Archive for the 'Hugs, Twisty' Category

Hugs, Twisty: rapist is asshole

Published by Jill on May 17, 2011. 69 Comments

Dear Twisty,

Please Jill! Cast the jaundiced spinster eye apon the recent IMF rapist? I need your unique perspective.

redpeachmoon

Dear redpeachmoon,

What luck! I just happen to have handy just such a perspective on the IMF rapist. However, you might not interpret it as particularly unique. It goes like this:

That guy is a fucken tool.

Sure, I’ve got a little more, but that’s pretty much the gist. So if you’ve got something else to do, go on ahead. I won’t mind.

Meanwhile, if, unlike blamer redpeachmoon, you serenely abide in your cloister under a self-imposed news blackout, you may not have heard of the IMF rapist. No great loss. If you’ve heard of one IMF rapist, you’ve heard of’em all.

This particular IMF rapist is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, pink-faced captain of industry and managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Dominique Strauss-Kahn went on a little spree in Manhattan last weekend and assaulted a hotel employee. According to the first link I clicked on Google, this is how it went down: Strauss-Kahn “emerged from the bathroom naked and dragged [the hotel employee] through the suite from room to room in a violent sex attack.” He then high-tailed it to JFK, licketty-split, but was yanked off his flight to Paris just before takeoff, brought back to “a police cell in Harlem,” and denied bail as a flight risk. [cite]

The woman Strauss-Kahn attacked is being referred to as a “maid” or “chambermaid.”

Maid is a creepy-ass word. No matter what, a maid is not a good thing to be. In days of yore the term was used to denote a mythical female who had so far escaped — but would soon be forced into — getting pronged by some entitled prick. Denoting females thusly was of vital importance back in yore; owing to a lot of macho-religious nonsense that equated women with sex, as-yet-unpronged ladies were worth more than pronged ones. Intact virtue could make or break your career.

Nowadays maid still refers most commonly to a member of the sex class, but with less emphasis on purity, and more emphasis on the flipside of the misogyny nickel — suitability for interaction with other people’s filth. It means “low-status servant who cleans up after high-status assholes.”

Some high-status assholes make themselves feel like magnanimous benefactors by calling their maids “housekeepers,” paying them “more” than the maids would make back in the Dominican Republic, and treating them “like” family. Oh please. The job is fucking cruddy. It’s so cruddy that dudes are never, ever maids. If maids were actually paid what the work is actually worth, dudes would get all the maid jobs.

Also, your maid already has a family, Your Highness.

Anyway, in the narrative of IMF rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the victim’s status as a sub-human hotel cleaner is an important detail. Apparently this Strauss-Kahn shitsack is a celebrated rapscallion, rake, and ladies’ man. Boys will be boys! His nickname in the classy world of international finance is reportedly “the great seducer.” So it makes titillating how-the-mighty-have-fallen news copy to depict him, not as a suave Casanova jetsetting around with supermodel heiresses, but as a privileged fiend predating a powerless, lower-caste menial. In a world where it’s generally considered OK to use women according to their universally-acknowledged purpose (sex), it is sometimes permissible to use them, as long as patriarchal prurience is served, for other stuff, such as, in this case, leverage in toppling a poobah. As for the actual woman herself, nobody gives a rat’s ass about her. She is merely a symbol of a towering potentate’s descent into ignominy, frothily recounted by patriarchal media. Like the virginal maids of yore, hotel maids are also receptacles for male disdain.

Anyone who goes around calling himself “the great seducer” is undoubtedly a serial rapist, so naturally other women are beginning to turn up with accounts of Strauss-Kahn’s abuses. One of them, a young journalist who had previously publicly recounted her assault (with Strauss-Kahn’s name redacted), now describes his behavior during her attempted rape as that of a “rutting chimp.” Not surprisingly, the woman didn’t press charges at the time. She didn’t want her career to be permanently stained with “she’s the girl who accused Strauss-Kahn of rape.” Which is exactly how rapists get away with it: fear, humiliation, and shame are superb silencers.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will undoubtedly get away with it, too. He has retained Michael Jackson’s lawyer.

Speaking of entitled white patriarchs who use domestic employees as toilets, California ex-governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently fathered a child with “a longtime member of their household staff.” Wife Maria Shriver, an original member of the long-suffering-stand-by-your-political-man wives’ club back in aught-three while candidate Arnie was at the center of a groping scandal, has finally left the schmuck.

Internationally powerful, white, rich, successful, married to heiresses they famously cheat on at every opportunity — these dudes are patriarchy’s poster-boys. You don’t become a global financier or a steroid-poppin’ muscleman California grope-ulator by being an enlightened sweetheart of a guy who doesn’t rape the maid.

