Archive for the 'Ways In Which the Internet Sucks' Category

Do you mind if I stalk you up close instead of from across the room?

Published by Jill on July 11, 2010. 50 Comments

Sure, I’ll smile, if you take this match and light your fucking mustache on fire.

This week’s Sunday Morning Hurl comes from misogynist dude site Askmen.com.

Askmen.com runs a recurring feature dedicated to “pickup lines.” A pickup line is a phrase used by suave movie bachelors and doofus TV sitcom knobs (and, apparently, by dorks who read Askmen. com) to turn unsuspecting women with whom they are not acquainted into hot, wet, pliable meatsocks.

The concept is predicated on the notion that women are morons.

The pickup line is a staple theme in the narrative of male sexual domination culture, where it is believed that, when properly worded and expertly delivered, it has the magical power to completely disarm a woman, flip her “on” switch, and guaran-fucking-tee her compliance. The concept of “the pickup” itself has competetive, jokey, pervy, and, of course, rapey components.

Askmen.com publishes a new pickup line every week. Some are labeled “Funny Pickup Line,” others “Cocky Pickup Line.” Oddly, none are called “Hokey Dipshit Pickup Line.” The editors add a little introductory remark to each one. These remarks support my hypothesis: that to qualify as a pickup line a phrase must contain lies, flattery, bullshit, and cheesiness, which qualities are intended to obscure the utterer’s actual meaning, which is “I want to use you as a receptacle. Open sesame.” Subterfuge, in other words, is seen as a quite normal and integral component of the venerable dudely tradition of sexual conquest.

Here’s a selection of the Askmen introductory remarks, followed by my editorial remarks, followed by the pickup lines themselves, which stand alone as monuments of heteronormative sexist farce:

Whether it’s true or not, you can still give this pickup line a try. We dare you.

Well, the guys have gone and dared you. What choice do you have?
A woman as beautiful as you deserves a man as rich as me.

“This pickup line is virtually guaranteed to make her giggle.”

And lard knows, once a chick giggles, she is legally bound to have sex with you.
“Excuse me, is your name Mickey? ‘Cause you’re so fine you blow my mind.”

“This pickup line is best used in the wee hours of the morning, when she’s less likely to think you’re a creep.”

Being tired and drunk will lower her resistance to your natural creepiness.
“You know, good girls get presents this time of year, but naughty girls get to have fun.”

“Why not try a little kindness the next time you’re trying to pick up a woman?”

Instead of your usual method of roofies and duct tape.
“I’ve had a terrible day, and it always makes me happy to see a gorgeous woman smile. Would you smile for me? “

“Once you’re fortified with liquid courage, try this pickup line on the hottest woman at the bar.”

It is common knowledge that the hottest women at the bar instantaneously give blow jobs to drunk assholes who stumble over and say
“you look like you could use a good one-night stand.”

The denizens of Spinster HQ have a hard time believing that any live dude who isn’t Disco Stu would even consider saying any of this stupid shit to an actual woman. However, whether or not men really use pickup lines is of secondary importance to the perpetuation, on the Askmen website and elsewhere, of the atavistic idea that women are essentially just sex troves, ripe for pillaging once unlocked by a few magic syllables.

Posted in Mass Media, Men Hate You, Rape Culture and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. 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.

Grinning moron hates wife

Published by Jill on February 6, 2010. 175 Comments

Patriarchy-blaming is a crappy business. The Internet feminist must beware the fine line, or slippery slope, or pot-calling-kettle-black, or hoist-on-own-petard or what have you, when aiming the Super Spinster Truth-Ray at stuff. Attention must be paid to the potential stinkiness of one’s own role in the proceeding. Care must be taken to inspect the fists for ham. Sometimes, denouncing a particular instance of exploitation produces unwanted side-effects. Ethical concerns. Knots in the lobe. Sensations of inner grubbiness. Such that, when the denunciation is completed and the sun sets on another day of blaming, instead of writing, with the usual glowing satisfaction, “Dear Diary, today I exposed some pernicious culture-of-oppression shit for what it is, goddammit!” one is obliged to say “Crap, I think I just participated in misogyny most foul.”

