Archive for the 'The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday' Category

Spinster aunt forgets what year it is, starts yammering about RapeAxe again

Published by Twisty on December 2, 2011. 60 Comments

Jayzus in a jetpack. So much has happened since last we spoke that I’m just going to ignore it all and proceed straight to the latest installment of the Anti-Rape Device Chronicles.

You know the Anti-Rape Device Chronicles, right? A long and sordid history attends the battle for dudely control over the problematic human vagina. The timeline so far:

Middle Ages: Chastity belts are implemented by jealous brutes to enforce feminine purity against other jealous brutes. Or are they?

1996: British historians debunk as myth the notion that medieval chastity belts ever existed as anything other than 19th century “curiosities for the prurient or jokes for the tasteless.”

Cheesy BDSM-wear, only 500 bucks on eBay.

This dude writes a scholarly analysis of the mythology. The chastity belt naturally finds its niche as a corny prop in the BDSM community, where it is anything but an anti-rape device.

2000: The “killer tampon” is invented by South African septuagenarian Jaap Haumann. Quoth he, “I designed a hard cylindrical plastic core which contains the spring blade, which slices when pressed against. […] When the rapist attacks the woman and penetration takes place, the point of his penis will touch the section containing the blade and it (the penis), or at least a part of it, is sliced off.” Haumann notes that South Africa is the rape capital of the world.

2005: A now-defunct website announces “FemDefense,” a spike-equipped vaginal insert reminiscent of, but slightly less disfiguring than, Haumann’s dick mutilator. The imaginary FemDefense and its faux marketing campaign turns out to be a conceptual art project by Swedish artist Leif Lindell; the “product” is never manufactured but makes the rounds on the feminist blogosphere, prompting a profusion of whataboutthemen whingeing. Photo here.

2005 again: Sonnet Ehlers, a South African activist, invents RapeX (later changed to RapeAxe). This is a hollow vaginal insert with lined with barbs. “When the attacker attempts vaginal penetration,” says Ehlers, “the barbs attach themselves to the penis, causing great discomfort. The device must be surgically removed, which will result in the positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest.”

2006: Production of Rapex “delayed” by squeamish dick preservationists.

2010: The newly renamed RapeAxe is in the news again when Ehlers announces plans to hand out 30,000 of them for free at South Africa’s World Cup.

Today: Blamer Sandi emails me (thanks, Sandi!) with a link to the 2010 Gizmodo story; I fail to notice the date and commence writing this post as though it were breaking news, quite forgetting that we discussed the subject last year in the comments of this post.

Well, untimely though it be, you get this post anyway, because it’s the one I wrote.

So. Consider a minor shift of focus in the wonderful world of rape culture. First there is this imaginary chastity belt, which leaves nothing to the imagination in terms of the 19th century woman’s moral status: a whole mythos erupts around the idea of medieval dudes asserting ownership of their women by literally locking up the only thing about them that matters. You can still rape, though, you just need a key.

Scroll down to the 21st century. Haumann, Lindell, and Ehlers’ devices are more victim-oriented. They don’t prevent rape, but they do suggest instantaneous unpleasant consequences for rapists. Therefore they are controversial.

But why should that be? Are we, as a society, pro-rapist?

Heck yeah we are.

Historically, society tolerates rape because it is more or less consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women, but the idea that rape might conceivably involve violence against rapists is just too shocking. Judging by the many comment threads discussing RapeAxe, a significant contingent of Internetians believe that women possess neither sufficient personal bodily sovereignty nor sufficient personal integrity to be trusted with such a device.

Concern trolls pretend to worry that dick-blood might harm the rape victim (more than a rape, apparently), or that the device might make the rapist madder than he already is, or that it’s sending the wrong message and promoting the dreaded “victim mentality” to tell women to be prepared for rape at any moment. The squeamish dick preservationists object that dick mutilation is “just wrong,” that RapeAxe is “vindictive,” and of course that women are evil and will surely be unable to resist using it to injure innocent men who prong in ignorance.

The objectionable violence is interpreted as originating, not with the rapist, but with the vengeful woman who has deployed the barbaric peen-shredding RapeAxe.

Pah. The thing that would prevent any and all peen-shredding is the thing that nobody can fathom: keeping it their pants.

