Every morning Google sends urgent feminist alerts to my inbox. It’s hilarious, the contexts in which writers of Internet crap chuck that word “feminist” around.
– Rihanna has a new album; she left her abusive boyfriend, so she’s a feminist icon now.
– You can wear false eyelashes and still be a feminist.
– What should we do if feminists try to take over the world?
Here’s a dude who says he became a feminist because his daughter has “big brown eyes.” Those dreamboat peepers of hers caused Walter Backstrom, writing in the Tacoma, Washington News Tribune, to look into the whole global women’s rights dealio, that he might gain some insight on what the future has in store for his little princess. What Daddy finds is patriarchal oppression out the wazoo, but sadly he ignores the obvious conclusions, preferring instead to recite a predictable and xenophobic list of injustices of which everyone on earth is already well aware and, as has been well-documented, doesn’t give a flying fuck about.
In some African countries, sexual slavery and sexual mutilation are still the norm. In some Arabic countries, young girls can’t go to school and woman [sic] can’t drive a car.
The bad men, they’re all over there.
“Doing my research, I discovered myself becoming a feminist.”
Hello, God? It’s me, Walter.
Too bad Walter didn’t research “feminism”; if he had, he might not have written this knucklehead crap:
“A feminist is a person who believes in equal rights for men and women.”
Oh, Walter. Walter, Walter. That’s not a feminist, that’s a marketing gimmick. A feminist is an activist who seeks liberation from sex-based oppression.
[Omigod, Jill did not just define feminism! Who died and left her in charge of gurgling out feminist ideology on her own website! Feminism is about whatever ya want it to be about, such as the right to make your husband do laundry, in return for which emasculating sacrifice you agree to wear porn drag in bed.]
Walter continues:
“[...] I realized that women are not paid at the same rate as men, that domestic violence is still a fact of life in the U.S. and the rap music that young people listen to on the radio denigrates women by using the “B” word.”
Well, stop the presses, Walter!
It kind of turbulates the innards to contemplate that old Walter claims he is just now noticing this shit for the first time. What kind of “research” did he have to do before coming into possession of these tired old pop culture factoids? The village idiot could write a 1000-word essay on this with one lobe tied behind his back. The sex-based pay disparity is, and has been for 40 years, the single most highly publicized “feminist” talking point; “domestic violence” is the central theme of about 47 popular TV cop dramas, 47 more popular TV true crime shows, all local newspapers, and Oprah; and no godbag honky dude who has drawn a breath over the past 3 decades has failed to get bent about rap music (“rap music” means “all black dudes;” rampant misogyny in other pop music genres never sparked the same outrage). Where has Walter been lo these many years? Maybe he spends all his spare time, when he’s not gazing raptly into his daughter’s limpid pools, in church.
“When I started researching the status of women, especially in the Third World, I felt the tears of angels on my shoulders.”
How does that work, exactly? Are the angels teeny-tiny, perching on him like parrots? If so, why wouldn’t Walter say “I felt the feet of angels on my shoulders”? I aver that the effluvia of such tiny shoulder-perching entities would be unlikely to stream out in quantities observable by a human shoulder. Or are these angels very large, floating above him, so that when they weep over Walter’s research, it sort of rains? If so, what physical properties do angels possess such that everything about them except their tears is immune to the Earth’s gravitational pull? And why would Walter feel these tears only on his shoulders? Does he wear an angel-tear-repellent hat? Do the angels have spray bottles that they aim at whatever body part they think might make the most sentimental impact?
Walter, with his touched soul, aching heart, and moist shoulders, doesn’t make much sense in this weird essay, particularly when he appears to sort of fleetingly comprehend that women’s oppression is a humanitarian crisis, but only, apparently, in the “third world,” and although we need to “help” those miserable third world women, he himself, most assuredly, “won’t be joining any feminist group such as the National Organization for Women, and certainly [not] Planned Parenthood, since I am a conservative and pro-life.”
