Sunday Morning Hurl: Mama Grizzlies

Published by Jill on July 18, 2010. 408 Comments


What the Mama Grizzly is wearing this season. From SarahPAC video.

Whenever a right-wing woman — any right-wing woman — claims to be a feminist, she doesn’t do it in a vacuum. She isn’t just hurting herself. Her antifeminist feminism has violent repercussions and broad implications. It spreads like a contagion from patriotically-attired partisan church lady to Fox news to housewife to housedaughter, cutting a swath of intellectual death in its wake. Research conducted here at the Spinstitute for the Intellectual Lifespan of Female Children shows that for each right-wing woman who performs in the capacity of an empowerful flag-waving heterosexual, 107.6 little girls can kiss their future human agency goodbye as it flutters off into the aether. Like their mothers before them, these little girls will have to pay for their own rape kits, be denied access to abortions, shop for pink lipstick at Wal-Mart, and be judged on their compliance with male desire until they ultimately become wife-slaves in nuclear families of their own, dedicated to consumerism and the replication of patriarchy.

Because the right-wing woman’s real agenda is compulsory compliance with megatheocorporatocratic mandates governing fair use of women, it’s bad enough when specimens from the rank and file pretend to give a fuck about other women. But when celebrity airhead Sarah Palin, with cameras running, gets all feisty and empowerful, the number of doomed girls vomitosially increases to 2,320,917, rising exponentially each time somebody watches her “Mama Grizzlies” SarahPAC vid on YouTube.

Mama Grizzlies! It’s a “mom awakening.” They’re gonna “get things done!” What things? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? Sarah Palin loves America, and that’s good enough for moms!

“Moms kinda just know when somethin’s wrong,” asserts Palin, addressing her back-to-basics, anti-intellectual female fan base, all of whom “just know” that ‘women’s intuition’ is a sound basis for vague social policy. Palin’s video blames “these policies comin’ out of DC right now,” this “fundamental transformation of America” for the existence of all this stuff that moms just kinda know is wrong.

But what wrong stuff, exactly, do the moms kinda just know? What, precisely, is the Mama Grizzly banding together against? To what — if it isn’t too much to ask — is she saying “no”?

Apparently, Mama Grizzlies are against whatever they kinda just want to be against, because Palin doesn’t mention a single issue in her video. It features a few quick cuts to protesters waving issue-ish but ultimately vacuous posters (“ANNOY LIBERAL WORK HARD & PAY YOUR OWN BILLS”), but what this charming little fillip of issue-less propaganda actually does is give uninformed right-wing women an anti-Obama political identity, a white ladies’ tribe to join. It’s the Mama Grizzlies Tribe, where you can be against stuff without even knowing what it is, where you all you have to grasp about politics is that something’s kinda just wrong, and that Sarah Palin’s gonna get it fixed because, even though she doesn’t hold public office and isn’t running for one, she loves America, so vote for her candidates in November.

Mama Grizzlies may not have a specific cause, but they are just as tough and fighty as Sarah! To wit:

The Mama Grizzlies are “gonna turn this thing around” and “get our country back on the right track.” They’re “banding together, rising up, and saying ‘no this isn’t right’. For our kids and for our grandkids. [...] Lookout Washington! Cuz there’s a whole stampede of pink elephants crossin’ the line and the ETA is November 2nd 2010!”

Lookout Washington! A pack of Mama Grizzlies have just morphed into a herd of pink elephants! Either way, you’re gonna have a sanitation problem on your hands.

Posted in The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today, The megatheocorporatocracy and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

My unique style self-expresses who I personally am

Published by Jill on July 17, 2010. 53 Comments

Me!
Jilroy Silliphant. Me! 1963. Pixels on ectoplasm.

The inbox at Spinster HQ this morning contained several urgent communiqués from an entity calling itself “How do I remove my tampon without it hitting something?”.

Yeah, this is a little embarrassing, but whenever I try to remove my tampon, it either hits my fingers or the rim of the toilet. I’m trying to take it out slowly so that it doesn’t swing around, but it’s a huge ordeal. Any tips?