I’ve commented before that this RapeAxe thing is a pretty compelling little gizmo. It can’t prevent rape, but at least it theoretically improves the chances of a conviction. And of course the agony it inflicts on the rapist is conceptually satisfying and poetically justical. And it dovetails so neatly with my wacko consent scheme. Theoretically, anyone equipped with one of these little dealios abides, unlike you or me, in a persistent state of having said “no.” Only removal of the RapeAxe can switch on consent. No ambiguity. Simple as that.

But alas, after considering it lo these many years, I can’t say I have high hopes for its efficacy. Enterprising rapists could easily game the system. For example, it would be the work of an instant for a dude with a gun to force his victim to remove it. In the end, whatever measures a woman takes to keep assholes from assaulting her, some chumpass perv will figure out how to circumvent them. Women can’t prevent rape.

Like the feminist email forward says: preventing rape is easy: just don’t rape anybody, stupid.

Posted in Rape Culture and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt casts jaundiced eye at scepter of passion

Published by Jill on August 10, 2011. 200 Comments

When Kubrick was making the film “Lolita” he was crabbed out that the prudey production code wouldn’t allow him to enfilthen 13-year-old actress Sue Lyon with all the dude-pleasin “eroticism” in Nabokov’s icky novel. He intimated that the godbag-enforced lack of explicit child porn is what caused the film’s initial lukewarm reception and prevented it from soaring on wings of dudely prurience to the pinnacle of cinematic greatness for which Kubrick yearned. Naturally, because — thanks, Internet! — modern audiences know exactly what to fill in the blanks with, the film eventually became the iconic classic of noble ephebophilia we know and love today!

That’s right, I said ephebophilia. You know how when a practice becomes widespread and established, one of the first things its aficionados do is codify it and quantify it and describe it and assign its variations to categories and invent endless sub-categories for the more subtle variations that increasingly are meaningful only to the experts? Like with wine. Most people can just have a glass of wine, but oenophiles are deeply sensitive to nuancy variables, like the varietal, the region, the chemical composition of the vineyard’s dirt, the amount of rainfall during the spring of its production year, the color, which of 12,687 potential aromas it expresses, and, of course, the vintage.

It’s the same thing with raping children. Because raping children is such an established and widespread practice, PsychiatryNation has devised handy categories describing the various spins its practitioners can put on their “sexual preference”.

When a preference is based on a specific child vintage, it is called a chronophilia. One such chronophilia is crowd favorite pedophilia — raping prepubescent children. Then there’s hebephilia, which is a preference for raping pubescents. Ephebophilia describes a preference for raping post-pubescents. Girls must be 14-16, but for boys it’s 14-19. Spinster HQ concludes that this age disparity obtains because after 16, girls age out into common slutdom (the default state for all women). Once they’re sluts, the desire to screw them is no longer considered a special psychiatric disorder, but rather a normal dudely activity consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women (see Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, and one of humanity’s finest hours: when the entire dudernet participated in that pervy countdown to the Olsen twins’ 18th birthday).

To explain male preoccupation with teen rape, I found this guy on the Internet. He is Frederick S. Berlin, M.D.,PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Founder of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital; Director of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; and Consultant to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse. This eminent upholder of dudelionormativity notes that ephebophilia is the default dudelionormative state.

“Most men can find adolescents attractive sexually, although, of course, that doesn’t mean they’re going to act on it. Some men who become involved with teenagers may not have a particular disorder. Opportunity and other factors may have contributed to their behaving in the way they do.”

Opportunity and other factors? Opportunity, such as when adolescent girls are permitted out in public? Other factors? Such as that fucking Lolita narrative, which has seeped into patriarchal consciousness, been transformed into internet porn and Thylane Blondeau’s fashion spreads, and tells everyone that female children are sexual cyphers just waiting for men to use them as toilets?

Nabokov apologists, do your worst, but this novel isn’t some kind of veiled anti-perv cautionary tale about what can happen when a dude thinks with his dick, or the consequences of acting on desire. Nabokov was totally a perv or he couldn’t have written this huge and convincing paean to pervy desire. He would have made Lolita a person rather than a voiceless toilet, and he would have skipped the gratuitous erotica. The novel is merely an attempt to make art out of kiddie porn. The hero is himself a child molester and murderer who kidnaps, drugs, imprisons, and serially rapes a 12 year old child for chrissake, and then writes a dreamy, poetical memoir about it. Check this shit out (but do it on an empty stomach):

“Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.”