Well, now it all falls into place. Walter hates women after all. The idea of helpless foreign sex slaves makes him sort of sad, but if they get knocked up old Walter doesn’t mind laying claim to their personal bodily sovereignty. No wonder Walter’s essay is irrational. No argument in favor of feminism can make sense if its author can observe irrefutable evidence of patriarchy while simultaneously maintaining that godbag asshole dudes should be able to string women up by the uterus with this churchy compulsory pregnancy crap.
O Walter! Walter, Walter. Those aren’t angel tears on your shoulders! It’s spinster aunt spit!
49 comments
Josquin
November 28, 2009 at 11:50 am (UTC -6)
Yes, and my spit too. Oh, Walter, please educate us, you pompous idiot windbag! Are all those bad bad things really true? And the crap about his daughter’s big brown eyes – honestly, if I had a penny for every idiot who claimed alliance to “feminism” because of the protectable/ownable beauty of their wife, sister, or daughter, I would be a very very rich individual. I hate these smarmy testimonies to “soft feminism”. What total and complete crap.
niki
November 28, 2009 at 12:18 pm (UTC -6)
Maybe the angels are doing research over Walter’s shoulder (since angels don’t typically have access to the internet, which is so obvious The Devil’s Playground) and are actually crying at the futility of his comprehension skills.
Laughingrat
November 28, 2009 at 12:50 pm (UTC -6)
Oh Jill. Thank you for making me chortle–nay, snortle–over something as ultimately unfunny as Patriarchy.
Notorious Ph.D.
November 28, 2009 at 1:07 pm (UTC -6)
I clicked over to that “If feminists take over the world” thing, and was amused and horrified to see that the first comment began:
“All you got to do, is to take all of their rights away. That simple. We are stronger, smarter, and more superior to women. How many women won the noble prize????”
No further comment necessary.
Doctress Julia
November 28, 2009 at 1:44 pm (UTC -6)
Geez, Twisty, I think you are the shit. This post was hilarious and made me snort OJ out my nose. Thanks! :) I wish I could go to Ikea with you…. sigh.
Denise
November 28, 2009 at 1:55 pm (UTC -6)
It’s the “noble savage” thing. Those poor third world women work so hard and are so down-trodden and accept their burdens with a humble heart! Therefore their struggles are sad. But everybody else deserves what they get because they’re so slutty and ungrateful.
Liz
November 28, 2009 at 3:04 pm (UTC -6)
Loved it! I don’t know when looking something up became “research.” I guess if you didn’t sit passively and take in “information” from Faux News, you were doing research.
yttik
November 28, 2009 at 3:36 pm (UTC -6)
Blech! Rihanna naked, wrapped in barb wire, as an example of female empowerment is even more depressing then Walter. This on the heels of the other feminist empowerment song, “Put a Ring on It,” is just too much. “It” being the keyword here. Naked women, barb wire, and referring to ourselves as “its” reminds me more of Silence of the Lambs then feminism. What is this, necrophilia as the new trend in female empowerment?
Jill has a good definition of feminism.
Helen
November 28, 2009 at 4:17 pm (UTC -6)
Gosh, that Everything About Social Science site has such an impressive akademic sounding name! So interlecktew-al! Check out the massive branes on there:
All you got to do, is to take all of their rights away. That simple. We are stronger, smarter, and more superior to women. How many women won the noble prize???? How many women can beat the strongest man in the world? Answer that. We dominate in every quality, while women are only supposed to care for kids and the home. Women aren’t meant to have rights…that simple. The men of the old had it right all along……
OK, I cannot compete with this Conan of cogitation. I will hand in my feminist badge forthwith! The mighty intellect of Everything About Social Science has made me see teh light!
Mukherjee
November 28, 2009 at 4:25 pm (UTC -6)
Jill, your description of the angels over Walter’s shoulder made me laugh out loud.
