as I pass, and then it’s off I go on a whirlwind tour of everything this fine, tiled institution has to offer. Wish you were here! Gotta dash! Ciao!”
Glad you’re up and about. Continued best wishes for a healthy, happy outcome to all of this.
Your truth is a beautiful thing, Twisty. Heal quickly.
Welcome back, Twisty. You’ve been in my thoughts. Glad to see you up and ready to blame.
twisty, you are awesome. glad you are home and healing. your photo series is a perfect rejoinder to the “pink ribbon” view of breast cancer as a cute and cheerful kind of cancer, best battled with perkiness and teddy bears, and an order of chemo on the side.
ann bartow — that is the funniest legal opinion i ever read. you trying to pop twisty’s stitches?
More best wishes from over here.
Bless You Twisty.
So glad to see you are over this hurtle. May all the rest be easy ones. Be well again, soon.
Kathy a - well, it’s nice to laugh at the patriarchy sometimes, don’t you think?
Best wishes, Twisty.
Yay, you! I missed you too, and you do have lovely arms. Not sure I’d choose it as elective surgery, but double mastectomy may have advantages, especially in this summer heat.
Thanks for communicating with your adoring readership, o you of many talents. May you be well soonest.
Whew! Good to see you up and about again! I wish you a speedy and complete (underline complete) recovery, warrior lady.
The Twisty is In The House and back on board. Yes! Nice pic girl.
One of the most expressive photos I’ve ever seen. It blows me away.
I’m so glad to see you back up on your feet.
If it is of interest, the woman mentioned above by apophenia is named Tania Katan, and is an incredible playright as well as a fellow BRCA bilaterally gazonga-free fabulous dyke. She also just wrote a memoir, which is pleasant light reading that I can imagine going quite well with vicodin-induced cloudy head, or perhaps a nice can of wine.
P.S. You’re beautiful.
P.P.S. Link to book: http://alysonbooks.stores.yahoo.net/1555838901.html
Fabulous photo!
Heal well and quickly.
You are amazing.
I would so not mess with you.
I know what ae meant by this, but I can’t help saying: Twisty, I would so mess (around) with you.
welcome back! I had a sidecar in your honor tonight.
Fanfuckingtastic!! So glad you are back. Thanks so much for your openness; it’s beautiful and truthful and amazing. Pippa xxx
Is it just me, or did I detect a whiff of Positive Mental Attitude in that picture?
;-)
Of course, it’s PMA with special Extra Spinster Spin, as only Twisty could do it.
Ahh, symmetry. Muscle shirts await you!
And for your PMA: when life gives you lemons, make a knot in the patriarchy’s hangy-thing and kick it in the balls! With kittens!
Wow - great to see you not just back online, but vertical as well! Even with a drainage tube, you look strong and fabulous. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t spend a few weeks reclining with air conditioning, books/DVDs, and tacos appearing magically by your side. May it be so!
Thank you for sharing your truth with us Twisty. Sending you angels of peace and healing. But don’t let go of the righteous anger. You rock!
Jeez, that looks to me like at least a week or two of no sneezing, coughing, laughing, wrestling, yodeling, or doing the limbo under 36″. I hope you can find some other occupations to pass the time until you’re healed. Now I am off to lobby my congress people to make laws demanding that all hospitals provide high speed internet connections and compatible digital cameras to all post surgery patients. The odds are pretty good that more than a few of us will one day find ourselves in a similar sutured-up, pared-down purgatory, and we need to know the deets of what to REALLY expect, not some fluffed up pink-washed sanitized version. Best wishes.
Good luck, Twisty! I hope you live to be a hundred and you never have to visit another doctor again the whole time. Also I hope you can get something to eat that’s a lot tastier than that bottle of magnesium citrate soon, soon, soon!
Woo HOOOOOO! She’s vertical and in-tha-house!
Yay! Twisty’s up and about! I think you look great — weird as that may sound — and symmetry suits you. Hope the drugs are good and recovery is quick.
They didn’t do the hysterectomy at the same time, did they? Surely that would be way too much for a body to take in one blow. So I guess that’s scheduled for later in the summer?
First off, I apologize for the fragmented sentences. However, that being said:
You are. The most. Amazing Person. I’ve ever. Come into contact with.
Thank you.
You are a fabulous person. Don’t the drainage tube drain away any of the patriarchy-hating bits of your guts.
I think that, while Twisty is recuperating, we might all do some blaming in her stead. I propose the following ad campaign by police in Suffolk, England:
“If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up. You could show off more than you intended — for all our sakes, please make sure you’re wearing nice pants [i.e. underwear] and that you’ve recently had a wax,” the article reads. “Better still, eat before you go out, think about how much you’re drinking, pace yourself and drink plenty of water in between bevvies or better still, don’t get in this sorry state — it’s not nice.”
The bulletin was apparently meant to be a tongue-in-cheek way of getting women to realize that passing out drunk might make them vulnerable to sexual attack. In other words, “It’s a joke, people!” But a statement by an official police spokesman betrays the underlying assumption:
“There have been a number of attacks on women who have been drinking and there is a serious safety message to get across.”
In other words, We’re not saying that a passed-out drunk woman is asking for it… but then again, we wouldn’t be too surprised.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1819074,00.html
Glad to see you up and about again. Hope you’re doing well. Remember, pain meds are our friends.
Damn!
That’s all.
DAMN!
BitchPhD said: Twisty, I would so mess (around) with you.
I think you’d have to wait in line — however, I suspect that, given the company we’d likely encounter in said line, the journey would be as much fun as the destination!
in lieu of a get-well-card, i send:
http://dailypuppy.com/
Great to hear your voice, Twisty, you’ve been missed.
Heart
rock on with your bad self.
Get well soon, Twisty, the photo is shocking and moving too.
I just made what may be the first female video game character who has thick arms and legs and no boobs. She’s beautiful too. I didn’t say anything to the guys here, hoping she’ll pass “under the radar”.
Hmmm. I made my welcome back post from another computer some time ago. Guess it’s sitting in moderation.
Welcome back, welcome home. Just plain welcome. I do notice, you’ve really got beautiful arms Twisty. And wow, you manage to hoist them up so high so soon.
Gawd, Twisty, you totally rock! Be well!
Hey, Twisty, it’s good to see you back online again.
I hope the rest of your recovery is swift & as pain-free as possible.
Glad you’re oot and aboot, Twisty. Hope you feel better soon!
Welcome back, Twisty.
I’m wishing you a steady and sturdy recovery.
Blame On :)
Hi Twisty - I’m late to this flurry of loving comments, but I’ll add mine anyway. I’m glad you’re back and I’m sending good thoughts your way.
ouch!
Wishing you fiestyness in the face of all bullshit.
Welcome back, and keep getting well.
Regarding the above posters who mentioned that they’ve dreamed about you; I have to admit that even though I hang out at PZ Myers’ site at least as much as I hang out here, only La Twisty is vivid enough to appear in my dreams. I always dream that you live in my neighborhood! Or, that I live in yours (I’d prefer that, I think. I really like Austin).
They left the obstreperal lobe alone, right?
Good to have you back. Be nice to yourself from now on, you deserve it.
Yay, it’s over. Hope you are eating something incredibly delicious right now.
Echoing the eloquence of the well wishers and well wishes.