Archive for the 'Men Hate You' Category

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Funny sexism: harms outweigh benefits

Published by Jill on November 21, 2009. 42 Comments

The No Shit! Department at Spinster HQ brings you breaking news from 2007: Study shows that sexist jokes induce actual sexism!

Two long years ago psychology researcher Thomas E Ford et al authored a paper revealing that when dudes sit around guffawing at dumb blonde jokes, they are more likely to cut funding to women’s organizations than are dudes who are forced to listen to non-jokey statements that depict women neutrally.

The research indicates that people should be aware of the prevalence of disparaging humor in popular culture, and that the guise of benign amusement or “it’s just a joke” gives it the potential to be a powerful and widespread force that can legitimize prejudice in our society.”

You know what else Ford found? Dudes who bust a gut over sexist jokes create cultures of misogyny with other dudes who bust a gut over sexist jokes.

We believe this shows that humorous disparagement creates the perception of a shared standard of tolerance of discrimination that may guide behavior when people believe others feel the same way.

The paper was published way back in 2008. Yet, astoundingly, despite these scientific findings, joke-based sexism — to say nothing of bigotry, violence, and hatred — remain! No government task force has stepped up to recommend that sexist jokes, which clearly cause women to experience anxiety, degradation, and unnecessary funding cuts, be phased out of pop culture.

Where’s that task force?

[Thanks, Susan]

Posted in Men Hate You, Number 1 Science Information, Oppression Culture and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

American boobs used as political football, part 472

Published by Jill on November 19, 2009. 92 Comments

Regular readers know that, news-wise, CNN confuses me, and that I have all but kicked the NPR habit (it seems fantastic, but El Rancho Deluxe gets only one radio station, and it only plays one song: that Red Hot Chili Peppers slow dance where the dude yodels in that weird accent about how he doesn’t ever wanna feel like he did that day), with the happy result that pop culture’s gnarly substrate — urgently breaking news — rarely filters down to the lab here at Spinster HQ until a week or two after everyone else has moved on to the next closeted gay Republican outing. This programming suits me and my eccentric recluse lifestyle perfectly. Seriously, must I know about every deranged serial killer’s murderous rampage? One deranged serial killer is very like another. Once a person has apprehended that serial killers serially kill, the philosophical implications may be considered grasped; reviewing a continuous stream evidence of the phenomenon is not only unnecessary, it’s prurient.

But, out of the loop though I be, even I have heard about this no-mammograms-until-you’re-fifty malarkey, and it probably won’t blow your lobe to hear that it blew my lobe. The report made particularly gikky reading in view of the recent Stupak craptacity. America just feels like taking a big old televised crap on women’s basic health care this week, I guess. If, after reviewing the stunning and sweeping misogynist antics our government has pulled over the past couple of weeks, a person could stand up and announce with a straight face that patriarchy doesn’t exist, he’d have to be a complete imbecile.

I allude to the absurd recommendations, released Monday by the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, concerning the age at which women should begin queuing up at the old mammogram machine. They used to say 40. But now they say 50, and only every other year.

Check this out: the “harms outweigh the benefits.” Not just for under-fifty mammograms, but for over 75 mammograms, and — this one really kills me — breast self-examinations!

Wha?

That’s right, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force says women shouldn’t be taught to touch their own boobs. The harm outweighs the benefits!

The dreadful harm from which they seek to protect us?

Anxiety.

Anxiety is bad for ladies. Worse, apparently, than blowing off the timely diagnosis of life-threatening illness.

Anxiety! Are they fucking kidding me? Does the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force think women pass their days carefree, lounging on puffy clouds of pink velvet laundry eating Boston cream pie-flavored Yoplait? For fuck’s sake, I don’t know a single woman whose lobes aren’t fucking soaking in anxiety just as a matter of course. I slurp down a couple of Ativans every morning with my Bloody Mary or I can’t leave the house. Anxiety is pie for women. It’s death that tends to slow us down a little.

Here’s an anecdote. One time I came down with breast cancer myself. I had the impertinence to come down with it at the age of 46. How did I know I had cancer? I happened to be giving myself one of those harmful self-exams and found a tumor the size of Guam up in that mug, that’s how. Did I subsequently experience anxiety? Hell yeah, I did. Do I prefer anxiety to death? Hell yeah, I do.