Hugs,
Twisty

Posted in Hugs, Twisty, Men Hate You and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: Pornsick dudes give blamer the screamin’ mimis

Published by Jill on January 16, 2011. 158 Comments

Blamers, blamers, blamers! Though my blogularity has been in remission lo these past weeks, I have missed you. The blog will return, I swear. Until then, allow me to resurrect one of my favorite recurring features. I allude to the “Hugs, Twisty” feature. You remember “Hugs, Twisty,” right? It’s where I publish a blamer email instead of writing my own essay. I scrawl a few platitudes at the end and sign it “Hugs, Twisty.” The idea being that the wise and mightly blametariat take up the cause in the comments.

Today’s “Hugs, Twisty” comes from blamer B. It appears that B is newly awakened to the horrors inherent in feminist awareness — especially those relating to the dreaded Male Gaze — and is struggling to keep it together.

Dear Twisty,

I’m just so confused and depressed about things and I really want to get your thoughts. I am having so much trouble with all the images and portrayals of women everywhere I look and with all of the male views on fantasy (even without porn) and I don’t know if I’m taking it all too far, or if other women really do feel as affected by these things as I am. When I mention how I feel to other people they tell me that I need to lighten up and that I just have a low self-esteem (which I know I do, so I start to believe them even more), or they use the lines on me about it all being normal for guys to do this or that, and I’m just losing confidence in what I think (or at least thought I believed) and I feel completely alone. To try and find support, I started looking at blogs, but I was feeling even worse because I see so many where the minute a woman makes the slightest indication that something makes her feel bad about herself or insecure, everyone (including women) beat her up with the same things others have told me. I’m new to your site and with what I’ve been reading the last few weeks, I’m finding some reassurance, and wanted to see what your views were on:

1) ads and commercials like Victoria’s Secret, GoDaddy, and Hardees? – Am I overreacting that these bother me?

2) magazine covers like Maxim, Cosmo, Sports Illustrated, Wired (did you see Wired’s December issue cover?)

2) movies like American Pie?

3) does it bother you at all that almost every movie has at least one female topless scene?…even movies like 21 Grams or Open Water…it just seems like it is beginning to be a given thing in every movie. Technically, these movies don’t have to have it in there…I can’t help feeling that it’s just a given to cater to men

4) masturbation? – I hope it doesn’t sound silly … that’s how insecure I am … but when men are blogging out there, or men you know or are in a relationship with, are saying that they are fantasizing or masturbating daily about attractive women they work with or that they see in public or in movies or commercials, and they say that it’s no big deal, but then in the same breath, they tell you that you are the most beautiful woman to them and that they love you more than anything, I just can’t get my brain to think that’s true. Am I overreacting to feel that way? I just see it that men are “consuming” women around them and fantasizing to these “ideal” and “unrealistic” pictures of women that are EVERYWHERE, and I just can’t see how they aren’t possibly considering how “real” women are not measuring up. But again, I just keep being told that I have a low self-esteem, and I have to admit, that because of all of this, I really do. And I’m not finding other women who feel hurt by this.

I have found women who are against porn, which I was happy to find validation on my views of that. But these other topics, especially the fantasizing have me so distraught. It’s difficult for me because it is a private issue, but when you know that all men are doing this all the time and you know that they are looking at women so as to “consume” their looks, I just don’t know how to cope with those feelings, so I am worried that I’ve taken it too far.

I really wish I could find a group of women in my area who feel similarly on some of this stuff as I do and would want to meet maybe once a month to just talk about how they handle all this in their workplace, in relationships and just in their minds. I almost feel like I can’t watch a movie or read a magazine without it all affecting me, and I’m wondering if most women are just “coping” by ignoring it since it’s too ingrained in our society, or if they all feel the same way I do and are finding relationships where others support them.

Thanks for your thoughts on this

B

Dear B,

Dang. I feel ya. Oppression fucking sucks.

You’re not overreacting. You’re trusting your perceptions. This is essential for anyone who wants to function as a sentient being with personal sovereignty. You have observed that our social order is profoundly misogynistical, and you have chosen truth over complaisance. Well done. Unfortunately, this path, though liberating in a bunch of important ways, can often be pretty difficult and painful in practice.

As a matter of survival, most people — men and women — have a huge personal investment in preserving the social order. This is why they tell you to lighten up when you question the legitimacy of the culture of domination. They don’t want to face the painful truth. Even self-identified feminists do this. Don’t be too hard on’em. The indoctrination is strong within us all.