The blaming goal is to expose oppression without compounding it with one’s own voyeurism, but this can be pretty difficult when dealing with subject matter that is by definition dependent upon — and therefore inherently sensitive to — the public gaze. I allude, of course, to the subject-victims of pornography. How do you write, “Here is a graphic representation of our culture’s hatred of women, and this is why I think so” without re-injuring the victim during the course of your argument? Is the pornulated woman to be made a casualty of feminist analysis in addition to her primary violation? Is a woman, once pornulated, swept away into some skeezy two-dimensional purgatory to remain there forever?

These issues are looming large down at Spinster HQ at the moment, and have been ever since that dangole chump PhysioProf hipped me to the existence of an extremely disturbing website. Maybe you’ve already seen it? It’s the “crying wife” website. In summary: asshole tapes wife when she cries piteously at movies, asshole mocks and laughs at tearful wife, asshole puts videos on YouTube, asshole’s website becomes popular. It’s not pornography in the fetishy sex-smut tradition, but it is definitely the graphic representation of dudely woman-hatin’.

Just Google “crying wife.” It’s the first result.

Not realizing what I was in for, I watched one of the many videos. In this video the woman reacts to the ending of “Star Wars.” I do not exaggerate when I say that it caused my jaw to hang open quite a bit further than usual. Also, my eyes started twitching, and I experienced the nasty sensation of self-loathing that I suspect must afflict all losers when they do loser-y shit.

The woman becomes weirdly and inconsolably emotional, yeah, but my slackjaw was occasioned not by her piteous, painful sobbing, but by her grinning asshole husband goading her on. That’s right, when she actually stops sobbing, he intentionally re-exacerbates her sadness by inviting her to remember sad scenes in the film. He also makes a big fucking point of saying that it is so hilarious to pimp her on the Internet as she experiences this extended moment of private weirdness and acute vulnerability. His tone as videographer can be summarized as “I invite you to point and laugh as I proudly make the lovable simpleton I’m married to cry and cry over stupid shit.”

As PhysioProf wrote in his email, “the sheer gratuitous pointlessness of the cruelty is shocking.”

The husband-dude’s laffy obliviousness adds a whole nother layer of crapulence, but it’s obvious he knows on some level that he’s exploiting her, because he’s got a whole FAQ dedicated to explaining how he isn’t exploiting her. First he makes a hi-fucking-larious joke about how she’s insane “only 4 days out of the month ;-)” [sic]. Then he makes his argument, which can can be boiled down to three points. One, it isn’t exploitation because he just can’t help laughing at his wife. Two, his wife “thinks it’s funny” and is “able to laugh at herself afterwards.” Three, it isn’t exploitation because he says it isn’t. He “loves [her] to death and thinks she’s the cutest girl in the world!” Also, “She’s a good sport and we all love her :)”.

Well, that makes it okay, then!

I’ve wanted to complain about this for a couple of days, but the idea of my own complicity in propagating the virus and contributing to the sobsploitation has made me queasy. It still does make me queasy. I have attempted to mitigate my quease by omitting to link to the website, but I have to admit that the astonishing degree of misogyny displayed by this loving husband moron has to be seen to be believed.

Posted in Lobe-blowing, Men Hate You, The Entertainment Industrial Complex and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: jubjub birds et al

Published by Jill on December 16, 2009. 89 Comments

Correction Department
The Nashville Corrections Department, conveniently located adjacent to a Christian Science Reading Room and Balloon-A-Tune, is where you will find concerned rape preventionists Rita R. Reed and Benjamin F. Bean.

A propos of scaremail forwards:

[Dear Twisty,]

Howdy!

I was just the happy recipient of the following text message on my phone:

Please be aware and be careful….

National Gang Week is starting: This is their new target method. While driving on any roads, if you see a baby car seat sitting on the side of the road, DO NOT STOP! These are gangs targeting people, especially women, to stop their vehicle to help a baby. They make this baby look as if it has blood on itself or on its clothing. when you get out of your vehicle in attempt to help, the gangs will jump from their hiding spots. they have beaten women to near death then continue to rape them and other torture methods.

DO NOT STOP! CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY!!!

-Rita R. Reed. TN Dept of Corrections Central Dispatch. (615) 253-8182 (615) 401-6811(fax)

So, naturally, I shifted uncomfortably in my car (and wouldn’t ya know it, the only text message I get all week I end up reading while driving) on accounta being filled with the requisite dread that every woman is obliged to feel at all times. Once home, I set myself to teh Google and while I couldn’t find any Snopes entry on this particular one, I noticed a series of similar debunked messages wherein gang-members (read = BROWN MEN!) rape/murder/maim/etc. women, especially white women, especially mothers. Just another way for the patriarchy to keep us askeered and racist at the same time! Two for the price of one unsolicited text message!