Of course, nobody really gives a crap whether women suffer anxiety. That’s just a lot of smoke up your ass. If they did give a crap, they’d make rape illegal or something. What they’re really so concerned about is that mammography can have false positives, which means expensive biopsies that insurance doesn’t want to pay for. But for crying out loud. Wouldn’t you rather have a biopsy that turned out to be unnecessary, than not have a biopsy that turned out to be necessary?

If I’d followed the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force Recommendations, I would be dead. Dead, dead, dead. As it was, I was pretty fucking sick.

So I’d like to shove my entire 46-year-old malignant tumor up the U.S Preventative Services Task Force’s entire ass.

Note: mammography is stunningly imperfect. It’s only useful in detecting cancer that’s already there. Which is to say, it’s a cure-based tactic. This makes it vastly inferior to preventative measures — vaccines, elimination of environmental carcinogens, etc — that might preclude cancer in the first place. Also, mammography is, as are all cure-based measures, useless for women who can’t afford subsequent treatment.

You know what else? Everyone should have access to free genetic testing to determine whether they have the breast cancer mutation. If you’ve got the mutation, your chances of tumoring out before age 50 are, like, 80%. Currently that test costs like 4 grand, and good luck getting your insurance company to cough up for it.

Posted in Crazy sexy cancer, Men Hate You, Politics, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Same stupak, different day

Published by Jill on November 15, 2009. 67 Comments

Stupak

I Blame the Patriarchy marches to the beat of a different news cycle, so this may be ancient history to you, but,

Stupak!

I propose that “stupak” be incorporated into common usage as a verb meaning “to ensure political victory by means of screwing women over bigtime.”

My mind is not boggled that the health care “reform” bill passed the House only because it contains an amendment (the aforementioned Stupak amendment) that would make it illegal for private insurance companies to offer abortion coverage, even when women pay for it out-of-pocket, if those women are also receiving federal insurance dough. It isn’t the least bit surprising that 64 Democrats voted for the bill [view the lip-curling list of politicians who hate you], and that 12 of those were women. It’s scarcely a blip on the Patri-O-Meter that Nancy Collaborator Pelosi was described by HuffPo last week as “triumphant,” and that Barack Godbag Apologist Obama looks forward to signing the bill into law.

Why am I not surprised?

I’ll tell you why.

Patriarchy is a big, boily ass lounging on two fundamental butt-cheeks, without which cheeks it would develop abscesses and go septic and die. Those two butt-cheeks are: sex-based dominance, sex-based submission, and the rapeability of women. OK, three butt-cheeks. Dominance, submission, the rapeability of women, and an almost fanatical devotion to compulsory pregnancy. Four. Four butt-cheeks. Although dominance and submission, as two sides of the same thong, should really only count as one cheek. So make that three cheeks total. Although when you think about it, since the rapeability of women and compulsory pregnancy are merely the practical applications of domination ideology, they’re all really pretty much the same thing. So, for the sake of clarity, let’s just say there is one big honkin butt — the state ownership of women — lolling in a louche manner upon the two cheeks: the rapeability of women, and compulsory pregnancy.

What I’m getting at is this: my lack of surprise at this Stupak shit proceeds from irrefutable evidence that state ownership of women is among the most beloved of our violent culture’s violent traditions. Social conservatives appear to believe that God made patriarchy in his own image, and that he will withdraw his complimentary concierge services and cancel Christmas, NASCAR, and life everlasting if the state stops oppressing women for even one second. So-called progressives just want uninterrupted access to pussy.

Also, people just plain like oppressing women.

That’s why, as part of the ongoing effort to keep women rapeable, rapists are generously protected by the law. Convictions are a joke. They are such a joke that 60% of victims never bother to report their assaults. They are such a joke that at least 20,000 rape kits are sitting around untested in various crime labs across the country. According to RAINN, only 6 percent of rapists ever see the inside of the hoosegow.

“Somehow all we can do is take the statement from the victim. Take the statement from the alleged perpetrator and then throw up our hands because they are saying conflicting things,” quoth this U Mass rape scholar.