The scepter of his passion? Gag-a-mag, it makes your boob scars shrivel.

Even though Humbert Humbert may be tormented and an unreliable narrator, and even if Nabokov was himself a paragon who completely pulled this Humbert character and his criminal obsession with “nymphets” from thin air (hah!), Lolita is just an articulate excuse to dudelionormatize the same infatuation with female children that our sexpert Dr Berlin, above, asserts is common to most men.

Is it art? Sure, why not? But it stinks.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Mass Media, Rape Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and all old movies suck. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt reads comment on Dawkins website, wrinkles lip

Published by Jill on March 19, 2011. 117 Comments

Liberal dudes (and that boobquake chick) just love celebrity biologist Richard Dawkins. Even some Internet feminists may be said not to vomit blood at the mention of his name. Because no greater proponent of atheism than yours truly ever camera-stalked a Rio Grand turkey in the Texas Hill Country, even the Spinster Library contains a couple of Dawkins’ popular, well-written books. They are enjoyable if one is charmed by that mellifluous English public school manner of expression, and if human penis-based arguments against godbagism typically convey buoyancy to your ocean-going vessel.

As an added precaution, the Great Council of the Dieri would also keep a stockpile of boys’ foreskins in constant readiness, because of their homeopathic power to produce rain.*

Despite his admirable enthusiasm for some of the richer morsels of history’s bounty, Dawkins is, as I have always maintained, no feminist. This is a disappointment but hardly surprising, since rare indeed is the intellectual Western motherfucker who is not enamored of the glorious myth that he and his ilk, in their educated and progressive magnanimity, have liberated their women.

It’s a disappointment, not just because it blows whenever a superstar brainiac turns out to be a knob about the global humanitarian crisis of patriarchal oppression, but also because of this: if otherwise rational, right-thinking, internationally worshiped dudes of Dawkins’ stature can remain deluded about the tyranny of male privilege, the chance in hell that feminist revolution might be said to stand is like unto that of a snowball. Particularly when women themselves, in the shape of self-described “equity feminists,” saunter through the town square declaring that patriarchal oppression in America does not exist. Even more particularly when the Dawkinses openly admire the  self-described feminists’ declarations.

The specific Dawkins-approved, self-described feminist to whom I allude is, of course, the notorious Christina Hoff Sommers, professional turncoat and author of several “Dudes Rule!”-themed books, such as the hatespeechy Who Stole Feminism, and that modern MRA classic The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.

Sommers thinks American feminists should put a sock in it and take it easy. Why? Because Americans have got patriarchy licked. Women are officially free. La di da da, free. She invents an enemy of American women’s freedom: “gender feminists,” mythical creatures who hate men but for some reason nevertheless maintain that men and women are “essentially the same.”

“Gender feminists” are probably more accurately described as “feminists who think Sommers is full of shit.”

So anyway, some commenter on the Richard Dawkins fanboy site suggested that Dawkins take a gander at one of Sommers’ antifeminist lectures. Here is the link to the lecture. Its gist is that “eccentric gender feminists” have staged a coup and taken over the women’s movement. Whereupon the eccentrics instituted a disinformation campaign, spreading foul lies about — I kid you not — ancient Roman emperors, while leaving a trail of bloodied, quivering equity feminists and the men they love in their wake. Sommers even takes a couple of shots at Eve Ensler for — get this — failing to sufficiently praise dudes in the Vagina Monologues.

This excerpt from Sommers’ lecture states her premise.

[I]n 1994 [...] I published a book entitled Who Stole Feminism? The book was strongly feminist, but it rejected the idea that American women were oppressed. For the most part, feminism had succeeded, I said. By the nineties, I argued, American women were among the freest and most liberated in the world. It was no longer reasonable to say that as a group women were far worse off than men. Yes, there were still inequities, but to speak of American society as a “patriarchy” or to refer to American women as second class citizens was frankly absurd.

Hey, Christina Hoff Sommers, what about that pesky 75 cents-on-the-dollar pay disparity, or the fact that only 15% of American political offices are held by women? Sommers, it turns out, isn’t even sure that these “factoids” are true (given the opposition’s proven propensity for lying about ancient Roman history), but even if they are, they can be easily explained by that handy psuedoscience mainstay, evolutionary psychology. You see, men and women are neither physically nor cognitively “the same,” therefore it is irrational to expect men and women to excel equally. Men are simply hardwired to win more political campaigns than women. Apparently men are also hardwired to make more money than women. So feminists should accept their biological destiny, “tone down the rhetoric against men,” and bask in our sexism-free utopia.

