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

Spinster aunt mutters in Yiddish

Published by Jill on February 7, 2011. 129 Comments

If you are anti-IBTP-on-Facebook — and no spinster aunt can blame you for that — you have been spared the recent grim ennui of a painful exchange between a dude named Alexander who fancies himself feministically enlightened, and a blamer named Ana who does not entirely concur with Alexander’s self-assessment. It’s a classic Clueless-Dude Time-Drain. Hell, you already know what went down even if you didn’t read it. You’ve probably seen 2583 of these feminist vs. feminist-dude splitsplats.

This one was especially funny, though, because of the unintentionally ironic caption the dude Alexander gave his feministical little Jezebel link. “If you were wondering whether men hate you [...]” was how he put it. I’m not even kidding. He couldn’t seem to grasp why some blamers might have a problem with a man strolling in and telling a bunch of women that men hate them.

Look, just to be clear: when a man hangs around the feminists, it’s weird enough, but when he announces “men hate you,” it strikes rather a different — some might say “menacing” — note than when, say, an award-nominated spinster aunt says it it. You’re not one of the girls, dude.

Just sayin’.

But really, it’s comical, the predictability with which dudes who fancy themselves feministically enlightened just can’t seem to shut the fuck up when they are found to be duding the joint up a little too hardcore. They all appear to have been issued the same script. The script goes like this:

Blamer: Points out that the dude himself is at this moment exercising the very male privilege he has just derided in somebody else.

Dude: Gets defensive [he is feministically enlightened, and no woman is gonna tell him otherwise]. Implies, by dint of hilarious and supercilious walk-on-eggshells-cuz-this-chick-is-touchy language, that blamer is overreacting and misunderstands him.

Spinster Aunt: Steps in and tells the guy to go back to feminist school.

Dude: Counters with a display of vast feminist knowledge, perhaps stating [as dude Alexander did] that Jill’s ideas are not original; he happens to know that Andrea Dworkin thought this stuff up already.

Spinster Aunt: Mutters “Oy vey,” and repairs to the barn to shovel horseshit of a more pleasant kind.

Blamer: [now joined by more blamers] tells dude what time it is, i.e. that merely by persisting as a dude with a dudely perspective in a dude-free feminist forum he is, in fact, an exemplar of the abhorred oppressor.

Dude: Makes disingenuous apologies because of course he never meant to step on any toes or annoy anyone in any way, but doesn’t cop to exercising privilege except in an abstract, generalized, all-men-do-it sort of way.

Blamers: Get cheesed off because dude can’t take a hint.

Dude: Gets cheesed off because blamers won’t appreciate what a learned and magnanimous fellow he is.

[This will continue until I come in for lunch. There'll be 20 or 30 replies in the pile-on, and I'll be obliged to pull the plug. Then I'll do a blog post about it, and 75% of the time the dude will email me to outline all the ways in which I am wrong about him.] The end.

It has been said about 173,942 times — including on the aforementioned Facebook thread — that feminist ally dudes who genuinely want to advance the cause can best do so by minding their own fucking beeswax. Theirs, after all, is the beeswax that most thoroughly and systematically jams women up.

There’s quite a bit of dudely beeswax that needs minding, too. Dudes might quit using porn, for example. They could quit sticking their dicks in people with lower status than them (both literally and figuratively). They could get vasectomies, or clean their own toilets, or read a bunch of feminist theory, or explain to all their buds the ways in which their boo-yah mores are violent and oppressive. If they are sensitive artistes, they could even quit mooching off their girlfriends. They could combine all this useful, proactive, pro-feminist, anti-domination behavior with — to echo a cry that has risen in many a parched feminist throat — shutting the fuck up and getting the fuck out of our way.

Hahaha! Hoooo-boy! That’s a hot one. I have to say, the notion that more than a handful of men would ever do any of that stuff makes me throw back my head and laugh, as the poet said, a hollow, mirthless laugh.

But back to the point, which is this: I’ve pretty much had it with these supposedly well-meaning dudes who try to exercise their nascent feminist chops on my personal patriarchy-blaming blog. Patriarchy blamers in general, and I in particular, in no way require the “feminist” male perspective on anything, ever. See the FAQ for more information.

So I am revising, somewhat, the blogular comment policy. I end up doing this every year or so, when the dudeliness starts getting out of hand and wearying me, which it always does because I am never enough of a hardass.