If people genuinely wanted to see the end of rape, which they don’t, they’d rescind the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women, replacing it with the following: if a woman says she was raped, she was raped. If that’s your DNA, Chad old boy, you’re a rapist. That’s it. The end. “Throwing up our hands” would be discontinued as a law enforcement technique.

So you know that stipulation in the Stupak amendment which would except pregnancies resulting from rape? Happily for fans of the status quo, since 94% of those will never be proven as rapes, denial of access to abortion can continue to oppress all but the wealthiest women.

Although our violence-loving society sort of pretends to pooh-pooh rape, it thinks nothing of claiming state ownership of women’s personal internal organs. Everybody’s fucking ecstatic about this health care “reform” bill. It’s “answering the call of history.” Which history, as usual, calls for women to take it up the butt and like it.

Posted in Compulsory pregnancy, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, Politics, Rape Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

Raper’s Delight, Part 3

Published by Jill on November 14, 2009. 24 Comments

Remember back in December of 2005, when Canadian rapist Jan Luedecke got a free pass because his lawyers had successfully argued that their client’s “sexsomnia” is a legitimate medical disorder that renders the “sufferer” incapable of refraining from assaulting women in his sleep?

Nothing, it will not surprise you to learn, has changed over the past four years.

A review board convening this week to consider Luedecke’s future has declared that he should run free, free, free to float on the ocean breeze, because he has apparently not sexsomnulated anyone but his official partner in 6 years.

That they know of. I don’t suppose that old Jan Luedecke would exactly pipe up about it if he had fallen off the ex-rapist wagon, and it goes without saying that his subsequent victims would have seen clearly the futility of trying to press charges against the poster boy for institutionalized juridical misogyny.

Naturally, nobody calls this bullshit “rare sleep disorder” what it really is, i.e., drunken blotto rape.

[Via Feministing]

Posted in Lobe-blowing, Men Hate You and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

All Old Movies Still Suck

Published by Jill on November 4, 2009. 94 Comments Tags: .

Of all the classic film genres I love to hate, I love to hate none more fervently than the mid-century sex farce. Mid-century sex farces suck.

As you know, by “mid-century sex farce,” I of course mean “bogus fucking misogynist fantasy crap.” And no classic film is more mid-century-sex-farcical than the one I watched the other day on the Turner Classic Movie channel. The flick to which I allude is so bogusly fucking misogynistical, they might as well have called it “How To Murder Your Wife.”

Oh wait, they did call it “How To Murder Your Wife.”

“Bring The Little Woman…Maybe She’ll Die Laughing!” The tagline was apparently written by somebody who thinks women should just get a sense of humor, already, about wife-murdering. Quoth an IMDB commenter who accurately articulates the enduring popularity of this fantasy:

A friend of a friend is one of those femi-nutzis. She hates this movie with a passion & proceeded to tell me why in a lengthy boring diatribe. After I woke from my slumber, (as femi-nutzis are prone to lull one to sleep with their “blah blah blahs”) I took it upon myself to get the movie as soon as possible. I was never offended by the alleged “sexism”: Why shouldn’t women be capable to take a men’s joke with humor?

The premise of this mind-bogglingly sexist 1965 Jack Lemmon comedy: the hero, a louche, martini-drinking playboy whose fabulous Manhattan bachelor pad comes equipped with Terry-Thomas as one of those droll and doting English valet sidekicks, wakes up to find that he got shitfaced and married Virna Lisi, the Italian beauty queen who jumped out of a cake at last night’s debauch. Lemmon is horrified by this fuck-up, since matrimony means an abrupt end to his with-it Hefneriffic swingertopia. Lemmon and Terry-Thomas spend the rest of the movie enmeshed in unfunny comedic hijinx related to springing Lemmon from the disastrous legal contract requiring him to be waited on hand and foot by a non-English-speaking sex goddess who worships him, cooks for him, and puts out 24/7. The hijinx include, it will not surprise you to learn, a plot to murder Virna Lisi.

