I Blame The Patriarchy

An “old movie” thread has been requested. Ask and ye shall receive.

Longtime blamers are well aware that, while recuperating from gory ankle reconstruction surgery a couple years ago — remember? Bert dug a hole, and I fell in it? — I became strangely fascinated by the Turner Classic Movie channel.

The Turner Classic Movie channel, in case you never heard of it, runs old movies 24 hours a day. Talkies, silents, the odd foreign film. The movies are given shallow introductions by an avuncular presenter who focuses primarily on the personalities of the film’s personnel, rather than offering any really useful critique. Initially I started watching TCM while I lay imprisoned on the living room couch because it is more or less commercial-free. It is more commercial-free than PBS, which, in addition to shilling for the megatheocorporatocracy, tends to run really long, tiresome commercials for itself featuring handsome, well-groomed children of all colors leaping through the air in slow-motion waving “PBS” signs, showing public broadcasting’s affluent honky audience how diverse they are. TCM, though not even remotely patriarchy-free, at least refrains from overt messages that purport to demonstrate Exxon-Mobil’s deep concern for the environment.

When I say that TCM is not even remotely patriarchy-free, I am not fucking kidding. I have yet to see a single film in their catalog that doesn’t throw a yacht party celebrating the mores of the culture of oppression. War movies, romantic comedies, films noir — even the iconoclastic films and the beloved classics — revolve around either a) the White Dude Experience or (somewhat less often), b) women who fail to conform to the mandates of White Dude Experience and get an educational smackdown. Turner Classic Movies is a great repository of stylized, idealized, heroifized patriarchy in action.

Recently on Kubrick night I watched (for the millionth time) “Dr Strangelove,” a gorgeous and funny film it is impossible not to admire despite the fact that the only woman in the whole thing is a Playboy centerfold. There are many reasons to admire it, such as the the opening sequence where war planes refuel in midair to a cheesy soundtrack, Peter Sellers in 3 roles, the verite-style battle sequence, and the fact that it is one of the few non-indie films ever made which does not contain the line “I don’t know what to believe anymore!” But it’s also one of the most phallo-centric things going, and at the end — after Slim Pickens has ridden the giant nuclear bomb penis that will destroy the earth — when Dr Strangelove describes a post-apocalyptic paradise involving a shit-ton of hot babes at the ready to service the survivors through the nuclear winter, I was primed to throw a boot at the movie delivery device.

My thesis is this: that the entire canon of 20th century cinema is misogynist, classist, racist, and is therefore impossible for the radical feminist to appreciate without cringing, throwing stuff, and blowing a lobe.

Here’s my favorite beef: the scene where a dude and a woman are running, running, and the virile dude is yanking the woman’s hand, dragging her pathetic terrified person along, and she falls because she’s wearing fucking high heels, and he picks her up and they continue running, running, him dragging her along like a wagonload of screaming mimis.

I also can’t stand it when actors yank horses’ mouths, which they all, without exception, do.

What chaps your hide, cinematically speaking?

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Ever since the Lightning Strike of Aught Nine took out my radio tower and my satellite and the computer running the missile silos I have aimed at various undisclosed megatheocorporatocratic installations, I’ve been out of the loop.

I just heard that David Letterman told a tasteless joke about Willow Palin getting knocked up. I don’t know what the joke was. But it has inspired a blotz-ton of Internetian (rhymes with “Venetian”) backlashing. Some people are in a lather, demanding that Letterman be fired. Some people are saying, “Letterman was nice to that crazy stalker lady, so obviously he’s a good guy and didn’t mean anything by it.” Some people are saying, “So what if his joke was a little sexist? Don’t tell me what jokes are off-limits, you handwringing old cunt.”

This woman, Jan Tessier, observes some feminist outrage, takes exception to the radicalism, and declares that David Letterman is the real feminist. That’s right: sensitive, compassionate David Letterman is late-nite TV’s Lone Voice of the Feminist Revolution. He apparently embodies the principles of Tessier’s personal feminist heroes Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinam [sic].

Tessier, who — I bet you didn’t know this — has been put in charge of awarding True Feminist Badges to male talk show hosts — is reacting to the remarks of Amy Siskind.