Yttik, the full lyric is ‘if you like it then you should have put a ring on it’, which implies that if the dude liked ‘it’, meaning that female creature-thing I suppose, then he should have proposed marriage to ‘it’. I honestly don’t know why so many people are crazy about this vile song. It is about as progressive as ‘I wanna be Bobby’s girl’.
Gayle
November 28, 2009 at 4:37 pm (UTC -6)
Where are these feminists who want to take over the world and how can I join them?
Doctress Julia
November 28, 2009 at 5:20 pm (UTC -6)
I am most definitely slutty and very ungrateful.
Comrade PhysioProf
November 28, 2009 at 5:29 pm (UTC -6)
If these stupid fucking angels are so angelic, then instead of crying like a bunch of fucking weeping willows, why don’t they pluck those poor women the fuck OUT OF THERE, drop them down in Palm Springs, and give them pitchers of margaritas and primo tee times?
otoc
November 28, 2009 at 5:35 pm (UTC -6)
The next big meme is going to be that the Tiger Woods incident is further proof that the all-powerful Feminist Mafia is suppressing the Truth about domestic violence — namely that it happens in equal numbers but men are just too chivalrous to report women. The Internet Misogygang (reddit/4chan/wikipedians/digg/Kos/HuffPo/etc./etc./etc./etc.) already got ‘progressives’ to latch on to the ‘issue’ of male circumcision. It’s totally the same thing as FGM, has nothing to do with preventing infections, and is a completely good-faith issue, don’tchyaknow!
If I have a point, it is that I hate the internet for re-writing reality to fit the MRA worldview. And I hate that any woman-hating bag-O-crap is legitimized and validated the second they spew on said internet.
Kossack
November 28, 2009 at 7:02 pm (UTC -6)
They spew with or without the Internets to spew through.
But calling them on it is so powerful.
Coopting their terms might work, too. As in saying: abortion is part of the right to self-defense, because pregnancy kills and children steal your income and access to education.
So if you want to be a social conservative who believes in individual responsibility and small government, you have to support my right to self-defense. Which includes defense of my body from a pregnancy the existential and psychosocial threat of which I deem outweighs the possible benefits.
Like the Second Amendment? Live with my right to bear or not bear kids.
liberality
November 28, 2009 at 7:18 pm (UTC -6)
Great definition! I second that.
humanbein
November 28, 2009 at 8:18 pm (UTC -6)
Many a new father finds himself staring, for the first time, into a greater awareness of female oppression, because he feels love that has little to do with being raised by a servant figure sentimentalized as dear old Mom, or love that is actually the enjoyment of sexual possession.
The same empathy and projection of the self into offspring reveals to the clouded male mind a new ability to see oppression where none appeared before. Then, of course, the mind must resort to creating and elaborating on some kind of double standard to justify the idea that other people’s daughters are sluts but yours is not, all the way down the line. Every girl on earth should be oppressed and viewed as a fuck object but your daughter, but as soon as she sprouts any of the characteristics that men consider signs of sexual availability, such as tight clothing, breasts, or makeup, she will be locked in a room until she’s 18.
Still, I think that every dad on earth has a chance to begin to understand radical feminism when they have a female baby. It’s a quickly closing door, but if anyone sees a man in this heightened awareness of the humanity of women, it’s the best time to give them some common sense words. A man is rarely as open to understanding sexual oppression as when he’s contemplating the life of his female child.
Jane Q Public
November 28, 2009 at 8:21 pm (UTC -6)
Ah, Walter. You’ve found yourself in a position that all fathers of female offspring do at one time or another. You’ve discovered some dude is going to one day do to her what all men have been doing to women since the dawn of time.
The real irony, oh he of the slopping wet shoulders, is that you are doing it to her right now. By “it”, I mean participating in the oppression that will follow her her whole life.