No advanced blamer requires a refutation of that ludicrous argument, so we’ll just press on to Sommers’ views on the “eccentric” idea that some menacing entity called “patriarchy” goes around victimizing women.

The dominant philosophy of today’s women’s movement is not equity feminism–but “victim feminism.” “Victim” feminists don’t want to hear about the ways in which women have succeeded. They want to focus on and often invent new ways and perspectives in which women can be regarded as oppressed and subordinated to men.

A few words on this women-as-victims stuff:

Largely because of the success of the funfeminist movement, which argues that women do too have agency, dammit! (as long as their choiciness stays perfectly aligned with male interests), to view women as victims has become passé and unpopular. Women aren’t victims anymore now that we can own property, vote, and have the right to pole-dance in our boyfriends’ apartments. Furthermore, the argument goes, if we traipse about the countryside exaggerating the sorry plight of women (when in fact the plight of women, though admittedly not quite as awesome as men’s, is at least not as sorry as it was), we’re just buying into that unattractive, unempowerfulized, hysterical “victim mentality.” We freely choose to wear 6-inch heels, and if we author this choice, we cannot therefore be victims of it. If we don’t think we are victims, we won’t be victims.

You know; only sick people take pills; therefore, if I don’t take pills, I won’t be sick.

What this argument fails to consider, regardless of a few funfeminists’ purported choice to choose choices, is that, hourly, billions of women worldwide suffer everything from discrimination to murder exclusively because of their sex. Women cannot choose the “I’m-not-a-victim” choice. Not even the funfeminists can choose it, not really, because when stuff like “you cannot rape me” or “my appearance is meaningless” or “the state cannot interfere with the contents of my own personal uterus” is not on the menu of choices, no real agency exists. But apparently, claiming that patriarchy victimizes women is just whiney.

So why in the world would scores of radical feminists, both Internetian (rhymes with “Venetian”) and regular, devote their public lives to exposing the violence perpetrated by the dominant culture if there were nothing to expose? What possible motivation could we have for supposedly “inventing new ways in which women can be regarded as oppressed”?

Sommers offers a helpful explanation: “There are a lot of homely women in women’s studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches–they’re just mad at the beautiful girls.”**

Meanwhile, upon reading the Sommers speech, Dawkins was moved to comment: “Thank you for this. I have now read the lecture you recommend, and it is indeed excellent.”

The anointed one has spoken.
______________________
* Dawkins, Richard. Unweaving the Rainbow. Mariner Books, 2000. p.182.

** Sommers has denied ever making this remark.

Thanks, Stella Tex.

Posted in Dear god what about the men?, Men Hate You, Oppression Culture, Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society, Strawfeminism, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt reads boobquake emails

Published by Jill on April 23, 2010. 235 Comments

Hey folks, you can stop sending me the “boobquake” alert. Consider me apprised.

What’s a “boobquake”? A reaction to some dude’s proclamation that saucy women showing cleavage are responsible for the recent catastrophic earthquakes, “Boobquake” is blogger Jen McCreight’s idea of “a boob joke.”

Damn, those are always hilarious!

McCreight’s boob joke was this: since that fundamentalist dude has a misogynist fantasy idea about the power of mammary glands over global seismic activity, let’s show him he’s wrong! McCreight calls for all women to wear their most cleavagey outfit at an appointed hour, then sit back and wait for the Big Quake. When it doesn’t come, we can all have a big laugh at the fundamentalist dude’s expense!

McCreight was surprised when about 47.876 million people joined her boob joke on Facebook, largely in the shape of helpful dudes offering to photograph the event.

Says McCreight, wishing to deflect feminist fury:

“I just want to apologize if this comes off as demeaning toward women. To be honest, it started as silly joke that I hurriedly fired off since I was about to miss the beginning of House. I never thought it would get the attention it did. If I would have known, I would have spent more time being careful about my wording.”

We’ve all said stupid things on the Internet. But when you say stupid things about encouraging women to protest oppression by capitulating to Dude Nation’s fondest desire, and then blame it on a compulsion to watch a stupid misogynist TV show, all I can say is, ewww.

Naturally, because it involves a woman urging other women to show us their tits, McCreight is being interviewed by national and global media.