Siskind, writing at HuffPo, has justifiably had it up to here with sex-based joke buttism and the culturally-embedded misogyny that inspires it.

Jan Tessier has read Siskind’s piece, which piece basically says “Hey, media knobs! Critique public figures on the issues, not on their Receptacle2K-compliance.”

Based on Siskind’s assertion that misogyny directed at icky antifeminist women is still misogyny, Tessier has no choice but to designate Amy Siskind a fake feminist. According to this reasoning, women who have been most severely compromised by oppressive patriarchal mores — the collaboratrices — are just asking for it. Tessier feels that it’s perfectly decent of Letterman to make jokes about teen sluts because — and this statement is remarkable in its stark raving lunacy — “there is absolutely no evidence that he hates women.”

Siskind, Tessier avers, is full of shit for maintaining that the media ought to put a sock in it already with the antifeminist one-liners about public women, even when the women in question are themselves antifeminists, like California beauty queen Carrie Prejean. According to Tessier, an “empty-headed” homophobic beauty queen is fair game for boob-job jokes. “That isn’t sexism,” she writes. “That’s comedy.”

What Tessier fails to grasp is that mocking members of oppressed classes simply because they exhibit the characteristics of their oppression is pretty fucking vulgar. Why did Prejean get her despised boob-job in the first place, Jan Tessier? For her health? No, Jan Tessier. The poor deluded kid enboobified herself in order to appease her oppressor, and absorbed homophobic messages for the same reason. The whole fucking system is homophobic and loves huge tits. What’s the big surprise? Mocking women for getting boob jobs is juvenile and unsophisticated. What needs mocking is the system that requires the boob jobs.

As to whether Letterman should be fired, well hell yeah. Of course, I say that about all the old white dudes.

Letterman has apologized, and naturally it’s a classic celebrity non-apology. He claims that when he told the joke he thought he was telling it about the 18-year-old Palin daughter, not the 14-year-old, which apparently makes all the difference.

I smell a Ditwuss!

Well, one thing’s for sure. Whenever an old influential white dude like Letterman cracks wise on national TV about the sluttiness of a teenage girl, no discourse gets enbiggened. No disconsolate soul grasping for Truth and Beauty in the dank subumbra of oppression is enlightened. No tacos are garnished with fresh pico de gallo, and no lobes are bathed in fancy, bubbly happiness.

I mention the bathing of lobes because the permutations of what may and may not be considered feminism, regarding this Letterman/Palin business, are truly lobe-blowing, and I don’t have to tell you, the veteran Blamer, how messy the post-lobe-blow wreckage can be, with its waxy yellow build-up, broken glass, and mountains of empty Cool Whip tubs.

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Hugs Twisty! Whaa?

Well, Twisty may be orbiting some distant star in a talking robot ship that makes her margaritas and tacos, but her fan mail continues to pour in here in Cottonmouth County. The post office at Rattlesnake is swamped, and are thinking of giving her her own zip code. This would be a symbolic gesture, of course, since Rattlesnake’s only settlement is Spinster Aunt HQ at El Rancho Deluxe, and we already have our own zip code.

However, there is neither snail mail nor Internet on Obstreperon (it became obsolete once the natives evolved giant, throbbing omniscient brains), so Twisty is obliged to correspond via subspace vacuum tubes. One such tube arrived this morning. To wit:

“It is a pleasure to reprint this communiqué from blamer T. Daniels, who steeled up her huevos and took blaming from Internet Feminist Theory to real-life praxis.

Greetings Twisty

I would just like to write you a quick note of appreciation and thanks for inadvertently pushing me to stand up for myself against my heathen bloke-manager. I’m 23 years old, I work at an NHS a nursing home in the UK and have recently reported one of my senior colleagues for indecent behaviour towards me. He has made remarks about my appearance (and other members of female staff) and I decided I could no longer stand his low level harassment. Whereas previously I would’ve just brushed his comments off and dealt with my humiliation and embarrassment in silence I know now how important it is to not feel like I’m suffering from delusions of persecution and get this guy done. I feel that without the ammunition your writing has given me I would never have had the confidence to report this arsehole.

Thanks awfully and long live IBTP!