Pornography is not, as you suggest, a “private issue.” It is the graphic representation of violence against women, packaged as public entertainment. The masturbators you describe are porn addicts. Porn addiction is richly rewarded in our culture, so naturally there are about 12,786 of these knobs on every bar stool, street corner, and yacht.

Quick fix: if some dude makes you uncomfortable, do whatever you can to just stay the hell away from him. If you’re up for a little activism-lite, tell your friends who use pornography why it’s not OK. Boyfriends who use pornography should be dumped without delay. Without delay!

Obviously you can’t stay away from all men all the time, and you can’t change the rotten way men think about women, so the best long-term defense is to develop a real awareness and deep sense of your own humanity, so the withering gaze of dudely pornsickness can’t turn you into a commodity in your own mind.

One way to gain a sense of your own — and all women’s — humanity is to bone up on feminist theory. It’s a disorganized mess, but there’s a reading list link on this here blog of which you might avail yourself, to start with. You might also click on the blamers’ blogs. Many of them share basic feminist views on pornography and other stuff, and reading their blogs might help you feel less isolated.

I wish I could offer a formula that would eliminate the patriarchy for you, but there isn’t one. Well, that’s not exactly true. There is one little scheme, which, if implemented even half-assedly, would pretty much take care of the problem. Of course I allude to feminist revolt. Alas, it’s an idea that never seems to get much traction. As previously noted, antifeminist indoctrination is strong, even among feminists.

We all just have to scrumble by as best we can. The main thing is to keep a sense of humor.

Chin up!

Hugs,
Twisty

P.S. You’re not alone. This blog, for instance, has like 3 or 4 thousand readers. Or at least it did back when I could be bothered to post.

Posted in Hugs, Twisty, Men Hate You and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.

Blamer Brain Trust Alert: Blamer seeks non-soul-crushing employment

Published by Jill on June 13, 2010. 142 Comments

Today’s cry for help is from one of our more prolific and incisive blamers, but I forgot to ask if I could use her real name, so until she outs herself she’s Blamer X.

Dear Twisty,

I just got out of a soul crushing HR meeting where I raised concern about the bosses of our department being 2/3 men despite men making up like 45% of the department, and that the women who have been promoted have worked there for ages in order to get that far (in between complaints about individual dudes and the crap they say/do). They explained to me the equally applied and straightforward nature of hiring and promotion (yeah, sure), and assured me that I cannot know who was really the best candidate because I wasn’t there during the meetings. I also should not be afraid for my job (ha!). Their job is to lie to me about the consequences of reporting a bunch of people who have authority over me, and I doubt much of anything will happen. I am looking for a new job.

Anyway, I know that the circumstances I reported are common at many work places. I want to know if there are blamer suggestions for finding a job that isn’t filled with this kind of BS. Are there any notoriously female industries or jobs that aren’t totally shitty and underpaid?

thanks
Blamer X

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Blamer X,

Although spinster auntly expertise is global, my own work history (see my absurd CV on the About Twisty page) compels me to reveal that I am no authority on notoriously female industries or jobs that aren’t totally shitty and underpaid. In fact, as far as I have been able to determine, there are no notoriously female industries, only dude industries that are notorious for exploiting a female workforce.

I might suggest bartending in a dyke bar. These little hellholes are always owned by women. Bartending money is petty good, and the sexual harassment would originate with women, making it somewhat more palatable on accounta the built-in sex-based power differential, often imitated but never duplicated, has no precise analog amongst the ladies.

However, I realize that dispensing booze to partying lesbians until 2 or 3 in the morning — especially if karaoke is involved — may not be your idea of a swell time. Lesbians are not automatically feminists, nor are they famous, as a class, for their good taste in music. Also, there is no health insurance.

Therefore I’m putting it up to the Blametariat.

Hugs,
Twisty

So what’s the word, girls? Does Blamer X’s dream job exist?

Posted in Hugs, Twisty and Oppression Culture. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: Woman’s sex appeal is unbearable to knob coworkers

Published by Jill on June 5, 2010. 62 Comments

To: Twisty Faster
From: maria m. miranda
Subject: Jezebel: woman fired for being too sexy at job
Message: I know Jezebel covered this, but I want YOU to write about it.

Dear maria m. miranda,

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than catering to the whims of complete strangers!

Here’s my synopsis [pieced together from the original story at Village Voice and Anna North's essay on same at Jezebel]: Debrahlee Lorenzana is fired from Citibank for bankering while female. She’s suing the chumpass motherfuckers for discrimination.