As I read these words — which seemed to me not like everyday, earthly words, but like diamantine droplets of sublime Internet perfection leaping from the screen to encrust my optic nerves in tiny, piercing embraces — a little tear of happiness (the sort of happiness that fills the void left by the pain of defeat after an arduous struggle) welled up in my jaundiced eye. Suddenly all those pent-up, anti-Internet feelings I’ve been having lately melted away into the aether. I gathered some rose petals in a basket the color of sunshine and went skipping down the lane, strewing the petals and singing my Number One Jam, “Top of the World” by the Carpenters. After I got done singing that, I started in on my other Number One Jam, Madonna’s seminal feminist anthem for social change, “Holiday.”

Upon my return to the bunkhouse it became apparent that a small point, lately arisen on the blog, required a clarification. As you know, a roiling controversy attends certain of my views regarding the practice of beginning arguments with the word “I.” My lobe — having recently been blown by the fact that the afore-referenced zenith of tamponish prosody and crystalline subsense had been achieved, by some miracle, without my vigilant intervention — now compels me to rethink my position.

Let me be perfectly clear.

Begin remarks however you like. Use whatever words you want, to convey whatever tone you desire, to express whatever thought pops into your head. If you manage to achieve even a fraction of the exquisite pithiness of “How do I remove my tampon without it hitting something?”, no greater contribution to human enlightenment could be expected of you.

Meanwhile, because I have shown myself to be incapable of explaining to anybody’s satisfaction why it is advantageous for women to disseminate their views on social and political issues as bona fide ideas rather than as qualified, localized, personal opinions, or of illustrating the ways in which this rhetorical style differs from “telling my story,” I am retiring from (but not conceding) the fight. I reckon I’m just too old and beat up.

But before I go, I urge the blametariat to consider this: an idea is infinite and infectious and evolving. Some ideas: Elvis, birth control, the Internet. An opinion, on the other hand, is small and finite and, ultimately, irrelevant. An opinion is “I like pie.”

Posted in Announcements, Art is my LIFE and Blogulation. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt posts photo of wagging tail without comment

Published by Jill on July 16, 2010. 28 Comments

Franny with white chair, 1963
Jilroy Silliphant. Franny with white chair. 1963.

Posted in Art is my LIFE, Dog Blogging and El Rancho Deluxe. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt executes close reading of seemingly benign remark, exposes hidden meanings!

Published by Jill on July 13, 2010. 121 Comments

Thanks to yesterday’s involuntary contributors, Valerie, Dr Sarah Tonin, and Saphire. You kids are all right. Today I’ll be picking a few more nits on the same theme. If a theme may be said to possess nits.

Queries blamer JenniferRuth on the subject of feminists gettin’ after other feminists for perceived infractions of the Unwritten Feminist Code:

[...] Is the tone of the message more important than the message?

In other words, if you see some patriarchy goin’ down, and it falls upon you to blame it, need you really mince words just to spare the feelings of the alleged perp? Shouldn’t the perp grow a pair, and learn from your expertise?

It can be argued (and is argued, by me, albeit somewhat obliquely, a bit further down) that the tone of the message is the message. Furthermore, when the tone may be construed as hostile or passive-aggressive or supercilious, “learning” cannot reasonably be expected to transpire.

Continues JenniferRuth (echoing the opinion of several other blamers):

I think that often a “gotcha” tone is inferred rather than intended. I see none of it in Dr Sarah Tonin’s comment. [Dr Sarah Tonin's comment is reproduced below -- Jill].

Alas, the intent of a remark is ultimately irrelevant to its audience; the net effect on the balance of the cosmos is what must be considered when assessing the gotchaness of any given remark delivered on a small-time blog. We have seen this intent-vs-effect scenario time and time again. For example:

When some progressive liberal dude drops anchor at Savage Death Island to take field notes on the wild feminist population, he might say something like “You ladies have really educated me, keep up the good work!” The dude imagines that he’s being supportive, but what he’s actually done is reinforce the dude-supremacist hierarchy by placing himself in a lofty position above the fray from which he may passively benefit from the ladies’ work while simultaneously condescending to bestow upon them the high honor of dudely approbation.