T.Daniels

Dear T.Daniels,

Several years ago, while I was taking a shower, I listened to cult figurine Sarah Vowell on the radio. That I was taking a shower at the time has no bearing on the story, but I am compelled to include this detail because it amazes and infuriates me that I can remember such a trivial minutia ten years later, but that really consequential stuff — what were my father’s last words to me? What is the recipe for that stuffed summer squash thing I used to make all the time in the 90’s? How many liters in a hectare? — these memories and so many more, all dusky ephemera that fluttered briefly in my glistening lobe and are no more. The aging spinster’s mind, once a vigorous, shining, athletic muscle, is now a soupy sponge that someone has thrown into a colander to drain.

So Sarah Vowell — who, despite her “concessions” to Beauty2K-Compliance (lipstick and high heeled shoes) has been called a “curmudgeon” by Bitch magazine — was on the radio in my bathroom in 1998, doing that humorous piece on her Goth makeover. You know the piece: she adopts the Goth name “Becky” and is celebrated by her Goth tutors as having “skipped a couple of levels and gone straight to pink.”

T.Daniels, you remind me of this. You have skipped a couple of blaming levels — i.e. hanging around on the blog, describing your unique relationship with your Nigel, correcting other blamers, engaging in call-out-pile-on mania — and gone straight to actual Feminism: fucking doin’ sommat what actually means sommat.

They might try to beat you into submission, demand concessions, minimize the harassment. Stay burly, T.Daniels. Letters like yours are what keep me from ripping my own head off. Thank you. I hope you apprise me of the outcome of your action. And if you know a recipe for stuffed summer squash, by all means lay it on me.

Hugs,
Twisty

P.S. On behalf of Jill, thanks to the Blametariat for all the kind internet condoling re: Zippy. She was indeed that once-in-a-lifetime dog.”

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Creepy billboard somewhere on MoPac.

There is only one reason that pregnancy should “scare” you: your culture hates women and kids.* It especially hates teenage women. It especially hates pregnant teenage women. It especially hates teenage pregnant women who get knocked up under unapproved circumstances.

Some unapproved circumstances:

they are not legally bound to an approved representative of the state (husband)
they’re poor
they’re prostituted
they’ve got a drug problem
they’re sluts
they’re women of color
they’re unmarried and poor and have some kids already

Your culture totally fucking hates these women no matter what. It hates’em if they have abortions, and it totally fucking hates the resulting kids if the unapproved women keep’em instead of adopting them out to approved (white affluent heterosexual married) people under the guiding auspices of godbag motherfuckers.

Yeah, I said “motherfuckers.” Take a Xanax.

The world’s uteruses are owned by the state. This means the world’s women are owned by the state. Unapproved pregnant women who aren’t claimed by a state-licensed nuclear family replicator (husband) are required to be scared shitless. This is so their culture can punish them for their sins, and so that godbag uterus-control groups like the Majella Society (the cabal responsible for these asinine billboards) can get their hooks in and brainwash the unapproved women into having babies they don’t want.

These Majellans are world-class kooks, by the way. This is the promo for a commercial airing in local Austin markets:

Have you ever wondered how our country would be different without abortion? Lifesaver [the title of the commercial] shows how over 50 million individuals would be helping our society today.

Here’s how the commercial“shows” how 50 million non-aborted fetuses are morally superior to aborted ones: it features a Beauty2K-compliant actor wearing a firefighter suit at a fire –she’s a former fetus, brought to term and given up by a scared teen mother — who grew up to be gorgeous, and to save lives, too!

Apparently the theory is that all aborted fetuses possess magical powers that might-have-been. Majella suggests with all seriousness that millions of aborted “babies,” had their host humans not asserted their personal sovereignty and gotten them removed, would have all grown up to be Mother Teresa and Jesus and dudes who would cure cancer. It does not seem to occur to Majella that the mere circumstance of having once been a fetus that was not aborted in no way ensures that a person will become a selfless world-saving supermodel scientist.

While there is no way to actually disprove the hypothesis that aborted fetuses are somehow superior in character to unaborted ones, the fact that all aborted fetuses are dead would indicates that they lack at least one trait necessary for superhumanness: not being dead. Furthermore, that the entire human population, all of whom are former unaborted fetuses, are just regular schmoes eating Twinkies on the couch watching internet porn, suggests that preventing abortions does not create heroes.