Congratulations on mastering the obvious in your research into the realities for women in third world countries, dismissing women’s rights in your own, and coming to the conclusion that you will do nothing about your findings except feel a little sad. I hope your daughter grows up to be a radfem. As you know, Walt, for conservative pro-lifers this is the equivalent of putting a hex on the whole family.
birkwearingblamer
November 28, 2009 at 9:30 pm (UTC -6)
Walter hasn’t joined us here to share more of his fresh manly wisdom with us? Should we send him a personal invitation?
wkbackstrom@aim.com
octopod
November 28, 2009 at 9:52 pm (UTC -6)
A commenter asks “How many women can beat the strongest man in the world?” Seriously? Good lord.
slythwolf
November 28, 2009 at 10:34 pm (UTC -6)
Well sure, you know, that’s real equality, because the dude is doing a job he doesn’t like, and the woman is doing a job she doesn’t like! Doing the laundry is exactly as degrading as wearing porn drag to help facilitate dudesex. Which is necessarily and manifestly a job, a duty that women perform. Like laundry.
Maybe this Walter person is trying to imply that the angels are reading over his shoulders and crying as he skims some articles on the internets. But that might imply that the angels didn’t already know about all the shit the patriarchy does to women, and I can’t see how that could be the case. Surely, if angels existed, they, like their imaginary boss, would already know about this shit, especially since so much of it is explicitly promoted in certain “holy” books pertaining to mythologies containing angels.
Or maybe the angels do already know about it, and just sort of sit around passively weeping over it. But then why do people ask for angels to help them with shit if the angels just sit around being sad and doing nothing?
mearl
November 29, 2009 at 12:33 am (UTC -6)
Walter has clearly misinterpreted the moistness of his shoulders. It was actually me, crying with laughter at Jill’s commentary on Walter’s angel tears.
Jill, if you keep this up, Walter’s shoulders will be getting peed on because I’ll be laughing so hard. Peed on all the way from Canada, no less. And he’ll probably still think it’s angel tears.
Jill
November 29, 2009 at 6:22 am (UTC -6)
“Walter hasn’t joined us here to share more of his fresh manly wisdom with us? Should we send him a personal invitation?
wkbackstrom@aim.com“
Antifeminist viewpoints aren’t admitted into discussion, so please don’t bother.
niki
November 29, 2009 at 7:57 am (UTC -6)
Watching one’s shitty ex boyfriends go through this new daughter cognitive dissonance on Facebook is an awesome/awful common phenomenon.
shopstewardess
November 29, 2009 at 8:00 am (UTC -6)
I am now picturing Walter in much the same sort of pose as that politician who posed on a sunlounger with his legs spread and a woman bending over his head, but with angel tear ducts in place of the woman.
Thanks, Jill.
Antares
November 29, 2009 at 9:14 am (UTC -6)
Holy Cow, my side literally aches for all the guffawing I’ve done reading this post and the comments. Thanks, everybody.
little_sis
November 29, 2009 at 5:43 pm (UTC -6)
“How many women can beat the strongest man in the world?”
i’m going to go with a sure thing and say fifteen, i reckon fifteen women could definately take the strongest man in the world down.
Shelby
November 29, 2009 at 7:54 pm (UTC -6)
Those aren’t tears Walter. That was me, with labia firmly clenched, pissing down your back.
SargassoSea
November 29, 2009 at 8:34 pm (UTC -6)
Is this hat available through Manolo? I think I need one.
Antoinette Niebieszczanski
November 30, 2009 at 6:49 am (UTC -6)
Next he’ll break out into a chorus of that execrable Butterfly Kisses song. Or chanting the praises of purity balls. Makes me want to yark, and I ain’t even had my breakfast yet.