Privilege exercised by A is oppression experienced by B. Whether the A “means” it or not.

Back to Dr Sarah Tonin’s remark:

@Valerie, I agree with the basic sentiment of your comment, but druther you’d pick a less classist analogy than “trailer park”. Cheers.

It is well observed that Dr Sarah Tonin is not, in this example, mean. She opens with something conciliatory, briefly administers the correction, attempts to diffuse any potential sting with a breezy “cheers!” and gets the heck out. A case of the surgeon’s knife.

There are other, more extreme, more entertaining examples I might have used, but alas, you get what you pay for here at I Blame the Patriarchy.

However. As for whether, as JenniferRuth wonders, the “gotcha” tone is real or imagined: if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck …

Read it again:

@Valerie, I agree with the basic sentiment of your comment, but druther you’d pick a less classist analogy than “trailer park”. Cheers.

Observe that Dr Sarah Tonin speaks directly to Valerie using the first person “I.” She alludes to Valerie’s infraction as distasteful to Dr Sarah Tonin personally. In so doing, she introduces a “j’accuse” dynamic, establishing a mini-hierarchy wherein she confers upon herself hall monitor status. She’s a pleasant hall monitor, but a hall monitor nonetheless. This dynamic makes the “cheers” feel a bit disingenuous.

It should also be noted that Dr Sarah Tonin’s humorous Internet moniker contains the quasi-honorific “Dr,” which, whether or not Sarah Tonin is an actual doctor, adds to her remarks a subliminal and somewhat presumptuous dollop of authoritative clout. The subtext might be read as “As your superior officer, I deem you in violation of the unwritten code.”

A more enbiggening, albeit more time-consuming, approach would have been for Dr Sarah Tonin to eliminate both her personal preferences and Valerie from her remarks altogether, and to compose her argument from a more universal point of view. Perhaps something like:

“Although trailer parks have enjoyed a colorful history as joke-butts among the upper classes and other denizens of site-built homes, these jokes are considered by many feminists to contain classist slurs that a) unjustly portray low socio-economic status as a character flaw, and b) bolster the jokester’s own status as someone privileged enough to make such pronouncements.”

Such a statement might still have offended the charmingly implacable Saphire (Valerie herself, it should be noted, has, as of this writing, yet to weigh in on the subject), but at least it would have met most of the criteria upon which the Blametariat appears to agree are necessary for successful consciousness-raising: it’s neutral in tone; it’s addressed to a general audience rather than to a specific blamer; it describes a widely-held philosophical position re: trailer parks rather than a statement of personal opinion; it’s an introductory explication of the problem with trailer-park jokes; and possibly it might even serve as a template from which a less-experienced feminist might extrapolate for future instances of self-privilege-awareness.

I Blame the Patriarchy’s superfatted Guidelines For Commenters already contains a plea for the excision of the first person singular from the Blametarium; it should, at least for purposes of Internecine Nit-Picking, also include a moratorium on the pronoun “you.”

These pronouns, they’re really something!

In closing, let us remember that, although this blog originated as a light entertainment delivery device for the amusement of its author, today its primary function is patriarchy-blaming. So, if you see some patriarchy in progress, and think you can blame it, bring it, girlfriend! The less culture-of-domination shit you throw around while doing it, the better.

Fun fact: I used to work in a manufactured housing factory, where I was the lowliest form of life, the girl who swept out the houses when they rolled off the assembly line. I will always be grateful to that job for hipping me to the existence of the Hokey, an inexpensive, human-powered housekeeping implement I use to this day to remove golden retriever hair from a blue paisley rug.

By the way, as somebody pointed out yesterday, the actual term for the type of dwelling under discussion is “manufactured home.” It may be “PC” (as the commenter suggested), but it’s also the official industry designation, for the simple reason that, once delivered, these houses are affixed to the ground with concrete pylons and don’t go anywhere. I know what I’m talkin’ about when I say that manufactured housing often exceeds, in terms of eco-friendliness, energy efficiency, price, maintenance costs, and general quality, comparable site-built homes. See photo, above.