Lorenzana’s story is older than a spinster’s bunions: because of the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women, wherein is codified the equation of “women” with “sex,” Lorenzana’s Beauty2K-compliance, which is considerable, was deemed “too distracting” for her dude coworkers “to bear.” Citibank managers criticized her for looking too sexy, for not wearing makeup, for wearing high heels, for not wearing high heels, for wearing pencil skirts, for wearing sweaters, for wearing “fitted” business suits, for not straightening her hair, etc. They also performed an office-neuter on her: omitted to give her essential training which forced her to rely on male coworkers for favors.

It was further speculated in the Jezebel comments that Lorenzana’s female colleagues experienced her as a source of acute agony and contrived to “cut her off at the knees” forthwith.

In other words, Lorenzana was hectored, harassed, and discriminated against.

And then, when the Village Voice reports on her lawsuit, they include a weird 26-photo online slideshow of the “amihotornot” variety, asking readers to more or less rate Lorenzana’s sex appeal, this in addition to the patriarchy-affirming, porn-is-great language and tone of the article generally. As of this writing, the slideshow has nearly 300 comments. I stopped reading after the first 10 or so, which all voiced the same sentiment: she ain’t all that, she should “get over” herself, she must have deep character flaws that caused her female manager to give her the axe, obviously she is looking to parlay this frivolous lawsuit into celebrity.

Poor Debrahlee Lorenzana. Possessing a physique and — according to the Village Voice, which lovingly devotes a whole paragraph to her five closets of designer clothes — a sense of fashion that mirror precisely the sort of physique and sense of fashion most highly prized by dicks who consume pornography and prostituted women, Lorenzana was perceived to emit porn-rays too hot for Citibank.

Here is what is irrelevant to the case:

Lorenzana’s Christian Louboutin heels
Lorenzana’s point on the sexbot continuum
Lorenzana’s aspirations to fame and fortune
That Lorenzana unlikeably tried to save herself by ratting out some women tellers for wearing hooker outfits
Whether Lorenzana chooses to emit porn rays, or whether her natural self merely happens to conform precisely to pornulated beauty ideals.

What is relevant:

That Lorenzana is being punished for porn culture.

There’s a femininity tightrope that all public women are forced to walk, and she got bounced off, into the vat of boiling misogyny below. Whenever a public woman fails to balance the following factors just right, the some dick jounces the rope, and splat she goes. To wit:

Public women should be X amount feminine, X amount motherly, X amount hot, X amount beautiful, X amount young, X amount confident, X amount helpless, X amount exotic, X amount educated, X amount intelligent (required: the last two values < the men in the office), X amount gay (the last value almost always = 0). The ratios are fluid, shifting from day to day at the whim of public sentiment, so that a woman may think she’s got it pretty well sewed up, only to wake up one fine spring morn to discover that the parade being thrown in her honor has suddenly vanished. Later she finds out it’s because she stupidly forgot she was a member of the sex class, and had dared to imagine that she would be judged on merit rather than her ability to do femininity right.

Eventually we all fall off the rope.

Hugs,
Twisty

Posted in Femininity, Hugs, Twisty, Keep your bias off my gender, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, The Beauty Ultimatum and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: “I just need to commandeer your uterus for a sec.”

Published by Jill on December 4, 2009. 55 Comments

Rejected comment from reader bilbertson on an August, 2007 post entitled UterusWatch 2007, in which I discuss a couple of legislative efforts to restrict women’s access to abortion, one of which required written consent of the “father”:

[Dear Twisty]

I know I’m commenting on this much later than it was posted but I hope readers will still consider my perspective

I very much think men should have a say in the future of their embryo/baby but not a say in the future of a woman’s own uterus

I think that women who don’t want to use their uteri to carry a particular pregnancy be allowed to terminate the pregnacny. Then the man could still have the embryo at said point. If he wants a baby, it should be his responsibility to nurture and develop the embryo into a fetus and viable child.

This is all outrageous and very maddening.

_______________________________________

Dear bilbertson,

As you know, bilbertson, from having read the FAQ twice — for certainly you did not omit to complete this small patriarchy-blaming prerequisite — it is not merely the stated goal of I Blame the Patriarchy, but also my own highest moral imperative to personally consider your personal perspective, particularly if it is antifeminist, and if you begin every sentence with “I,” and if you decline to punctuate.

I am happy to inform you that your perspective is worthless.

