Comments on: Spinster aunt harkens to call of the wild

By: easyVegan.info » Blog Archive » Intersectionality ‘Round the Interwebs, No. 1

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:57:39 +0000

[...] I Blame the Patriarchy: Spinster aunt harkens to call of the wild [...]

By: Queenie

Queenie — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:44:00 +0000

“This sex bias does nothing but ensmallen the ornithological horizon” has got to be one of the most fantastic sentences ever composed in the long, oppressive, greatly-overblown history of the English language. I think it important to declare my future intentions of using the word “ensmallen” on a fairly regular basis.

Great post, Twisty! As usual, I will strive to ensmallen the all-too-often unnoticed impact of the patriarchy on my future thinking processes.

By: Cranky Old Coot

Cranky Old Coot — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:44:44 +0000

I hope you know Twisty that you’ll never starve. If you get desperate for filthy lucre, just offer Nature Walks. Your humor would make them so much fun, you’d have to schedule them 10 hours each day. I wish I’d run across someone like you 20 years ago, I’d be the reincarnation of Euell Gibbons. (Pretty Please, write a book. I promise I’ll buy 6 copies of it within 2 months-I’m not that rich to do it at once.)

By: Kali

Kali — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:10:08 +0000

“… their purported scientific objectivity masks a deeply ingrained systemic misogyny. Take the patriarchal notion of the male as the default, no matter what the species. Especially when it comes to birds, the females of which are always described in terms of the males.”

I was just thinking that very thing about orthinology when I saw your previous post of the indigo bunting, the female of which is certainly not indigo.

Oh, & your new banner is totally f**king hilarious Twisty!

By: rootlesscosmo

rootlesscosmo — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:54:32 +0000

@slythwolf: vultures were thought to give birth to live young or clone themselves without male fertilization or some such thing

In Kenneth Rexroth’s bestiary the entry under “V” was

St. Thomas Aquinas
Thought vultures were lesbians
And were fertilized by the wind.

If you seek the facts of life
Papist intellectuals can be very misleading.

By: gerda

gerda — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:47:16 +0000

bother i was going for the ‘vulture symbol of powerful death goddess feared and reviled by patriarchy’ angle, but sythwolf beat me to it. in my favourite ancestral culture it is crows and ravens (and, weirdly, also swans in scandinavia). the word troll (and trull, which is one of those many words for naughty uncontrollable women) comes from the old english word for the priestesses of helle/huldra/holda etc.

love the unicorn.

By: VibratingLiz

VibratingLiz — Sun, 03 May 2009 06:10:38 +0000

Then he will be sick.

Or worse, if the vulture died because it ate the carcass of a poisoned gopher.

By: Twisty

Twisty — Sun, 03 May 2009 04:51:47 +0000

“On behalf of poor Bert, please allow him to do what his breeding insists that he do: let him bring that dead bird to you [...]”

Ha. I wish. Bert’s breeding, I regret to say, has nothing to do with bringing me dead vultures. Neither does his training, so the little dude’s 0 for 2. He’s no field dog, in other words. He’s a pet dog, descended from show dogs. He was bred, successfully, to have long flowing hair and to not bite people. If allowed anywhere near it, Bert will chew off a chunk of that rotting vulture and disappear into the underbrush until it is consumed. Then he will be sick.

By: Cass

Cass — Sat, 02 May 2009 22:42:15 +0000

I dig it, too, but there should be a one-rainbow limit for any banner.

By: Frog Princess

Frog Princess — Sat, 02 May 2009 21:30:50 +0000

On behalf of poor Bert, please allow him to do what his breeding insists that he do: let him bring that dead bird to you so you can stuff it in a sack and watch it decompose, be it on your kitchen counter or somewhere in the lower forty, depending on whether you plan to eat it or merely observe the process of decomp.

Bert should be rewarded for his generous, though likely unconscious, contributions to the warm and cozy upbringing of his bird pals.

If the dead vulture is stinky and Bert elects to roll in the remains rather than retrieve them, it will provide further blog fodder: which is more compelling to a dog? Instinctual scent obfuscation or inbred desire to retrieve? You could write a monograph!

I ask my research students sometimes where all the dead bird corpses are. There are a lot of birds in the world, yet we so rarely see any evidence of dead ones. Why is that? Insects and predators devour the bodies? Then where do the feathers go? Do they die and decompose in trees or in vast green spaces, we wot not where?

Mysteries.