Failure to edit and re-reread before posting duly noted. agin.

But I am aware of Twisty’s love of the English language and the desire for a readable, non-frat like, non-’look at me look at me’ discussion of rad fem. And I know that i can be like that at times.

I acknowledge too, that in the internet world, it’s considered polite to get to know the joint before one butts in and makes the same sorry old mistakes that every other newbie makes – whereupon the old hands have to fight the impulse to call out ‘RTFM’! Or not fight it, as the case may be.

don’t take the above as a slap-down – please! contribute! the internet is full of cantankerous narks (like me!) who take potshots at arguments for no other reason than because they can. you must learn to ignore them, or atleast – not take them personally – or never post again. ever. anywhere. :)

anyway. this is a wonderful place. glad you’ve found us etc etc. post often, make insightful comments and go forth and change the world.

What I meant was ‘Right – so this is the situation we face’. With behind it being..so let’s gird our loins (or staff the battle stations, or something) and take action. But I can see it was more likely to be read as –’No, she’s wrong’. A sarcastic ‘yeah, right’.

I agree with every single thing you say.

I can’t tell you how delighted I was to find IBTP a week ago. Such is my enthusiasm that I only lurked for a week before leaping in to say ‘hi’!

And once I’d pressed the blame button I realised I’d made a couple of editing errors as I shifted stuff around to try to make my argument. And, later, reading the archives, I realised I’d disobeyed Twisty’s exhortion not to start a sentence with an ‘Uh’. Or use ellipses … (which I had to look up what they were, cos my we weren’t taught grammar in my time). (I read the FAQs! I really did. Then I forgot a bit of them.)

When I realised my mistakes, I was a bit embarrassed. But I remembered a poster on another thread who said ‘the Blaming experience can be harsh, but bracing, and just what one needs to get a jolt, like a riding crop on a horse’s ass. Gets you moving’ and thought, oh well, I’ll just have to take my medicine but it will sharpen my thinking.

So, to spare both old hands, and my pride, I think it might be an idea for me to lurk a bit longer to get more of a sense of the place. Read the archives. And to leave my writing for a while before I post. To try not to be longwinded. To edit more. Then edit again.

“Molony is no oil painting himself, but he was simply stating the bleeding obvious about human nature: that market forces work in dating, too. When competition for men is stiff, as it is, for instance, in inner-city Sydney, the most alluring female will win. And when men outnumber women in a dating environment, as they do in the mining town of Mount Isa, their standards are more likely to slip than women’s.”

Uh huh. Right.

Miranda D might not be much more than a grand tizzy of nothingness, but the woman does, every now and again make some good points (as much as it pains me to say that about anyone of the further reaches of the right, credit where credit is due. there was an article she did a few years back on fearmingering about TSS and tampon useage, and the resulting number of young women being scared out of engaging in sports activities because they thought they’d DIE that was just awesome.)

anway… sorry. Diverted. But the above.

If you accept there is a patriarchy; that the patriarchy is the matrix; the it governs most rules of social interaction and most woman are engaged in patriarchy affirming behaviour, including beautification, partner-seeking etc.. the… why uh hu right to the above statement, which wholeheartedly supports those notions? What MD describes above is a statement of the actual reality of our present circumstance – indeed, the most alluring women (or, substitute in patriarchy affirming woman) would have the highest number of “successes”; if success if based on attraction of mates. You obviously read smh – did you come across the article this weekend or last talking about how attractive women apparently “trade up” at a far greater rate than the rest of us: market forces indeed was dictate their available pool of potential partners is larger than that for the rest of us, whose generally hideous, unadorned appearance is such that it would reduce said pool.

as to the men: really? you don’t think their standards would hit rock bottom if that was the pool available to them?

This, from the article, will give you some idea of Miranda’s defence of that poor, misunderstood Mayor:

“Molony is no oil painting himself, but he was simply stating the bleeding obvious about human nature: that market forces work in dating, too. When competition for men is stiff, as it is, for instance, in inner-city Sydney, the most alluring female will win. And when men outnumber women in a dating environment, as they do in the mining town of Mount Isa, their standards are more likely to slip than women’s.”

Uh huh. Right.

Miranda then goes on to quote demographer, Bernard Salt, to assist those desperately seeking lerv, where best to find it.

Sadly, Bernard is from Melbourne, and clearly hasn’t done his homework when he says that “he identified Auburn as Sydney’s bachelor hot-spot and Annandale the suburb with the highest ratio of single women” and suggested that the road between these two suburbs should be renamed the “Road of Love because it brings together the boys of Auburn with the girls of Annandale”.

She says: “In his dreams. Women in Annandale tend to prefer cats …. and [in Auburn] a good number of the suburb’s red-blooded bachelors are congregating, sans women, in the Gallipoli mosque.”

(I’m not sure that all the readers may have understood exactly what Miranda was trying to say here. I mean, they might think she means that those all those single women in Annandale who prefer cats must be little old ladies who live alone with only a couple of moggies for company – right? She doesn’t.)

Uh huh.I can just see it now. Our Muslim brothers uniting with our lesbian sisters on Parramatta Road, which surely must hold the Australian record for being the ugliest road with the most car salesyards.

Hmm… I’ll Bernard’s analysis in my ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ file for use next time I want explain the difficulties of really understanding a community from a set of statistics.

And then of course, beauty standards also help reinforce our inability to make a change, because usually once a woman has figured out that she’s been gamed by the system, she’s no longer young and therefore not “pretty.” And when you’re a woman and not fuckable, your opinion doesn’t matter, as we see in Mayor Shithat’s comment about how the women protesting were probably ugly. Serioulsy, that’s his refutation of their position? “You’re ugly and female, therefore your opinion doesn’t matter. I don’t need to use facts to explain why I think your position is wrong, because you are wrong simply by being ugly and therefore nothing you say can ever have any value.”

It limits women’s possibilities so much — I’m the type of person who, if I put in enough effort, can look really good when I want to, to the point where I’ve been called stunning by idiots who care about that sort of thing. But without makeup, when I’m just dressed comfortably and showered and have no makeup, I’m actually pretty ugly. I hate going to any effort to look good, so on occasion I go out just looking “ugly” even though I know I’ll get treated like shit. Because of this, I don’t put any political buttons on my purse or backpack, and I don’t sign petitions or anything when I’m not dolled up, because I know that my opinions will be deemed worthless and even detrimental to my causes because of how I look, because if an ugly chick thinks it, it must be wrong. I especially don’t like to wear buttons proclaiming my veganism, because there’s this idea in parts of the animal rights movement (courtesy of the fucknecks at PETA) that one of the main draws of veg*ism is either a) suddenly magically becoming hot if you’re a woman or b) getting hawt chicks if you’re a guy. If you’re not hot, you’re not representing and you’re an embarrassment to the movement. The group I’m involved with isn’t like this, but a lot of the movement is, and that’s how nonvegetarians view it as well, that if ugly women participate it’s not worth it — I know I shouldn’t give in to that self-limiting bullshit, but it’s so fucking hard when it’s reinforced everywhere and you AND YOUR VIEWS are constantly in front of a firing squad for how you look.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope that mayor gets bitten by an Outback snake right where it counts. :P