According to the Twistifesto, once a man has shot his wad, the wad becomes a waste product the sovereign control over which the wad-shooter has no expectation to exert. Men who wish, as you say, to “nurture” their wads — collected, perhaps, in a tube sock or family-sized block of Velveeta? — are of course at liberty to do so, although if you don’t mind my saying so it would probably start to smell a little funky after a while. Still, chacun à son goût, as long as you leave me out of it.

The notion of male entitlement to embryos implanted in women runs afoul of a woman’s right to personal bodily sovereignty and as such proposes criminal violence. As I just explained, ownership of the wad terminates when it departs the chute. While there’s nothing to prevent a woman who is so inclined from chucking her discarded embryo at you, or even, I suppose, to prevent you from fishing it out of the biohazard bin, I predict some difficulty on your part in developing such a thing into a “viable child,” as it is my understanding that this process always requires a uterus, to which organ a woman is infallibly attached. In other words, the scenario you describe involves a compulsory pregnancy. Compulsory pregnancy, it turns out, is a crime against humanity.

I Blame the Patriarchy encourages Dude Nation to abandon the Earth-dooming folly of human reproduction and “wanting a baby” altogether.

Hugs,
Twisty

Posted in Compulsory pregnancy, Dear god what about the men?, Hugs, Twisty, Men Hate You and The Argument Against Human Reproduction. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: fan mail from a flounder

Published by Jill on November 30, 2009. 40 Comments

Email from David Finnigan to twisty.faster
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 5:10 PM

[Dear Twisty,]

paragraphs like this:

‘Compulsory feminism, unlike the heartwarming compulsory capital ‘M’ misogyny the shoving down of which our throats are all accustomed to, is apparently nothing short of child abuse. One nervous misogynist, Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrissey, blurts with swaggering bravado that “strident feminist propaganda won’t wash with boys,” but he nevertheless vigorously opposes the program; apparently his confidence in the red-blooded Australian boy’s natural aversion to strident feminist propaganda is not 100%. He is anxious that some strident feminism might work its way in through the chinks. The “feminisation” of boys is already a Number 1 red-alert crisis situation, given the declining population of male teachers in schools. The fear that oppression-sensitivity training will pussywhip boys into a class of oppressed autobot pansies is not confined to Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrissey.’

are why IBTP is one of the best things on the web.

That’s really more to do with what an arid wasteland the rest of the internet is than anything else, but you know, good work.

Dear David Finnigan,

Thank you for taking the time to evaluate my paragraphs in terms of the rest of the Internet, and for sending the results of your evaluation to me. I don’t know when I’ve received so lukewarm a compliment!

No, wait, I think do know. It was the last time a dude emailed me.

I’m so grateful to you for your acknowledgment of my paragraphs, I just really wanna fuck you. Ya know, when women email me, it’s like my paragraphs don’t even exist. They’re all “I love your giant brain and I would so make out with you.” What a bunch of sluts!

Hugs,
Twisty

Posted in Hugs, Twisty. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: Blaming now a recognized science

Published by Jill on November 11, 2009. 52 Comments

I Blame the Patriarchy has won an award!

Dear Blog Owner,

Our website Science.org is a informational databases and online news publication for anything and everything related to science and technology. We recently ran a poll asking our website users regarding what online informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. It seems many of our users have labeled your blog as an excellent source of Science information. We have reviewed your blog and must say, we absolutely love the information you have made available to the public and would love to make your blog a part of our top science blogs. After browsing your blog, our research team has decided to award you a Top science Blogs award banner.

It is a distinction we offer to the blogs that our team feels is ahead of the curve in terms of content.

Thanks again for the great information and we look forward to the great responses your blog will receive from our site. Your blog presence will be very effective for our users (top science blogs).

We have put great efforts in making this decision to give deserving with award acknowledgment. For listing please reply to request banner.

Sincerely,
–
William Lee
Research team
Science.org
1 international blvd
Mahwah NJ USA – 07430
201 247 8553
editor.science@gmx.com

Dear William Lee,

Gosh. Thanks for the honor. I was unable to locate on your site the poll that resulted in your decision to bestow this award, but I am certain that if you applied the same exacting standards to the other winners, I am in some pretty estimable company. Not that it won’t be hard to live up to the kind of unforgettable writing showcased on your website (e.g. “Reading science articles will provide useful and informative information that can usually be applied or implemented to some degree.”)! That Admin guy’s work is très formidable!