_____________________
* Homicide is the leading cause of death among young women. Homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women. The homicide rate for black pregnant women is 3 times that of white pregnant women.

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Picture Obama giving this patronizing hug to a dude Supreme.

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Dear Twisty,

I just read a book review, titled “From Patriarch to Patsy,” linked by Ann Bartow at feministlawprofessors.com and I’m excited to let you know that, not only has feminism succeeded in gaining us equality, we really are now oppressing the men. I am so excited about my total control of reproduction and my new ability to quietly victimize men! It’s like we’re all superheroes now! I just wanted to let you know so you don’t waste any more time blaming the patriarchy.

One of the comments made it all clear to me:

Due to our code of law that still needs a major adjustment to the modern realities, men do not nearly have the same protections and rights as women do. This coupled with reproduction being controlled by women and disinformation by the popular media, especially daytime TV that mostly caters to its female consumer, women have nearly all the leverage. In this day and age, men and husbands are really the largely quiet victim.

Well, no time to blame, I gotta head out – I have to subjugate the hubby!

Thanks,

A former blamer

Dear A former blamer,

A year or two ago I almost shut down the Blamateria. That was when about a million feminist women wrote in to explain that giving blow jobs was the most empowering thing ever invented. I figured, well heck, if they’ve found the solution to women’s oppression, what am I still doing here? But I lingered on, mostly out of habit, the way obsolete old people do, updating the blog with the occasional wackaloon theory about how perhaps the white American feminist’s devotion to fellatio had not completely eradicated global male domination.

But now? Well, I have just finished reading “From Patriarch to Patsy,” the book review to which you allude, and you know? It looks like I can fully retire after all. Feminism, apparently while I was busy shaking my head over the ratio of rapes to rape convictions, has put American mothers in the driver’s seat. These ass-kicking women don’t need anything so prosaic as fellatio to control their men. They merely have to have a couple of babies. The instant they become mothers, their husbands mutate from noble human beings into broken men, cosmic joke-butts who have to touch dirty diapers and show their faces at Gymboree.

In the WSJ, Toby Young reviews Home Game by Michael Lewis, a whataboutthemen?! compilation of Lewis’ Slate columns wherein, apparently, he whines humorously about being pussywhipped. Boy, is it ever devastating to read of the degradation of the American father at the hands of the condescending American wife. Here is an excerpt from Young’s review, which begins with an excerpt from Lewis’ book.

‘At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negotiating table with the American female and — let us be frank — got fleeced,’ [Lewis] writes.

The poor sucker agreed to take on responsibility for all sorts of menial tasks — tasks that his own father was barely aware of — and received nothing in return. If he was hoping for some gratitude, he was mistaken. According to Mr. Lewis: ‘Women may smile at a man pushing a baby stroller, but it is with the gentle condescension of a high officer of an army toward a village that surrendered without a fight.’”

Toby Young, himself a father of four, loves Lewis like a long-lost millionaire uncle. He concurs that family men are not only doing the humiliating work of women, they are doing it without sufficient compensation. Taking the kid to swimming class! With other men in bathing suits! Cripes, is his wife-mandated vasectomy showing?

Excuse me a second, I have to get a fresh hankie to wipe the tear from my eye.

I checked out this Lewis dude, by the way. The very first thing I found was one of his Slate essays on fatherhood, probably one he recycled for his book. In this essay Lewis joyfully alludes to his penis about 87 times, considers dressing his 3-year-old daughter every morning an act of heroism, calls this daughter a “vixen,” and, as a treat for his pedophile readers, actually publishes a Femininity2K-compliant photo of the tot posing in a hula skirt and bra.

What a class act.

Hugs,
Twisty

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The obsession with wild turkeys frolicking at dawn continues unabated at Spinster HQ.

Sexting! It’s the latest teen scourge. Lock up your daughters! Or at least get them iPhones. You still can’t effing text a photo on an iPhone.

Sexting, you will be delighted to hear, is when a teenage girl sends, via mobile, an unclothed self-portrait to her boyfriend. Like all teenage boys, this boyfriend is made of sterling stuff. Within moments he forwards the picture to the whole school. The teenage girl then commits suicide because she is unable to cope with the torrent of contempt loosed upon her by her ghoulish little schoolmates.