Ewww.

I conclude that McCreight omitted, in her haste to watch the beginning of, perhaps, “American Idol,” to proof-read her statement, forgetting to change the spine-wrenching “if I would have known” to the economical and correct “had I known.”

Double-ewww.

Posted in Blogulation, Sexploitation, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday, Ways In Which the Internet Sucks and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

Is your pout plump enough?

Published by Jill on February 22, 2010. 116 Comments

Oh my fucking god, behold yet another story in a major American newspaper wherein the writer gets all verklempt about this wack new burlesque craze, just fifteen short years after the first quasi-transgressive hipsters disentombed it from its well-deserved mothball crypt in the misogynist perv-pile. Any excuse to interview a semi-nude chick with a stripper name, I guess. These Yay! Burlesque! stories seem to appear every couple of months. They always present burlesque as some kind of exciting new art form the practitioners of which are all empowered feminists who are totally in touch with their sexuality.

Here is what Miss Lily Verlaine, Seattle burlesque artist, has to say about about feminism.

“I enjoy the trappings of femininity. I enjoy wearing dresses, I like silk and I like high heels, eyelashes and big hair. It’s fun for me. I don’t think it’s un-feminist or that I’m any more or less of a woman for accentuating certain aspects of my femininity.”

I choose femininity! For me! Because what could be more feminist than choosing something?

“I find it very feminist and very exciting when a woman decides how to portray herself. Any woman being her own agent, being her own director, being her own stylist and her own voice is always feminist.”

What could be more exciting than a woman deciding to portray herself as something? Especially when she decides to portray herself as a male fantasy, am I right?

“‘For a long time, I wasn’t interested in nail-polish and makeup and all that stuff because I could be spending my time doing things in the community,’ she recalls. However, Verlaine found that once the dresses, furs, heels and makeup followed her offstage, people began to treat her better, men especially.”

Well, whaddya know. Appeasing the oppressor vs. “doing things in the community”: it’s a no-brainer!

“‘If I have my drag on, people compliment me. They say kind things. The interactions are night and day,’ she says.”

People: “We didn’t think much of you, Miss Lily Verlaine, before you started dressing like a hooker. But now that you’ve demonstrated your willingness to conform by defining yourself in terms of male desire, we think you’re awesome. Can we buy you a Scotch?”

Miss Lily Verlaine: “Gosh, thanks! This beats the shit out of trying to be taken seriously!”

Pull yourself together, woman! Not even the hipsters think burlesque is hip anymore. And even if it were, femininity is unenlightened, and also dumb. And even if it weren’t, all that makeup crap totally causes cancer! There’s mercury in mascara!

But maybe life just isn’t worth living if men don’t want to fuck you; what’s a little cancer compared to the infinite rewards of sex appeal?

Speaking of makeup, I just found out there exists a species of cosmetic called “lip plumper.” Lip plumper is an irritant that, when applied to one’s “pout,” makes it swell up, the better to affect that sexy, just-been-punched-in-the-face look that dudes love. This poor girl, apparently of her own volition, makes her own lip plumper out of cayenne and infant butt-cream.

Kill me now.

______________________
Photo: still from “How To Make Homemade Lip Plumper” by SecretLifeOfABioNerd on YouTube.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Femininity, Mass Media, Sexploitation, The Beauty Ultimatum, The Entertainment Industrial Complex and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

Original iPad joke

Published by Jill on January 28, 2010. 31 Comments

Remember this vid from the Jerktassic Epoch?

Jokes about menstruation are hilarious because menstruation is gross and alluding to it is fucking transgressive.

Posted in Oppression Culture, The Entertainment Industrial Complex, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday and Ways in Which the Internet Is a Hoot. Bite me, Chad.

Happy fucking new year

Published by Jill on December 30, 2009. 60 Comments

Speaking of mayhem, it’s about time for the Annual Holiday Trio of Random Passages from the SCUM Manifesto.

“A small handful of SCUM can take over the country within a year by systematically fucking up the system, selectively destroying property, and murder:

SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds and unwork. For example, SCUM salesgirls will not charge for merchandise; SCUM telephone operators will not charge for calls; SCUM office and factory workers, in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at.

SCUM will forcibly relieve bus drivers, cab drivers and subway token sellers of their jobs and run buses and cabs and dispense free tokens to the public.

SCUM will destroy all useless and harmful objects – cars, store windows, ‘Great Art,’ etc.