Note: filmmakers who want to get maximum gyrations out of their non-English-speaking Italian bombshell actresses should take a hint from this movie: whatever you do, don’t write a translator into the script, or add subtitles, or your bitch won’t be able to wigglingly pantomime everything, such as how her clothes got stolen at the International Miss Jugs pageant. Having her clothes get stolen is pretty ingenious, too, since it means she can spend the rest of the first act naked under a shiny black plastic raincoat.

A waxy yellow build-up of sexist clichés — the battle-axe mother-in-law, the hen-pecked husband best friend — culminates in a courtroom scene in which Lemmon’s character beats the titular murder rap by postulating to the court that the essential emasculating nature of women justifies killing them, and that if they let him off the hook they’ll be striking a blow for American Male Justice everywhere. Lemmon’s speech:

Too long has the American man allowed himself to be bullied, coddled, and mothered, and tyrannized, and in general meant to feel like a feeble-minded idiot by the female of the species. Do you realize the power that you have in your hand here today? If one man – just one man – can stick his wife in the goop from the gloppitta-gloppitta machine, and get away with it! Whoa-ho-ho, boy, we’ve got it made. We have got it made. All of us.

Then, of course, Virna Lisi turns out not to have been murdered after all. They live, if you can stand it, happily ever after, because Virna Lisi is a bimbo, and still adores Jack Lemmon, even though he has humiliated her, drugged her, and spent a whole movie trying to get rid of her.

How this movie could pass for comedy, even in 1965, is beyond any sane person’s comprehension. “How To Murder Your Wife” is too ugly to pass for satire, and too mean-spirited and vulgar to rise even to the level of curious sociological artifact. It’s just a tarnished, tasteless old relic from that pervy rumpus-room interlude in honky dude American history — the period just after June Cleaver’s heyday and just before 2nd wave feminism — when stylish boozing, accessorizing, and womanizing was considered a sophisticated art form. It is unlikely that this glittering Rat Packian lifestyle actually existed anywhere but in movies and the pages of Playboy, but it nevertheless foreshadowed today’s mainstream Porn Nation.

This picture is so over-the-top hateful that even TCM’s host was moved to remark, in a sad and wistful tone, that it’s the kind of film that just wouldn’t get made today. Normally these TCM hosts are matter-of-fact about the female sexprops that parade with perfect cadence through the dude movies they show. Their idea of a feminist film is “The Women,” in which a bunch of rich white housewives sit around gossiping in a beauty parlor about their husbands’ mistresses. So it’s really saying something when a TCM dude actually quasi-acknowledges that one of their beloved classics might fail to delight women audiences today. That “How To Murder Your Wife” is 128 minutes of uninterrupted hate speech, however, does not prevent TCM from airing it. And on a Saturday afternoon, too, guaranteeing maximum exposure to two groups who can least tolerate it: invalids, who are already sick enough, and impressionable youths, whom it will scar for life.

In other words, blah blah blah.

Posted in Lobe-blowing, Men Hate You, Sexploitation and The Entertainment Industrial Complex. Bite me, Chad.

Ways In Which the Internet Sucks

Published by Jill on October 16, 2009. 193 Comments

meghanmcc Savage Death Island is happy to launch a new feature. It’s the greatly anticipated Ways In Which the Internet Sucks feature!

We begin with a charming instance of Whataboutthemen?! appearing this morning on the Atlantic’s website. But first, the backstory:

Meghan McCain — Young Republican, internet columnist, “Colbert Report” guest, and daughter of John — posts a self-portrait on Twitpic.

A “twitpic,” I have discovered, is a photo with a short URL, suitable for tweeting.

McCain tweets this URL.

Uh-oh! In the self-twitpic, McCain has failed to completely disguise the fact that she has breasts. Her “tens of thousands of followers” retaliate for her public femaleness by loosing a torrent of abuse, a Public Shaming Action consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women. According to WSJ blog Dijits, McCain responds to the beatdown thusly:

“So I took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing but apparently anything other than a pantsuit I am a slut. [...] When I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, I had no idea this makes me a ’slut’, I can’t even tell you how hurt I am.”

I will touch on the tragickal patriarchy-blaming implications of that statement in a moment. But first, the whataboutthemen Atlantic piece.