A “trailer” is something you hitch to your Ford F-250 to transport livestock, hay, landscaping equipment, or an Emergency Mobile Margarita Bar.

___________________
Photo: Adorable “trailer” is (surprisingly?) un-trashy. 475 sq ft “Eco-Cottage” by Nationwide Homes.

Posted in Blogulation, Oppression Culture and Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society. Bite me, Chad.

We’ve all done it, but maybe it’s time to cut it the fuck out

Published by Jill on July 12, 2010. 142 Comments

More excerpts from the comments!

#
Valerie
July 11, 2010 at 4:05 pm

[...] They make trailer parks look classy and nuanced.

#
Dr. Sarah Tonin
July 11, 2010 at 10:48 pm

@Valerie, I agree with the basic sentiment of your comment, but druther you’d pick a less classist analogy than “trailer park”. Cheers.

#
Saphire
July 11, 2010 at 11:16 pm

^ Lest Valerie forget that impossible high standard the internet feminist is held to!

#
Saphire
July 11, 2010 at 11:19 pm

Grrr think I too am giving feminism a break. I’ll come back when we have anything resembling something where ‘feminists’ don’t tear each other down at the first chance. ‘Patriarchy handmaidens’, spot on.

Don’t I know it. When your blogular practice of Internet feminism gets corrected by total strangers, it’s about as appealing as when some nattering nabob of a poindexter corrects your grammar. As a professional Internet feminist, my ass is hangin’ there on both lines pretty much around the clock. Smarty pantses (or is it smarties pants?) and finger-waggers line up around the block all the live-long day, just waiting for a chance to correct some little infraction. I’d be lying if I said this didn’t completely chafe the spinster butt-cheeks.

I remember one time I typed “morays”, like the eels, instead of “mores,” like the normative conventions and attitudes embodying the fundamental moral values of a particular society, the contravention or rejection of which by individuals or subgroups is liable to be perceived as a threat to stability. I can’t say why I wrote “morays” instead of “mores”; if anyone knows the difference between an eel and a normative convention, ’tis I. But I did it all the same. And sure enough, though it was perfectly clear from the context of my post that eels were not among the topical considerations of the essay, a lurking poindexter lost no time. She leaped from the bushes and executed a “gotcha!” in the comments, exposing my dreadful usage mishap for the entire world to see. She performed this gotcha, not with a simple “hey, you typed the wrong word,” or a pleasantry about eels and their social fishiologies, but with an unnecessarily (I thought) elaborate explication of my error, including definitions, pronunciations, Latin origins of both words, and a goddam supercilious (I thought) tone. The cheeks were chafed.

I have complained about this before. Remember dear old Cuntalinagate? No? Well, here’s what happened. Last year — I forget exactly when — I used the word “cuntalina” as a pejorative to describe — I forget exactly who — and lo! The Feminist Secret Service was deployed toot sweet to fishslap me into compliance with the relentless, sanctimonious, supercilious metrical Formula of Internet Feminist Conformity and Propriety. Demands for an explanation were conferred. I became Misogynist of the Year. I got voted off my own island. I got compared to Mengele. It was all “oh my god, Twisty, you called a woman a cunt! You’ve set women’s rights back 50 years! All my hopes and dreams just went down the crapper and you suck shit through Hefty bags! The kids and I are burning the computer we used to read your posts!”

Here’s what I said then, so I don’t have to think up a new paragraph to say it again now.

I’m damned glad you guys are taking this feminism thing seriously. Really. Nothing could be more heartwarming, except, possibly, certain heartwarming nature crap, than that there exist women who are able to grasp that “cuntalina” is an antifeminist slur.

But seriously, get off my fucking case already with this hypervigilant radfem hall monitor shit. The policey, self-righteous, gotcha bullshit around here generally is chapping my entire hide. When and if I commit some egregious ideological error that threatens the very fabric of the cosmos I’ll make Twisty fucking cop to it, as you fucking well know if you’ve been reading this blog for more than five minutes. But this cuntalina uproar is fucking absurd. Jayzus in a jetpack.

Good times.