This award couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been reading Stenger’s book on the New Atheism, from which informational resource I have learned that to be taken seriously as an atheist these days you have to be either a smug dude scientist or Christopher Hitchens. I’m not soused enough to be Hitchens (and unlike Hitch, I am an actual horseman) but I’ve got smug in spades. And now that I am receiving Internetian (rhymes with Venetian) acclaim for being ahead of the curve in my work in the field of great Science information, there can be no doubt that I am a scientist, despite my almost total lack of PhDs. So maybe — thanks to your award — I can finally glom onto some of that serious atheist action and get into that club. Only, you might need to hook me up with a pair of balls along with that Top science Blogs award banner. Also, how much do you pay?

Hugs,
Blog Owner

Posted in Hugs, Twisty, Magical Mysteries from Godtown, Not Altogether Depressing, Number 1 Science Information and Ways in Which the Internet Is a Hoot. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: moderated dude yearns to be heard on feminist blog

Published by Jill on October 27, 2009. 59 Comments

You know what sucks about the Internet? When Internet feminists don’t stop what they are doing right now and answer your question.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 10:01pm on post Ways In Which The Internet Sucks

Ok, this is probably a stupid question, but please answer, anybody.

I’m assuming she has had breast augmentation. That is what I find controversial about the pic. Showing off an asset that not every woman can afford to purchase, nor wants to purchase, nor wants to be reminded of, that was not really earned but simply purchased with daddy’s money (who by the way apparently gets an interest free credit card account with AMEX), is tacky.

Bravado over a cosmetic procedure seems tacky no matter where on the body it occurs. Imagine a man showing off his washboard abs that he had surgically augmented. It would be kind of creepy, no?

So, if they are hers, and have not been augmented in any way, then it is what it is, whatever that is, but if they’ve been surgically augumented, then I put it in the tacky category.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:39pm

Did my comment/question get deleted?
Did my comment/question get deleted?

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:42pm

yes, sonia, we wouldn’t want you to discuss anything that is not first approved of by the moderator.

This is freaky. Did the mod actually delete my question?

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:44pm

So instead of being able to post here and get feedback, I’ll instead have to delete your blog from DailyPUMA since you can’t let other’s share your forum, and have to do my article on it. This is pathetic. Rather than just ask a question here and not make a big deal about, I’ll instead only get feedback by posting on my own blog. If I’m being auto deleted everytime I post that is pathetic.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:50pm

lol, you can add autodeleting someone’s comments without even knowing what they are. Usually putting links in a comment can result in the comment being put into hold onto the moderator sees it, but here I have not included any links. I am occasionally surprised at blogs that don’t seem to welcome new viewpoints. I emailed you, hopefully you can clear this up.

[email]
Alessandro Machi to me
Oct 17 (10 days ago)

Please let me know, I see my comment up for one brief moment as it was posted, then it just disappears. Is that an autofunction of your blog or something more sinister?

-Alessandro Machi

Dear Mr Machi,

Great news! You can breathe a sigh of relief! True, I ignored you for 10 days, but this egregious injustice is now corrected! I did not delete your “question”! In fact, I saved it, and your entire oeuvre, to share with the whole Blametariat! They are always so eager to welcome a dude’s “new viewpoints” on celebrity breast augmentation!

Unfortunately, responding to the question you are so anxious to have answered presents some difficulty. In your zeal to accuse Meghan McCain of having had a boob job, to pronounce this “tacky,” and to make assumptions about her character based on her father’s credit arrangements, you appear to have neglected to actually ask anything.

No, wait. Now I see it:

“Imagine a man showing off his washboard abs that he had surgically augmented. It would be kind of creepy, no?”

No wonder you are so persistent; your question is of vital importance. Like so many who have preceded you, you appeal to a heartwarming radical death islandist to seek validation for your opinion on the creepiness of imagining men with surgically enhanced washboard abs.

Furthermore, you intimate that, should I omit to give you the consideration you crave in this urgent matter of imagining washboard abs, it is your intention to exact revenge by removing my URL from your website.

In response, I can only tell you what I tell all the washboard- ab-imagining dudes who threaten me with asinine shit:

God your so handsome and exciting. So suave. So classy. A man of action yet Sensitive and Sophisticated. i can only imagine what a Turn-on it is when you show off your washboard abs. Where have you been all my life. Baby baby. Do you have a webcam. Here’s my number. Take me now.

Hugs,
Twisty

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Fun fact: one of Mr Machi’s many, many websites, ShareAmillion.com, proposes that someone (“candidates include sports celebrities or the wall street fund managers that make incredible amounts of millions on yearly basis” [sic]) should give him a million bucks, interest-free. He promises to give it back in five years. Meanwhile, he’ll use the money to fight “credit card battles” and pay his “monthly debts.” Quoth Machi, “I am an unpaid watchdog for the consumer when it comes to credit card company practices and procedures. In the future, I desire to figure out a way to become a paid credit card watchdog for the consumer.”