Here’s the Snopes search, if you want to be sickened and entirely justified all at once. I know, I know: that’s your daily bread, sister.

IBTP.

- Woman.
______________________________________

Dear Woman,

Your text sample is a real beaut. A cursory Spinstanalysis:

The “please” capitalizes on the recipient’s susceptibility to bogeyman mythology by emphasizing the author’s solicitous concern: Please! I beg of you! If not for yourself, then for your children! Read this text message and take it to heart because you will die otherwise, and anonymous authors of text messages care.

The ellipsis — a four-pointer — portends a dark and foreboding situation urging the recipient to consider entering an undefined state of general awareness and carefulness. Yellow Alert!

No, make that an Orange Alert; “gangs” are involved. And although they are targeting “people,” they have a particular fascination for women. This means you.

So wait, now we have “National Gang Week”? Whence cometh this 411? Does the King of the Gangs send out a press release to Safety Mom Weekly? “Watch out, bitches! We will soon be attacking innocents on a roadside near you”? And what’s the protocol? Is it take a gang to lunch or else? And, really, a whole week? Mothers, secretaries, and women only get a day. Spinster aunts get bupkis. Breast Cancer Awareness — despite the fact that everybody in the solar system already oozes breast cancer awareness from every pore — gets a whole month, but you can’t expect the megatheocorporatocracy to deny itself 29 extra days to cash in hardcore on the golden eggs from that poor, sick old goose. As a matter of fact, the CEO of Pink Ink Inc, manufacturer of the ubiquitous pepto-pink pigment (the secret ingredient is panda fetuses), has banked enough to buy a private island in the Caribbean. He’s got an English valet with a better vocabulary than his, a pair of tickets on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, and a margarita machine.

Anyway, National Gang Week is “starting,” but the author omits to include the date, which leaves the end of National Gang Week sort of up in the air. And if the text message sender is to be believed, the object of this infinite National Gang Week appears to be that participating gangs must suddenly abandon the tried-and-true in order to implement elaborate and cumbersome methods of murder and mayhem. To wit:

A car seat with a bloody baby, placed by the side of “any road,” while multiple gang bangers, coiled like cobras in “hiding spots,” eternally await the random good Samaritan, hoping it’s a tenderhearted little woman they can torture, and not a cop? The scheme strikes me as a trifle busy. And passive, time-consuming, and comparatively unremunerative. Don’t they normally just rob you at gunpoint? Simple, but efficient. No bulky props, no waiting around. They don’t even really need the gun. I was once robbed at fingerpoint, of $3 and a Chanel lipstick. Lucky for me it wasn’t National Gang Week at the time, or I’d be singin’ soprano today!

It turns out that the gangstas of National Gang Week don’t want your money or your lipstick. Instead of dealing drugs, waging turf wars, and pimpin hos, these guys prefer to loll about on roadsides, luring women who take an inordinate interest in discarded car seats, beat them not quite to death, rape them, and torture them. I guess they’ve been watching Law & Order: Rape Cops, the TV show where it’s always National Gang Week.

ANYWAY!!! I GOOGLED RITA R. REED AND FOUND THE FOLLOWING!!!! Brace yourself….

According to Snopes, “National Gang Week” originated as an email hoax before jumping species to infest the cell phones of innocent blamers. Note the subtle differences between this email version and the text message.

Subject: FW: Driver beware
National Gang Week is starting: This is their new target method while driving on any roads, If you see a baby car seat sitting on the side of the road DO NOT STOP!!!! These are gangs targeting people, especially women, to stop their vehicle to help a baby. They make this baby look as if it has blood on itself or on its clothes, when you get out of your vehicle in attempt to help, the gangs jump out from cornfields or tall bushes. They have beaten women to near death, and then continue to rape them with baseball bats and other torture methods. This is not just a forward of information, it is within our area. If you do happen to see a car seat DO NOT STOP CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY!! Please send this on to everyone you know.*

Benjamin F. Bean
State Of Tennessee
Department Of Correction
Central Dispatch
5th Floor Rachel Jackson Bldg.
320 Sixth Avenue North
Nashville,Tennessee 37242-0465