Anyway, far be it from me to tell anyone what to do! So I’m not demanding that interested parties should check their annoying habit of going for the jugular whenever they perceive the slightest opportunity to cut some hapless fellow Internetian (rhymes with “Venetian”) off at the knees and feast on her imperfect brains. I’m just saying, maybe you’re being a jerk to act all offended and self-righteous when your victims, weary of the constant prissy-ass doctrinairian hectoring, go a little postal.

Nobody likes a rat-fink.

But on the other hand, what to do about insouciant, stereotype-perpetuating remarks concerning the philosophic depth of trailer parks? Haven’t we a moral imperative to nip this shit in the bud? Because if we don’t check call out these heinous anti-trailerite lapses, pretty soon feminism itself will be torn completely asunder and polar bears will go extinct.

It is a fine line we walk, you and I. It may be suggested, in the interest of peace and harmony, that when confronted with one of these intolerable slurs, the slurrer herself be recused from any subsequent critique. Also that the zingy take-down, popular though it is, be relinquished, and that the focus of the critique be ideological rather than personal. Perhaps affording the slurrer an opportunity to broaden her horizons rather than force her to defend herself from an angry mob of Trailer Park Rightsists. One might strive to be educationy, rather than imperious.

This is suggested, of course, despite the high probability that nobody will pay it the slightest attention. Why won’t they? Because it is the Way of the Internet — yes, even the Feminist Internet — to self-aggrandize by any means necessary. Usually the means is dominating anyone who shows the slightest weakness. In the end, the lone chumps left standing will be those few who can withstand the longest the Internet’s Death by a Thousand Cuts (or Venomous Morays).

But blowing off feminism because couple of amateur feminists make stupid remarks on a small-time blog? Aw.

Posted in Blogulation. 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. 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.

Horrifying frizz experiences and other stories

Published by Jill on July 10, 2010. 58 Comments

Uh-oh!

Sometimes I feel the patriarchy most of all with feminist groups, and the P leaves me alone on occasion in the real world. Hell, I turn off the TV and the patriarchy almost ceases to exist. Then I’ll be on a feminist committee and feel like women actually grouping together against the patriarchy are the most deadset against us getting anywhere.

But I refuse to believe I participate. [from a blamer comment on the Spot of Art post]

As a professional expert spinster aunt it is my sworn duty to inform you, blamer, that you are wrong-o.

What you are experiencing is Anti-Oppression Fatigue. You’re pissed at the feminists because they’re a ceaseless reminder that patriarchy does not leave you alone. You’re tasering the messenger. Ouch! It burns!

You can turn a jaundiced eye toward the arguing feminists, you can shoot your TV, you can imagine that the dominant culture “leaves you alone,” and you can refuse to believe stuff that’s actually true. But your agency is illusory. It is not possible not to participate. There are wheels within cogs around sprockets under layers of dung upon substrata of filth. To wit:

Even if — as you enjoy what you perceive to be a patriarchy-free moment — you’re lounging on the couch you made yourself from sticks you found in the woods, wearing the rough-hewn mu-mu made from cloth you spun yourself from the bamboo you grew on your roof, eating a salad of organic homegrown alfalfa you raised from heirloom seeds and gazing at this post with the computer you hand-built from scrap metal found in a dumpster — there is no way — no way — you personally have not availed yourself of the products of human oppression.

Even if nobody is molesting you, harassing you, hitting you, pimping you, judging you on the size of your ass, selling you carcinogenic wrinkle cream, working you like a dog in a strawberry field and paying you jack shit, taking naked pictures of you and posting them on the Internet, feigning interest in how you coped with your most horrifying frizz experience, sending you subtle messages through film, TV, the Internet, and other media that you’re nothing but a piece of ass, preventing you from obtaining an abortion, threatening to fire you if you don’t put out, leaving your toilet seat up, or murdering you, a gazillion women and kids actually are experiencing this shit — patriarchy — as a big, violent bummer.

The dominant culture of domination is all up inside your shit, too, like one of those 30-foot parasitic worms winding itself around your intestines. It oozes from every pore. You collude with it daily. It’s your first language. Deny this at your peril.