Ah, free money. Live the dream, bra.

Posted in Blogulation, Dear god what about the men? and Hugs, Twisty. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: The color of womanhood, plus I suck all the fun out of a Bette Davis classic

Published by Jill on September 11, 2009. 49 Comments

Staffers at Spinster HQ (namely, me and my secretary Phil) are always delighted when an incoming email is brief. We’re even more delighted when it does not contain some variation on the “your head is up your ass” theme. We’re even more delighted still when its author more or less desperately confides that s/he is in deep agony — and, indeed, will probably have to be hospitalized — unless my views on “Now, Voyager” are revealed at once.

Pinko Punko hits the trifecta with the following communiqué.

[Dear Jill,]

I feel like maybe [this site] had already come down the barf slide, but the floral utility knife was nice.

Also, I would love to add “Now, Voyager” to the list of classic films I’d like to see in the IBTP film guide.

I hope you aren’t being inundated with plastic army dudes.

PP

Dear PP,

Let us first address the website to which you link, LadiesToolsOnline. At this pinkinated shopping site, Ladies can purchase pink hammers, pink slip-joint pliers, and pink utility belts, as well as non-pink products that nevertheless preserve a lady’s surrendered-womanhood, such as the “Family Glue Gun and Stapler Set” or the “3-Piece Cutting Tool Kit-RED FLORAL” (which actually has 4 pieces, but you know, math is hard).

You may not know this, Pinko, but women — or, as LadiesToolsOnline calls us, “Diva’s” — are often physically and psychologically incapable of prolonged separation from the color pink. This is the main reason we get ourselves entangled with men and have babies. It’s so we can surround ourselves with mountains of pink laundry.

For centuries, power tools and utility knives have not been pink. This is the main reason women of yore traditionally spent all their time shopping and getting their nails done, instead of doing shit around the house with implements the non-pink color of which threatens their emotional health. Fortunately for today’s woman-on-the-go, whose sacred duty is to be empowerful and feminine at the same time, purse-sized 26-piece mini-tool sets now come in pink, for $6.99.

The LadiesToolsOnline FAQ explains why their website exists: like doing math, it’s hard “to pick the right hammer.” It is often better, they suggest, to do-it-yourself than to “cash in the spa vacation fund” to hire somebody who knows what they’re doing. But here’s a handy trick if you get in over your head: call the fire department and rescue is on the way! “Every firehouse seems to have a plumber, carpenter, painter, etc. ready to help on their days off.” Who knew?

That there is a whole section devoted to “security” on a hardware site might have baffled you. Allow me to splain. This is a site purveying pink tools of indeterminate manufacture to women who cannot choose a hammer on their own. It is common knowledge that women live in a perpetual state of fear, and that crap like hammers may be more easily sold to them when their fear is excited and exploited. Thus does LadiesToolsOnline suggest helpfully that women whose home security has been compromised should “call the police and hope they catch the bad guys.” Furthermore, the site devotes a whole paragraph to the heretofore nebulous concept that, for “piece-of-mind,” you should lock your house.

Sound advice for imbecilic ladies and people who may be visiting from some other planet where they don’t have doors! I just can’t understand, Pinko, why you find this site barf-worthy, when it’s just trying to preserve women’s spa vacation funds and keep us safely locked in our homes.

But “Now, Voyager“! Dude, you know I love Bette Davis like an old pair of jeans, but this flick is just a big fat advertisement for patriarchal pukeology. Not only is it profoundly anti-Spinster (the horror), it actually pathologizes non-compliance with the Feminine Beauty Mandate.* Charlotte, the Bette Davis character, is sent to the loony bin because she is having a psychotic break as a result of her frumpiness and lack of personality-sparkle. Other misogynist markers:

– Motherhood demonized: Charlotte’s villainous mother eats her own young; the kid Tina’s mother’s similar occupation is to prevent the happiness of her family at all costs.

– The ugly-duckling-into-swan/unattractiveness-as-mental-illness theme appears in a second iteration; the kid Tina, who wears glasses to signify that she is a horrific spinster-in-training, is a mini-Bette similarly in need of psychiatry. Incidentally, although it is of little patriarchy-blaming relevance, that mega-annoying kid character makes me want to tear my own face off.

– Psychiatry (as practiced by wise white dudes who wield absolute power over the hysterical nutjobs) is portrayed as the One True Path to womanly fulfillment. Davis’ character is so fucked up that it takes Paul Henreid and Claude Rains — not one but two handsome, dudely, sympathetic leading men — to fix her. Aack!