Appearing in a column called “Spatwatch,” with the classy and original headline “Meghan McCain’s Breasts Launch 1000 Ships,” is an account of two dudes who get into it on Twitter over McCain’s photograph. The dudes, if anyone gives a crap, are ABC correspondent Jake Tepper and some knob described as “conservative blogger Allahpundit.”

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see a blog with the word “pundit” in the title, I say to myself, “Jill, that’s one blog you can safely omit from your reading list with every expectation that your life will continue to be fun-filled and carefree.”

The substance — I use the term loosely — of the Tepper/Allahpundit tweetbroglio: Tepper chivalrously attempts to buck up the wounded McCain by instructing her on the intricacies of mob psychology, describing her detractors as “mean 9-year-olds.” Whereupon this Allahpundit dude goes apeshit, his temper flaring because he apparently interprets Tepper’s defense of McCain as a personal affront. The exchange progresses until both dudes have kissed and made up and are stroking each other’s pundits.

I mention this because, instead of discussing the sorry state of affairs that has compelled hordes of dickwads to deride McCain for having boobs, instead of deconstructing the larger, ultra-misogynist zeitgeist of the Internet, the “Spatwatch” piece completely ignores the actual story (i.e. “Woman punished by fans for appearing in public as human being”) in favor of showcasing the egos of a couple of Dude Nation losers.

Same shit, different day.

Meanwhile, observe McCain’s own rhetoric. She clearly knows the rules. Here she is after the shitstorm, commenting the double-standard that just slapped her upside the head.

[W]hen Rep. Aaron Schock or Rep. Jeff Flake post pictures of themselves without their suits on—and their shirts, for that matter—they are proclaimed “hotties.” But put me in a tank top and I am suddenly an embarrassment to the Republican Party and women everywhere.

She grasps that, as a member of the sex class, she exists continuously in a state of pre-porn. She understands that she is only allowed to wear tank tops when she is “alone in [her] apartment.” That’s because, in public, she will be judged by Dude Nation’s occupying forces and their collaborators, all of whom have exacting (but ever-fluctuating) standards with which members of the sex class, who ceaselessly walk a fine line between virgin and whore, must comply.

McCain’s mistake is in momentarily forgetting this detail and imagining herself to enjoy fully-human status.

When her scandalous tank top photo — you’d think it was a shot of a wide-open beaver with a crack pipe hanging out of it for all the attention it’s getting — makes national news, she quickly realizes her error, and — here the spinster butt sprouts a boil — issues an apology to her Twitter fans. She takes down the twitpic and contemplates deleting her Twitter account. She’s sorry if she “offended” anyone by publishing a likeness of her personal self in non-regulation Young Republican-wear.

She has, she says, “learned a valuable lesson about the Internet and the boundaries between personal and public use with social media.”

The lesson? Men don’t have boundaries.

Beatdown successful! Congratulations, Dudes!

Posted in Dear god what about the men?, Femininity, Lobe-blowing, Mass Media, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.

Frustrated dude decants anguished soul

Published by Jill on October 6, 2009. 67 Comments

After reading his comment a second time, I began to perceive that this guy has little affinity for hoes.

johnny_handsome90
October 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm

I hate hoes superficial hoes groupie hoes hooker hoes.
all these hoes that run around night clubs who are broke
and think a rich guy or a celeb is going to notice them
and pay their whole way through life, hoes who think promoters
are super stars and act like they famous, hoes who think a door
man is some god, hoes who work at some company for 10.00 an hour
knowing she sucked the boss off to get that job, damn well knowing
her pretty ass wouldnt be working there or had that job if she
was fat, hoes hoes hoes, hoes who chase down rappers tour
buses, hoes who can not even hold a convo, exp hood rat hoes.
But women i do love women real classy women, women that know how to act.
intelligent women, michelle obama, oprah, hilary clinton, real women.
p.s all you hoes can suck a nut!

I publish johnny_handsome90’s comment for two reasons.

One, it’s fucking funny.

Two, it reveals a facet of American manhood we see all too little of: the tortured inner conflict suffered by a sensitive intellectual chap who despises all the women he has actually met. These women all seem to be doing femininity in a manner inconsistent with johnny_handsome90’s lofty ideals. They are broke, they are fat, they desire financial security, they go to nightclubs, they have low-paying jobs, they like music, they like sex, they admire rappers. Their interest in men who are not johnny-handsome90 justifies the repeated use of derogatory epithets when describing them. Anger and hate is his reasonable response to having been made to endure a miserable life deprived of the society of “real” women like Oprah.