The revision is this: This blog is goin’ dudeless. If you are commenting as a dude, don’t do it here. I don’t ever want to have to read fingernail/chalkboard crap like this again:

“So let me get this straight, you are blaming the porn industry and men in general for the poor decision made by this woman? It is pretty sexist for you to assume this woman was incapable of make [sic] her own decisions. I’m pretty sure that no one was holding a gun to her head telling her to get breast enlargement or die. I really don’t understand why any women get breast enhancement. They don’t look good, except sometimes while wearing a bra. They don’t feel good. And if the woman decides to have children, breast feeding is not an option. Of the maybe 20 guys I have talked to on the matter, none of them would marry a woman who had fake breasts.” — some random asshole with a Hotmail account.

As always, dudes are welcome to both spectate and contemplate the ideas discussed in this blog and in other feminist work. But from now on, I’m inviting them to do us the courtesy of shutting the fuck up. Of course, I’ll grandmother in those guys who’ve been around for years and have shown themselves capable of human decency.

New dudes can bypass the sex restriction by going incognito. I got no problem with that as long as they complete the prerequisites, never use the personal pronoun “I,” and knock it off already with the fucking tiresome-ass male viewpoint and supercilious tone. Good luck with that, though, because you know as well as I do that sooner or later they always start mansplaining or yakking about dudesex. If we can tell they’re dudes, they’re out.

As far as IBTP on Facebook goes, effective immediately dudes are invited to stop posting status updates on the wall (“Wall”. Really? Facebook is stupid). Blamers, even on Facebook, are not interested in dude-directed discourse. For now the Facebook comments will remain open to all comers, and we’ll see how it goes.

The purpose of all this is not to censor men or punish men or hate men or do anything to men at all (although if that’s what they want to think, it’s no skin off my nose). Rather, it’s to keep the blogular discourse as free as possible from the contamination of male privilege.

End transmission.

Posted in Announcements, Blogulation, Dear god what about the men?, Mass Media, Men Hate You and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.

Death by femininity, again

Published by Jill on January 26, 2011. 32 Comments

If only pornography was just dirty pictures. That would still be bad, but not as bad as the real actual truth. Pornography — that is, the graphic representation of violence against women — is in fact like unto a thick, noxious gas percolating through every conceivable stratum of human culture.

Take this example of multi-tiered pornography from the Huffington Post: a blurb noting the death of a 23-year-old woman named Carolin Berger.

The headline:

“Carolin ‘Sexy Cora’ Berger Dead: Porn Star Dies After Sixth Breast Enlargement Surgery (PHOTOS)”

[Arguably, one may even perceive an element of perpetration in the very act of critiquing this article. That's because pornography leaves a putrid grease on everything and everyone it touches, including spinster aunts who clamor for its eradication. But, onward.]

On one hand, this HuffPo item supports the anti-porn mores of Savage Death Island: Young Berger has died of extreme femininity. Her heart stopped during her 6th breast augmentation surgery and she never regained consciousness. The patriarchy blamer naturally recognizes a familiar narrative: desperate to appease the oppressor through rigorous adherence to deeply internalized pornographic beauty standards, Berger undertook multiple self-mutilations, and paid the ultimate price. Femininity kills.

But … that headline! It is the spinster aunt’s duty to expose what at first blush appears to be the announcement of a tragic accident for what it is: a titillating squirt of micro-porn to whet the insatiable appetites of typical prog-liber-o-prurient HuffPo readers.

This headline’s got it all. “Sexy.” “Dead.” “Porn Star.” “Breast Enlargement” “PHOTOS.” Who wouldn’t click on that? It’s an opportunity — one of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, presented daily to the average media consumer — to ingest sex, to taste the greasy juxtaposition of sex, mutilation, and death, to check out some hottt pixxx, and to pass smug judgement on another blonde bimbo — Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith — who failed to get it just right.

As the story progresses, we discover that Berger’s porn star name was “Sexy Cora.” Naturally, the sex name is the one used throughout the remainder of the article. Porn stars are not human beings, they are a brand of consumer sex receptacle. Thus are the dimensions of Berger’s breasts, both pre- and post-op, more germane to the announcement of her death than, apparently, the detail (omitted by Huffpo) that her surgeon-butchers are now up on negligent homicide charges. To find out about that, you have to go to CBS News’ lurid true crime website, where Berger’s humanity is of little importance compared to her value as a sensationalized dead TV slut. If you doubt this, you have only to observe the 38-page wealth of “Sexy Cora” images available in a CBS online photo gallery, and compare it to the amount of CBS discourse relating to Berger as a human person (barely any), or to the instances of broader CBS discussion of the murderous effects of institutionalized misogyny on the quest for human enlightenment (zilch-o).

[Thanks, Jessica]

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media, Sexploitation, The Entertainment Industrial Complex, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and Ways In Which the Internet Sucks. Bite me, Chad.

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

Published by Jill on July 11, 2010. 51 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.