– Charlotte can’t get a boyfriend until she loses weight, gets a makeover, slips into some haute couture, and sails into Rio, one of the most phallic ports on Earth.

– Her married lover Jerry is an asshole disguised as a romantic. He supposedly loves Charlotte but won’t divorce his wife; he abandons his kid, whom he also claims to love, in an asylum; and at the end he ditches’em both, leaving Charlotte stuck raising his goddam kid. But Charlotte’s practically giddy with selfless gratefulosity. And we’re supposed to like this chump Jerry?

– Famous line at the end makes no sense: “Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon; we have the stars!” What, their love is so cosmic that she doesn’t need happiness to be happy? Pah!

– Although Charlotte appears to be somewhat transformed and empowerful at the end, she remains emotionally tethered to Jerry, and we know that she will never have a life of her own, and that all she has found is the ability to wear designer clothes. To borrow a deeply satisfying quip from Shakesville: Fail!

The film’s only redeeming features are dapper little Claude Rains, who is just adorable in every film he ever did, and of course Davis herself, who easily mesmerizes even when stuck slurping out ghastly sentimental material like “Now, Voyager.”

Meanwhile, the plastic army man incursion appears to have abated entirely; a security sweep of Sectors 3 and 9 revealed no plastic paratrooping activity. Looks like the little fuckers have declared a ceasefire.

Hugs,
Twisty

(P.S. Twisty’s still on Opstreperon, but “Hugs, Jill” just doesn’t have the right ring.)

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*The Feminine Beauty Mandate states that all members of the sex class, i.e. all women, should endeavor to preserve themselves perpetually in a condition that the casual male ogler can easily describe as “fuckable.”

Posted in Femininity, Hugs, Twisty, The Beauty Ultimatum, The Entertainment Industrial Complex, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: Blamer lodges complaint

Published by Jill on June 23, 2009. 29 Comments

Today’s “Hugs, Twisty” letter comes from Adrienne, who endears herself by quoting me in an excellent essay in which she reports on a demonstration in Boston against Exodus Ministries. You remember those Exodus knobs? They’re the ones who think they can convert homos through “the power” of the ghost of a dead Nazarene on a stick.

In the essay to which I allude — which essay, she says, “turned up on every radical/anarchist/queer website on the planet” — Adrienne uses, probably for the first time anywhere, the phrase “gratuitous homoerotic canoodling.”

But Adrienne’s most recent email leaves all that fluffy shit behind to concentrate on matters much more dire. That’s right. Phonology.

Dear Jill [ Note: Adrienne didn't actually begin with "Dear Jill," but I know she felt it in her heart of hearts ]

Yay! I can never get over how awesome you are.

Meanwhile, I don’t read the comments on your blog, but the posts you’ve made about people trying to call you out all the time sound awful. So awful, in fact, that I kinda feel bad about bringing this up, but it has to do with phonology, rather than philosophical unsoundness!

You write ‘enbooben’ when it oughta be ‘embooben.’ b is a bilabial phoneme and n is a velar nasal one and English affixes match the phonological traits of the roots, e.g. enact, embody, invariable, impatient, illogical, irrespective, ensure, embalm, enact, emulate, innocent, immature, irredeemable, illegitimate, envious, empathy, and so forth.

Please don’t hate me!
Adrienne

P.S. good luck with that well.
P.P.S. many a year ago, you caused me to reconsider my uses of ellipses. Thank you.

Dear Adrienne,

Oh, you! I could never hate anyone who knows what a bilabial phoneme is.

Of course I can feel but a pale twinge of the pain you must have experienced upon perceiving my coarse phonological gaffe, but if it’s anything like the tiny razor blades that slash my eyeballs whenever some commenter considers it a matter of personal style to eschew the shift key, I can sympathize and how.

But I must tell you: It is part of the daily programme here at Spinster HQ to destroy the institutionalized discrimination governing the deployment of certain affixes in our language. Furthermore, as a spinster aunt I am professionally and morally obligated, for the sake of the revolution, to misspell made-up words describing or denoting the dominant culture’s crimes against humanity. Into which category falls the made-up word currently under review.

Thank you for taking the time to ponder the human rights crisis that is enboobenationalism, as well as for giving ellipses a second thought. And for becoming a feminist in 2005, and most especially for calling me “awesome.”

Hugs,
Jill

P.S. We will soon have some crappy video of the ag well pump repair; a more sweeping epic will have rarely been seen on YouTube.

Posted in Hugs, Twisty. Bite me, Chad.