It’s time someone spoke out. This is the Number 1 problem with women. They are not real, like First Ladies, talk show moguls, and Secretaries of State.

Although I might suggest that if johnny_handsome90 wishes to attract women who have achieved the degree of realness of a Michelle Obama or a Hillary Clinton, he might first look into becoming President of the United States.

Posted in Blogulation, Dear god what about the men? and Men Hate You. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt recommends non-sucky blog

Published by Jill on September 16, 2009. 36 Comments

Autoharpophilia

Yesterday morning, as I clawed my way out from under a pile of various retrievers and leaped from the TempurPedic with my customary yelp, a brilliant thought occurred to me. I said to myself, “Jill,” I said, “what you need is an autoharp!”

Now, I probably don’t need to tell you that all the autoharp shops here in Cottonmouth County closed sometime around 1886. No problem! I just turn on my computer, press a few buttons, and in a few hours my new autoharp arrives at my gate via Autoharp Airlift Express Dot Com!

The internet. Replete with jackasses, but occasionally useful.

Internet usefulness is not constrained to its facilitation of the union of spinster aunts and stringed folk instruments they have no idea how to play. Today, for example, I happened upon a well-written blog. It’s even a feminist blog. I happened upon it because its author, displaying a degree of discernment unusual in today’s feckless young blogger, paraphrased me using proper attribution, and the link showed up in my inbox.

I know, I know. It seems incredible. But I’m not exaggerating. Fannie’s Room is not junk.

Fannie’s post on one of those asshole dudes who believes that his important dudeliness qualifies him to lecture the feminists on the nature of feminism is very pleasant indeed. Fannie’s taste in asshole dudes is excellent; he’s quite a peach. Here’s what the guy has to say:

Western feminism is too bogged down in its own limitless self-regard, arguing ad nauseam about the evils of sexually stereotyping adverts, or why female bankers don’t get quite such enormous bonuses as their male equivalents, to care about anyone else. Least of all the millions of subjected women living in conditions they cannot begin to understand, although Jaycee Lee Dugard could probably give them a few pointers.

He can begin to understand millions of subjected women, though. Because he’s a dude! This also entitles him to the view that Western feminists are doing it wrong! We’re so obssessed with sexist TV shows that we’ve never heard of honor killings, or if we have, we have nevertheless failed utterly in persuading assholes like himself of the validity of feminist ideology; it’s the job of Western feminists to “save Muslim women,” yadda yadda, you’ve heard it all before.

Anyway, Fannie offers an engaging analysis of his argument. Here’s an excerpt:

From those who have the privilege of being considered default human beings who are privy to the One and Only Objective Worldview, feminists often receive quite the schizophrenic message. On the one hand, feminists aren’t worth listening to because all they do is whine and ruin everybody’s fun. But on the other hand, they should use their incredible powers of indoctrination to work on More Important Issues.

But worse than this mixed message, is the fact that non-feminist advisors to feminism are often so very wrong about what feminism is and is not. Perhaps placing a primacy on their own “objective” worldview, they assume that their ignorance about what feminists do, care about, and strive towards is an accurate reflection of reality.

It’s usually not.

Precisely! Few things blow my lobe worse than dudes who simultaneously denigrate feminism as useless crap and accuse its ideologues of wielding demonic power over the masses. I get these feminists-suck-at-feminism guys all the time. They got no argument, because they don’t know what feminism is; they just hate women.

Also, I credit Fannie with hipping me to what everyone else has probably already forgotten about, it’s so last week. I allude to the pro Prop-8 California Assemblyman whose mic was on as he described to an interlocutor his revolting heterosexploits with one of his mistresses. Of his graphic bragging, Fannie remarks, “[E]w. That definitely just made me a little more gay.”

Seriously, did you see this shit? Hilarious! Fannie opines that active mics on politicians should be mandatory 24/7. Hilarious!