As you know, girls are sex; when girls send naked pictures of themselves to boys, they merely participate in what the megatheopornocorporatocracy tells them comes naturally. They hit send, sneak out for a cig, and anticipate their just reward for an oppressor-appeasing job well done.

But you know how it is. The set-up is bogus from the gitgo. A woman’s social status is inexorably tied to the manner in which her sex is used by men. It’s impossible for her to express sexuality precisely right, because the sex class is not sovereign over itself. It’s subject to dudely whim. The expression of a woman’s sexuality is purely a matter of dudely interpretation.

Just like in the real world, in the high school world laws governing girls favor boys but are otherwise arbitrary, and are strictly enforced by the masses. You know what high school society can’t tolerate? A girl whose boyfriend exploits her by passing her image around around from cell phone to cell phone. That girl is a fucking slut, and the only thing to do — seriously, the angry mob’s hands are tied in this matter; their disciplinary action is carved in stone and dates back to Hammurabi — is to leave a bunch of cruel messages on her MySpace page.

If they don’t kill themselves first, teenage sexters can get busted for distributing child pornography. They’re sex offenders! Awesome.

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Blamer Kate reports via Blackberry from the West Coast:

Dear Twisty,

A laughably obnoxious ad cluster I spotted at the intersection of 6th and Anza in San Francisco while doing my very dudely pizza delivery work:

[For those of you who can't make out the slogans in the photo:

"Save the calories for bacon."
"0 calories. Great taste. Welded together."
"No gut. All glory."]

Dear Blamer Kate,

Thank you for sharing the stupid ad for this stupid soda. You may or may not be acquainted with an even stupider TV commercial for this stupid soda wherein the product is described as consisting of wolverine spit and scorpion venom, packaged in a macho black can made from the hull of a nukular [sic] submarine. Dudes crush the “submarine” with their bare hands. “Pepsi Max. The first diet cola for men.” You can watch it here.

What’s the big whoop? Well, you can’t have a “soda for men” unless “men” are considered a class unto themselves, defined in terms of the bacon-eating, welding, glorious nukular submarine-squashing aspirations that separate them from dainty vulnerable “women.” These ads are jokey, depicting average-looking dudes, but they tacitly allude to the noxious he-man/fragile damsel dichotomy that’s been chapping actual women’s hides lo these many millennia.

So Pepsi wins I Blame the Patriarchy’s first-ever Ditwuss (DTWS, or “Degrades the Whole Species”) Award.

Hugs,
Twisty

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Heatwarming milkweed bugs stick their butts together on a clump of antelope horn.

Everyone is always asking me how to smash patriarchy.

“It’s all well and good,” they say, “this vague, spinster auntly consciousness-raising crap in the Age of Funfeminism and Liberal Dudes, but where’s the practical solution?”

Well, I sure as hell don’t know. Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked, with the possible and imperfect exception of dropping out of society.

Dropping out of society is not a flawless gambit, to be sure. The patriarchy-smashing is localized to one’s immediate sphere of influence, and is entirely illusory, regardless of the depth to which one drops. You may be so far off the map that only the mosquitoes can find you, but Dude Nation, that icky subsidiary of the megatheocorporatocracy, still owns the map, confounding at every turn the efforts of spinster aunts who just want a quiet life without quite so many assholes in it.

You might, for example, find in your bathroom a paperback entitled Emergency by New York Times Bestselling Author Neil Strauss, who “takes us on a white-knuckled journey through America’s heart of darkness as he scrambles to escape the system.” You might thumb through it because, what a coincidence, you’re scrambling to escape the system too, and besides there’s nothing else to read in there except the Christmas catalog from Dover Saddlery. In so thumbing, you might come across this paragraph:

In the Golestan Shopping Center, women wrapped in burkas shopped for designer jewelry. Though the only skin showing was the front of their faces peering out from beneath black chadors, at least one in twenty of those faces had a bandaged nose from recent plastic surgery. My cab driver later told me that Iran was the world capital of nose jobs, proving that even in a culture like this, a woman’s vanity could not be kept down.”