Pondering if angels can fly, cry and crap at the same time, like birds.
buttercup
November 30, 2009 at 9:18 am (UTC -6)
Oh, Jill. That was marvelous. Starting the morning laughing at something that should make me sob is the only way to go. Growing up without a father was inestimably better than growing up with a knob like ol’ Walter as the head of the household.
flaps
November 30, 2009 at 9:38 am (UTC -6)
Feminism taking over the world? I blame the UN. Obviously.
nails
November 30, 2009 at 11:18 am (UTC -6)
The “equality” idea would be acceptable to me if men didn’t retain rights that no one should have. I really don’t want to be on equal footing with a group of people who can rape and get away with it; I want to get rid of that kind of privilege existing. Hell, the dominance men perform makes it impossible for everyone to have that kind of equality. In order to have domination culture there has to be a class of people getting fucked over. By definition we can’t be equal without taking some shit away from the dudes. Getting rid of the privileges that no one should have is what feminism is about for me.
Shit, that is half the problem with the crowd that says feminism isn’t needed anymore. They point to women working in high powered corporate jobs (politicians count) as proof that everything is ok, ignoring the inherently unfeminist hurt that these systems cause to a huge number of people.
Pantsuit Sally
November 30, 2009 at 12:52 pm (UTC -6)
Well said, nails.
No cookies for doofuses who kinda sorta reach the conclusion that females are kinda sorta human only upon the birth of their very own female.
Jill
November 30, 2009 at 12:53 pm (UTC -6)
nails, you’re on fire lately.
Orange
November 30, 2009 at 10:54 pm (UTC -6)
There’s a picture book called Walter, the Farting Dog.
I wonder what made me think of that.
agasaya
December 1, 2009 at 1:37 am (UTC -6)
Humanbein,
Good points all. Too bad that once realized, most will just shake their heads and say, that’s the way it works. And daughter has already learned her lovely brown eyes don’t get her much of worth out there. But the words still have to be said. I left a brief comment and will email the man since I have nothing else to do at the moment.
Genevieve
December 1, 2009 at 7:24 am (UTC -6)
No cookies for doofuses who kinda sorta reach the conclusion that females are kinda sorta human only upon the birth of their very own female.
You know, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that his daughter isn’t the only woman/girl who he’s ever been close to in his life. I’m guessing he most likely is married to a woman, has a mother, and maybe a sister or a female friend or someone. Other women he should care about.
But nope, only the byproduct of his very own sperm can make him give a shit about half the population.
Pantsuit Sally
December 1, 2009 at 7:40 am (UTC -6)
Yep- further evidence that it’s not really a newfound sense of feminism he’s feeling, just a different manifestation of his patriarchal sense of ownership.
Amananta
December 1, 2009 at 1:11 pm (UTC -6)
“The sex-based pay disparity is, and has been for 40 years, the single most highly publicized “feminist” talking point; “domestic violence” is the central theme of about 47 popular TV cop dramas, 47 more popular TV true crime shows, all local newspapers, and Oprah”
Sadly this IS news to many men (and some women!). Why? Because they have the right to ignore it. It blows the mind how many times I have to actually argue these points with clueless patriarchy-bots who otherwise seem to have a generally good grasp on reality. Even when they do admit women are paid less, they claim its their own fault for “choosing” to work part-time or quit entirely for a few years to take care of aging/ill/infant family members (as though there were no societal pressure on women to do all the unpaid work in the world – and which is beside the point anyway as the pay gap is present even between fully employed professional women with the same degree of experience and education as men); or for “not leaving”, oh and women can be verbally abusive you know, even though they aren’t killing and shooting their husbands on a daily basis and even though men have perfectly capable centers of speech with which they can and do verbally abuse the wives and girlfriends they are ALSO beating.
They will then go on to tell you it’s all balanced out by/the real problem is the men unfairly lose their children after divorce and have to pay child support to a bad mommy whore figure even though they aren’t getting to screw her anymore! (Even though an extensive study found this also is completely untrue, even though, if anything, the authors admitted they expected to find a result opposite of what they found.)
Sometimes, if you have the patience and energy to fight your way through all of this crap, you can get a half-hearted admission that back-alley rape by a stranger of an underage girl is wrong BUT of course her parents should have been watching her better/what was she doing there anyway/why hadn’t someone taken her to a self-defense class?