Patriarchy is the reason women don’t get it together and throw a feminist revolt, not feminists. The whole set-up is rigged, see?

Remember, ladies: whenever a feminist takes a day off, a penisface gets his wings.

Posted in Oppression Culture and Private Business of the Secret Feminist Society. Bite me, Chad.

No Art Week would be complete without Yoko

Published by Jill on July 4, 2010. 136 Comments

On the other hand, here is a film script excerpted from our girl Yoko Ono’s 1964 arty book Grapefruit. In Grapefruit, Yoko writes poetical instructions for arty stuff, theoretically for the reader’s own lobes to complete. Like “go sit out in the sun and eat a tuna sandwich.”

What a lazy artist. Trying to oil out of making the tuna sandwich herself.

“Burn this book after you’ve read it!” Yoko writes in the overleaf. I suppose that seemed pretty subversive in 1964.

“The best book I’ve ever burned!” witty Beatle John Lennon adds in the 1970 edition.

But back to the script. Oops! Feminism Fail. To wit:

Film No. 5 (Rape, or Chase)

Rape with camera. One and a half hours, colour, synchronized sound.

A cameraman will chase a girl on a street with a camera persistently until he corners her in an alley, and, if possible, until she is in a falling position.

The cameraman will be taking a risk of offending the girl as the girl is somebody he picks up arbitrarily on the street, but there is a way to get around this.

Depending on the budget, the chase should be made with girls of different age, etc. May chase boys and men as well.

As the film progresses, and as it goes towards the end, the chase and the running should become slower and slower like in a dream, using a high-speed camera.

I have a cameraman who’s prepared to do this successfully.*

Something’s just a tad awry with the scenario. Something churns just slightly the viscera of the Spinster Aunt of the New Millennium. It gives her auntly nostrils a wee enwrinklement. What could it be?

Gosh, I wonder if it’s that the script proposes a fucking snuff film? A dude hired by the artist to randomly select women on the street and run them to earth, filming them the whole time? And Ono thinks there’s a “risk” that the victims of this predation might be “offended” by what she has no problem calling “rape,” yet proposes there’s a “way around” it? What way would that be? After the terrified victims are cornered “in a falling position” in the alley, does the dude chirp “Smile! You’re on Candid Rape Camera!” and everybody has a good laugh? Or does Yoko simply pay her off with John’s dough?

I bet she’s got a cameraman who’s “prepared to do this successfully.” Pervy motherfuckers with cameras aimed at victimized women are never in short supply now, and I doubt it was any different in 1964. That she’s using footage of actual victims shot from the point of view of one of these predatory knobs puts this feminist statement pretty unequivocally in Bogus Town.

This film, now titled more succinctly “Rape”, actually got made in 1969, co-directed by good old John Lennon. Coincidence? I think not. It featured a young undocumented, non-English-speaking immigrant woman chased through the streets of London by Yoko’s willing camera dude. The apparent randomness of the victim’s selection by the camera dude was bogus; the woman’s own sister colluded with Yoko to set her up (nice). The 77-minute film ends, according to this essay, with the woman “curled up on the floor, shielding her face from the intruder.”

The aforementioned critique (written by a dude) excuses the Ono-Lennons from this pretty creepy ethical lapse by suggesting that the importance of the film as a fucking pomo “Truth-Event” supersedes the right of a woman not to be chased by a predator through London for the sake of an art fling or for anything else. The author alludes to the film “Rape” as a “feminist masterpiece.”

Check this fucking pomo violence-rationalizing shit out (I swear I didn’t get it from the PoMo Generator):

However, if we are to submit “Rape” to examination under Badiou’s framework of the Truth-Event, then questions of moral knowledge suddenly become less relevant (perhaps even completely irrelevant if we consider that the Truth-Event shatters the preceding positive ontological order of Being) [...] “Badiou calls the language that endeavours to name the Truth-Event the ’subject-language’. This language is meaningless from the standpoint of Knowledge, which judges propositions with regard to their referent within the domain of positive being.”

What’s one more woman sacrifice? Jesus in a jello mold, this fucking analysis is even more problematic than the film. For one thing, no “feminist masterpiece” can exist, pretty much by definition.