Though, as a New York Times Bestselling Author, Neil Strauss ought to be on top of the world and above such things, he nevertheless feels it necessary to prove something unpleasant about women as a class.* He isn’t about to let the prooflessness of his argument keep him from doing it. And there you are, reading it. Thus has a misogynist dickwad wormed its way into your private bathroom.

Are you about to say, “Twisty, you dumbass, you were just asking for it, picking up a book written by a New York Times Bestselling Author”?

Don’t say it! Consider the implications!

Because no, I wasn’t just asking to feast my eyes upon that offensive (and poorly written) statement. The thought that it might amuse me to read some dude’s pronouncements on the inferiority of women never even entered my lobe. Like any rational human, the spinster aunt is seldom compelled to seek out abuse. Particularly when in the bathroom. But ours is a society wherein one does not have a reasonable expectation of freedom from bigotry, sexism, exploitation, and knobbery, on the grid or off, on the toilet or off.

Which is why I can only suggest an intellectual fortress approach to coping with membership in an oppressed class. It goes like this:

You know that thing you really enjoy doing? The thing that gives you the illusion that your life has meaning? With me, it’s sitting around looking at bugs with their butts stuck together. With you, it’s probably weaving god’s eyes out of rainbow yarn or something. Well, whatever it is, do it all the time, and with a sort of vengeance. Because the more you focus your lobe on shit that has actual philosophic value, the fewer the lobal chinks through which New York Times Bestselling Authors can slither.

__________________________
* New York Times Bestselling Author Neil Strauss’s other works include Jenna Jameson’s autobiography, the seminal How To Make Love Like a Porn Star, proving that New York Times Bestselling Author Neil Strauss is an asshole. The only “system” he wants to escape is some imaginary one where women have an iota of human dignity.

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The iPhone used to be the purview of elitists and geeks. A current Apple commercial says it still is, attempting to illustrate the unsurpassed coolness of its product by demonstrating that it can be used to read books and MRIs.

However, now that iPhones have filtered into the mainstream, they are little more than mediocrity-delivery devices. And less.

As of this writing, the 20 “Top Paid Apps” at the Apple iPhone Lifestyle section contained:

1. Bikini Blast
2. Bible Shaker
4. sexybytes
9. Sexy Spin
18. Bikini Girls 2
19. Sexy Bikini

“Lifestyle.” Man, I love that word. A set of behaviors and beliefs for which you must buy how-to manuals and that you must update constantly with the latest accessories.

That Bible Shaker is a crack-up.

Are you praying for someone to get healed? Shake out a healing scripture to back up your prayer and pray God’s Word [...] In these dark and troubled times, you need to be equipped with the Sword of the Spirit. What better way to live your life than with God’s answers right at your finger tips. [sic]

But what’s with all the sexy bikinis? Is this Austin Powers’ iPhone?

Recently released, but too stupid even for the Top 20, were:

iControl Her (a “mythical remote control” for women, with an off-switch for “nagging” and an on-switch for “love”)

Cute Asian Girls (”Are you down with the asian persuasion?” Photos of women in various submissive poses for 99 cents.)

Angels Lite Edition (”With two beautiful angels, you can easily set one to watch over you, and set the other for a family member or friend.” Magical thinking for your phone.)

Afterlife - Next life prophecy predictions for your reincarnation (”Using advanced iPhone analysis techniques and the powers of Numerology, Astrology, Chinese Zodiac and Feng Shui ‘Afterlife’ does the rest.” It’s a little-known fact that Apple’s iPhone OS has precognitive abilities and can predict the future you — digitally!)

iBlackBook (”This is a must to keep your women in order.” Application with mudflap-girl logo keeps poontang info handy for mack-daddies, stalkers, and rapists.)

The Girls of Miss Campus Queen 2008 Calendar (”Exclusive pictures of the most beautiful and talented college girls in Japan.” How could a person be expected to get through the day without ogling a Japanese teen?)

Of course the iPhone has applications that emulate “Spin the Bottle,” but just try to take a decent picture with the damn thing. Sex before functionality, that’s Apple’s motto. Who needs video and sound recording, cut-and-paste, and for the lovamike, the ability to send a fucking photo with my text message, when you can click on a “foreplay” button and hit that shit?

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