We have a long way to go, baby.
sam
December 1, 2009 at 1:43 pm (UTC -6)
Amananta succinctly describes the last conversations I endured with some male friends before dropping that dead weight from my life.
Jan
December 2, 2009 at 12:15 am (UTC -6)
Woman-centric tribal days behind us and the patriarchy still before us, just for today I’ve given up on my own kind (women). And moist angel tears, spare me. But a tribe of womankind would be nice.
Meanwhile, there’s personal integrity. Not so comforting when things are tough. There, nonetheless.
Today I withdrew from a once beloved organization (70% women) in which most of the women fawn over the men’s opinions with a level of caring never extended to themselves as women or to other women. Years ago I eschewed any voluntary contact with men, none of whom have the capacity for friendship with any woman unwilling to sacrifice some of her autonomy on his male-entitlement spire.
Google “bondage photos” one night and see the truth of what men as a gender class do to some women and want to do to the rest. The converted power tools are relatively new to the genre and give new meaning to the term “bloody invasion.” Those who had no moon blood of their own in the year’s 13 lunar cycles have enacted a cruel vengeance against women.
Today I quit lending my strength to women who honor men over women. What will become of me, of any of us who do this without a trust fund or farm lands to sustain us under the ownership requirements socially set my men? Not asking for crying angels but for greater power. Whatever Goddesses There Be, Help.
Jan
December 2, 2009 at 12:23 am (UTC -6)
“… socially set by men [correction to my post language that said "my men"]. There are no real “Freudian slips,” Freud having been a fraud and hater when it comes to women, but it is true that “my men” is how women as a gender class have been socialized to fantasize in an ego-boosting way about the men who oppress them. Naming it is part of blaming. Hurt “by” men, who are never “my” guys.
fannie
December 3, 2009 at 12:01 pm (UTC -6)
“he himself, most assuredly, ‘won’t be joining any feminist group such as the National Organization for Women, and certainly [not] Planned Parenthood, since I am a conservative and pro-life.’”
What’s that smell? I think an angel just farted in here.
Kathleen
December 3, 2009 at 4:04 pm (UTC -6)
that was the funniest wind-up to the best punchline since I don’t know what. I might have to read it every day for a week.
Hedgepig
December 3, 2009 at 5:07 pm (UTC -6)
Jan, (this response to your comments above probably belongs over on the ethnicity discussion thread) one of the most successful characteristics of patriarchy is its insistence that women must feel greater loyalty/attachment/love etc for people in their kin group (which is of course riddled with males) than they feel for people in their gender group. That’s why the whole concept of the ethnic group serves patriarchy so well. And you’re so right about Freud, too.
Jan
December 3, 2009 at 8:19 pm (UTC -6)
The moistness of one daddy-dude’s angel tears seemed an association worth noting in this thread, Hedgepig, but yes, this whole amazing blog could be subsumed topically under the kin/gender group dynamics of ethnicity and sex-class submission.
roesmoker
December 10, 2009 at 1:48 am (UTC -6)
On the stellar Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Social Sciences Since You Didn’t Bother To Pay Attention in Elementary School site, one “Doodlebugjim” wrote: “Feminism pretty much has taken over already” (that’s news to us! Why don’t you mansplain to us how we have secretly taken over the world?) and he helpfully obliges: “Almost nobody realises things like
1/ feminists are trying to close women’s prisons and turn them into men’s
2/ the UN are helping to promote anti-male laws worldwide.
3/ feminism is secretly promoted in China and India using soap operas. This is also done via the UN.”
Wait, what? I actually really want to see the soaps with subliminal feminist messages in China and India. And the UN is obviously controlled by the Feminist Mafia. That makes tons of sense.
Jezebella
December 10, 2009 at 9:47 am (UTC -6)
Feminist Mafia? UN taken over by feminists? Excellent news indeed! Do we have pink helicopters yet? And why haven’t I been recruited?