The syntactical and punctuation mishaps remain, but this Benjamin F Bean’s email is a bit more colorized, a bit more cinematic than Rita R Reed’s text message. In Mr Bean’s particular Bizarrohorrorwelt, the reader must not merely please be careful; she is ordered to beware (Admit it. The last time you were told to beware, you were whiffling through a tulgey wood, am I right?). Mr Bean’s gangs don’t just jump, they jump out of ominous tall bushes and forbidding cornfields. They don’t just rape, they rape with baseball bats. And what of the eccentric and somewhat sinister “This is not just a forward of information, it is within our area” admonition? Doth Mr Bean of the long, official mailing address protest too much that he is a reliable narrator? Happily, he remembers to close with the traditional “Forward this to everyone you know,” which beloved valediction — curiously omitted by Rita R Reed — is central to the scaremail terrorthodoxy.

My question is this: has a dude ever sent you one of these things? Because I’m formulating a hypothesis that fear-forwards of the rape-and-murder variety are the particular purview of women, both as senders and as recipients. I formulate this hypothesis in response to what I sense is the vague perception that these forwards are in fact sent by an amorphous entity known as The Patriarchy.

Hugs,
Twisty

_________________________
* The *About.com version has Mr Bean asking you to send this “onto” everyone you know. Ow!

Posted in Rape Culture, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. 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.

Rape Spam

Published by Twisty on July 16, 2005. 41 Comments

You know rape spam? I allude to those rape-avoidance-tips emails, the kind written by “the police department” and sent by your well-meaning friend, warning you to always look under your car for attackers (or up in the trees for ninja attackers!), and to stroll around town with your keys sticking out of your white-knuckled fist.

Like all these emails, the one I got today says “This information is invaluable to women who could potentially be victims of crime. I would encourage everyone to read this, and pass it on to those you care for. It is not intended to scare anyone.”

The subtext, of course, is:

“You should be scared shitless! You were born female, and rotten luck that is, because that means you are pretty much there for the taking whenever the fancy strikes, and nothing you can do will actually prevent some psycho shitbag from sexually assaulting you, and we really can’t help you by doing anything that will actually make a difference — like giving stiffer sentences to sex offenders or castrating known rapists with jagged bits of metal or suggesting to boys that a woman is not obligated to screw them just because she smiled at’em — so, just to make sure you feel like the entirely powerless speck of dirt you are, here are a few half-assed tricks we all know don’t work — like, ‘practice screaming into your pillow,’ or ‘never go out alone’ — but probably you ought to just be too scared to ever leave the house again, even though rape is most likely to occur in your own home by some violent perv you already know. Oh well! That’s the good old patriarchy, the social system of misogynist barbarians! Sucks to be you!”

Why don’t they just send out emails saying “Fuck it. You should just move into your panic room permanently and have done with it.” (No panic room? No problem!) Because you know ain’t nobody sending out emails to Dude Nation saying, “Hey, don’t rape any women today; that shit ain’t cool!”

To the growing list of activities women are supposed to avoid (such as being female in public after dark, or being female in your own bedroom between midnight and 2 AM, or being, you know, female) today’s email has added “being female while wearing a ponytail” (it’s used as a handy handle to grab you, bitch) and “being female in a grocery store parking lot” (chicks trying to keep cantaloupes from rolling out of those stupid plastic bags are asking for it loud and clear).

Also, you’re supposed to carry pepper spray at all times, and a large pointed object, like an umbrella, and never look into your purse or talk on a cell phone (like you’d even be able to, with your hands full of pepper sprays and umbrellas). Instead, look everybody you meet straight in the eye and say brightly, “My, but this is some weather we’re having!” And don’t forget to look in the back seat before you get in your car!

I, of course, take it a step further, cause we’re under seige, girls! I carry a 20-pound cannister of tear gas and a scimitar, and hire a sherpa to fumble with my cantaloupes for me, and look everybody I meet straight in the eye and say brightly “What the fuck are you lookin at, douche?” Before I get in my car I blast the back seat with a flame-thrower.

Rape is the floatie in the toilet of patriarchy.

Posted in Mass Media, Men Hate You, Rape Culture and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.

Comedy Joke

Published by Twisty on July 11, 2005. 0 Comments

Ha!

I know there must be some dudes out there that blog, but I can’t think of any. If you can think of any blogs written by people with external gonads, please leave them in the comments.

I know the call for dude bloggers may seem silly or sexist, but it’s the chromosomes that count, not the content.

– Lauren of Feministe

Posted in Blogulation, Oppression Culture and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.