Almost as hilarious as me keeping society with an autoharp. I can sense your anxiety, but not to worry! As soon as it arrives I’ll post a video demonstrating the perfection of our union.

Posted in Blogulation, Knobjectivism, Mass Media, Men Hate You, Politics and Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt complains about Ted Kennedy

Published by Jill on September 3, 2009. 60 Comments

One of the reasons this spinster devotes fewer and fewer aunt-hours to reading blogs these days is the increasing likelihood that I will encounter something along the lines of “You call yourself a feminist? Shame on you for not writing about blahblahblah.” Whereupon the blogger in question writes sanctimoniously about blahblahblah. I fucking hate that shame-on-you tone. Who died and made you king of the blog topic deciders, Sanctimonious Blogger?

This week the cause celebre and object of feminist indifference is Mary Jo Kopechne, who, in 1969, famously suffocated to death after having been abandoned in a submerged car by the recent Senator Ted Kennedy, who was perhaps a bit tipsy at the time.

“[E]ven the feminist blogs are not mentioning her. Yes, as if she never existed indeed!” says DaisyDeadhead, giving herself a little pat on the head.

DaisyDeadhead is pissed about how popular Ted Kennedy is lately, now that he’s dead. He’s so nationally beloved and so perfectly deceased that it is, she says, “considered ‘rude’ to mention [Kopechne's] suspicious and untimely death.”

DaisyDeadhead is right about me, at least. I have completely omitted to write about Mary Jo Kopechne’s suspicious and untimely death. I haven’t even thought about Kopechne in years and years. Hell, I had already tuned out the incessant chatter covering Kennedy’s princely week of national mourning and state funeralizing and sentimental eulogizing (if I hear the phrase “uncanny ability to reach across the aisle” one more time I’m gonna set fire to my own head). Another pink-faced old bloviating honky patriarch biting the dust is but a blip on the obstreperometer here at Spinster HQ. But Daisy’s got a point. When public figures croak around here the tendency to canonize’em and whitewash their not inconsiderable personal failings, especially when those failings are so perfectly in line with the evils we particularly abhor, can really chap the old hide.

It dawns on me, though, that the focus on Kopechne’s death has the untoward effect of historically footnoting her in terms of a dude. I know, I know, whaddya do? The dude in whose terms she is historically footnoted is a fucking dead Kennedy, bona fide American royalty whose considerable influence casts a fairly jumbo and luminous shadow. And had he not killed her, it is likely that nobody, not even DaisyDeadhead, would be writing about her now. One doesn’t write “Kopechne” without writing “Kennedy.” Peas and carrots.

Joyce Carol Oates authors a remarkable speculation in a recent Guardian article. It’s currently being bandied about in Femtown:

“[I]f one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?”

Unless one is insane, one is to think that that dude should have been tried for homicide, that’s what. Oates isn’t boostering for the guy, or suggesting that Kopechne’s murder was justified by her murderer’s subsequent good deeds. She’s just pointing out the unpleasant fact that patriarchal hegemony trumps justice, even as it pretends that justice is its highest moral purpose.

She kisses the master’s ass, though, by whitewashing this phenomenon as a “paradox” rather than calling it what it is: the logical conclusion of oppression culture.

Oh, those wacky men, and their lively tradition of perpetrating unspeakable criminal shit in private while simultaneously basking in the glory of their larger-than-life public service.

It is impossible to speculate what Mary Jo Kopechne, a woman with a promising career in politics, might have accomplished had she not been sacrificed for the political career of an ethically challenged, privileged white asshole. One thing’s for sure, though. She’s but one of millions of women whose invitation to life’s rich pageant turned out to be bogus.

I’m not one of those dorks who thinks that women should run the world and that if we did there would be peace and harmony and vegan tacos for everyone (No one should run the world. But that’s another post). I can barely imagine what human society would look like if women were merely accorded human status, but I tell you what. It sure as shit couldn’t be worse than this.