Eventually SCUM will take over the airwaves – radio and TV networks – by forcibly relieving of their jobs all radio and TV employees who would impede SCUM’s entry into the broadcasting studios.

SCUM will couple-bust — barge into mixed (male-female) couples, wherever they are, and bust them up.”

and:

“SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: “I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd,” then proceed to list all the ways in which he is.”

and:

“It is most tempting to pick off the female “Great Artists,” liars and phonies, etc, along with the men, but that would be inexpedient, as it would not be clear to most of the public that the female killed was a male. All women have a fink streak in them, to a greater or lesser degree, but it stems from a lifetime of living among men. Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are not, although their behavior is. When SCUM gets hot on their asses it’ll shape up fast.”

What the hell, how about a Holiday Bonus Passage:

“SCUM, being cool and selfish, will not subject itself to getting rapped on the head with billy clubs; that’s for the nice, “privileged, educated” middle class ladies with a high regard for the touching faith in the essential goodness of Daddy and policemen. If SCUM ever marches it will be over the President’s stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”

Put that in your snowglobe and shake it.

Posted in Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt explains comedy

Published by Jill on December 3, 2009. 154 Comments

Whenever I hear some guy say that feminists don’t have a sense of humor, I want to punch that guy in the face.

What I mean is, I want to take a bunch of tiny razors and glue’em to a glove, kind of around the knuckle area, and put on this glove and then punch him pretty hard about six times and turn his nose into pâté. I would probably dip the razors in curare first, if there was some lying around and nobody else was using it. Because here on Savage Death Island, that shit is comedy gold.

What got me thinking about comedy gold was an item in the Canadian National Post headlined “B.C. police seek serial groin-kicker after series of attacks.” The item was emailed to me like 6 weeks ago by blamer Holly Campbell. Fast and friendly service, Holly, that’s what you get here at I Blame the Patriarchy.

Anyway. According to the article, a psychotic young woman is on the loose in British Columbia.

[T]he young woman inexplicably kicked [some dude] in the groin hard enough to send one of his testicles into his abdomen.

Having read the headline, you will not be surprised to learn that she is suspected of having kicked 3 or 4 other random dudes in the cubes, apparently without provocation. If the outraged dude message boards are to be believed, she is apparently the perfect radical feminist, since she’s actively living the violent anti-testicle fantasies the rest of us only dream about.

Anyway. Don’t tell me I don’t have a sense of humor, because this shit is funny as hell. Because the dude’s nut ruptured — ow! I bet that hurt! — and “will be replaced by a prosthetic before Christmas.” Just in the time for the annual B.C. Holiday Parade of Testicles! What a gasser!

Let me just say a few words about humor. Everyone loves humor, but the fact is that jokes are attacks. That’s why dudes on the Internet are always telling women to lighten up already and join them (the dudes) in busting a gut at their (women’s) own expense. Dudes like attacking women — it’s how they express affection — but since punching them in the face with curare-dipped razor gloves — at least in public — is somewhat frowned upon by those with gentle upbringings, jokes are all they’ve got left. So fuck you if you don’t like being their joke-butt. Ha ha!

Ergo:

According to the long-established elements of comedy we’ve all assimilated from oppression culture — e.g. surprise, irony, incongruity, impropriety, et al.– that hapless dude who got biffed in the giblets is a fucking Platonic ideal of a joke-butt. What a savory little fillip of unexpected delight is the whole ball-bonker tableau. It’s got it all, comedy-wise: a little white chick running around socking it to unsuspecting dudes who are strolling down the street minding their own beeswax.

Should I explicate further? Dudes usually have nothing to fear from little white chicks, see, since they (dudes) are, by universal agreement, the class who typically mete out the sex-based violence. Conversely, everyone recognizes that women typically don’t enjoy the dudes-only luxury of gaily sauntering through the town square without the expectation of sudden, unprovoked harassment. But here’s B.C. Girl, challenging the Global Accords Governing the Fair Use of Women with a surprising, ironic, incongruous, improprietous turnabout! The underdog puts one over on the overlord! Hi-fuckin-larious!

Posted in Bloodsport, Dear god what about the men?, Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society, Rape Culture and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

Funny sexism: harms outweigh benefits

Published by Jill on November 21, 2009. 43 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.

Same stupak, different day

Published by Jill on November 15, 2009. 70 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.