Posted in Bloodsport, Mass Media, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, Politics, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Another amateur pornographer deludes self he’s an artiste

Published by Jill on August 16, 2009. 64 Comments

This amateur pornographer, known on the website Deviantart.com as “Pelicanh,” snaps photos of naked ladies, stands back, basks in it, and calls it art. Furthermore, he puts it on the World Wide Web and gets thousands of hits a day. Furthermore, he is eager to demonstrate to his followers his superiority in the field of female genital identification (though he obviously can make no claims in the ellipsis or the ALL CAPS or the insertion-of-too-many-letters-in-the-word-way departments). To wit:

“Anyone taking even a casual stroll through my gallery will see a lot of pussy photos. Let’s just call them what they are, OK? NO….they are NOT photos of “vaginas” – learn your anatomy, people.

I’d LOVE it if there was a sweet and endearing name for them, ya know. “Pussy” sounds pretty “Playboy-ish” to me but it is the best I can do because it ISN’T a vagina photo and that sounds waaaaayyy too medical to me anyway. There are at least a billion names for that part of a woman’s anatomy but that’s not what this journal is about. SO – get over it, I’m gonna call it a pussy.”

Well, sure, you’re a pornographer. This means you think “pussy” is “anatomy.” But even if you didn’t, obviously you’d have to call it “pussy,” since degrading women and telling them to “get over it” is one of the Inalienable Rights of Man.

However, were you not a wart on the corn-hole of Dude Nation, you might know the difference between a pejorative slur and actual nomenclature, or possibly even that vagina is not a “medical” term. It might also dawn on you that a “sweet, endearing name for them” would be useful only to you and your efforts to distract their owners, through some kind of phony sympathetic display, from the fact that you are a dehumanizing, exploitative prick. “That part of a woman’s anatomy” has already got a name, pencil-dick.

Anyway, this Pelican guy, in an essay titled, apparently without irony, “Pussies – Art or Porn!!??”, reveals that his life’s most cherished dream is to release nude models from their self-imposed prison of vulvular self-doubt. See, he has taken a poll on the subject. He is “saddened” to find that nude models invariably aver that they consider to be ugly the body part to which he alludes as “pussy.” Their views on the matter have apparently induced in these models a certain reluctance to flip him the wide open beaver on demand.

Unacceptable! Pelicanh vows magnanimously to take matters into his own hands, to educate these tragically deluded women on the subject of the “beauty” of their “pussies,” presumably for the betterment of all womankind, but in reality so he can persuade more of them to give it up for the camera.

I set myself a small mission to MAKE people look at them, accept them, see the beauty.

Make people look at pussy! What a noble mission! Because men usually experience such difficulty looking at pictures of naked women on the internet. Pelicanh has undoubtedly secured himself a spot on the short list for the Nobel Peace Prize for his dedicated work in this field.

A vulva, according to Pelicanh, can be one of two things:

1. Beautiful art, or
2. Porn.

It doesn’t occur to old Pelicanh that a vulva might have aspirations that rise above being photographed by some perv for public display on his perv web page, where viewers are “made” to look at “beauty.” Aspirations, for example, that do not involve complicity in dudely “art” projects, dudely perceptions of “beauty,” or perpetual availability for pornsick voyeurism. A vulva might want to just hang around. Hit the links. Go to a museum. Menstruate. Enjoy a taco. Chillax on the chaise with a marg and a copy of I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew.

The “It’s beautiful so it’s art, not porn” argument always hilarifies me. Haw!

What could it be about a vulva that makes it the universal Holy Grail of a certain species of male shutterbug? Why must these vulgar specimens insist on its unique “beauty” when, in fact, a vulva is precisely as “beautiful” as an elbow or a nostril? Why do they so vociferously declaim that they are not pornographers even though their “work” depends entirely on the gross imbalance of power between dudes and women, specifically on flattening women into 2-dimensional sex graphics?

I’ll tell you. When a dude photographer snags a beaver shot, he snags a trophy. Boo-ya. A photograph of a disembodied vulva is not, as is one of an elbow or a nostril, a politically or socially neutral concept. It is the graphic representation of the universal belief that women = sex, and a symbol of male dominance in a rape culture. And naturally it is customary, in the world of oppressive human endeavor, to imagine that beauty attends that endeavor, so that one may justify the oppression.

In the continuum of pervy sexist tools, dude photographers stand alone at the pinnacle of sleaze.

[Thanks, Windswept. I think.]

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, Rape Culture, Sexploitation and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.