Furthermore, for a spot of art to be considered feminist, it should, at the very least, refrain from inflicting actual terror on actual women.

Iy yi yi.

______________________
* Excerpted from Art and Feminism by Helena Reckitt and Peggy Phelan. Yoko Ono, ‘Film No. 5 (Rape, or Chase)’, Grapefruit (Tokyo: Wunternaum Press, 1964).

Posted in Art is my LIFE and all old movies suck. Bite me, Chad.

Art week brings you a spot of art

Published by Jill on July 3, 2010. 31 Comments

Sue Williams, 1992It’s the last day of Art Week, so I thought I’d better actually squeeze in some actual art. Here’s a painting by Sue Williams.* A Funny Thing Happened, 1992. It comes with a trigger alert.

This painting, about 4′ square, sold for $61,000 in 2008.

The picture depicts three rape scenarios: the first begins with the protagonist wearing “pretty new shoes” and ends with the victim’s beheading and inner uncertainty about what just happened (“now what is it I’m feeling?” asks her disembodied head). In the second (“Funnier”) the victim fights back, but it is unclear whether she is successful. In the third (“Funniest”) a nail-polished hand fires a gun at a set of disembodied dude-organs (“Oh geez, is it really all that bad?” asks the hand. “Don’t shoot” says the dude-organ).

On the edge of the picture, a headless angel flap flap flaps, captioned “too late” and “couldn’t decide.”

What you can’t make out from my bootlegged JPEG are the tiny scribbled inscriptions that reveal, comic book-style, the woman’s inner monologue, some Greek chorus stuff, and the male figures’ (rapist, doctor) out-loud utterances.

“– and don’t forget to dress for success! the Dali Lama”

“Shut up! Can you find anything to cram in her mouth?”

“Bad panties to be caught raped in. Plan ahead.”

“– We don’t know if she enjoyed it or not. This case remains a mystery…”

“Out of my way– I’m a shit doctor. Slut.”

“Evidence too embarrassing”

Here is the Artist’s statement, 1993:

Do victims feel the kick as pain or pleasure? ‘Fuck off.’ When the object of my love and affection gives me the boot as hard as he can it hurts quite a bit. Also, a deep feeling of humiliation and rejection (harder please). Yet there is something horny about the feeling: dear old Dad. Of course I go back for more (home). This is a riot for everyone with their shit together. Well no alternatives came to mind at the time. What can I say? And all these bruises about the face and misshapen lip touching the nose (a turn-off) so everyone knows what you’ve been up to. Oh, the embarrassment, the shameful feeling of worminess. ‘Look, an untogether woman’ Even from Dad! ‘How could she let that happen?’ No gun. ‘How could she do that to herself?’ How did I kick myself in the head? I am a worm, hear me whimper mumble mumble. Fuck you all. Fifteen years of therapy, groups, twelve-step-programmes. I’ll never do it again. Then I am attacked and raped by a total stranger (I swear! O can’t he see that I am centered and working on boundary issues? That I have my shit together: Hell — I OWN my OWN SHIT. What gives? Why wasn’t I training in combat? Should I go outside again? Well, no alternatives came to mind at the time.**

Back in the 70s one of my art history professors, the curmudgeonly conservative Norris Kelly Smith (d. 1998), used to do this for the final exam: He’d project a slide of some ghastly masterpiece from the Uffizi and say “Would you hang this on your living room wall? Why or why not?”

Just so you know, if you wrote in your bluebook “I wouldn’t hang this on my wall because I don’t like it,” you’d get an F.

Because Norris K was so enamored of his Caravaggios and Parmagianinos and Cavatelli Conbroccolis, I never thought to piss him off and squander my grade point average by writing anything negative about the paintings. So I’d puke out all the crap he wanted to hear about vanishing points and contrapposto enbiggening the Glory of Man.

I get a big charge outta imagining what Norris K would have said about Sue Williams. He probably wouldn’t even have considered it art.

I wouldn’t hang A Funny Thing Happened on my wall because I wouldn’t want to have to look at the graphic though sardonic representation of rape every day over my pitcher of margs. I would certainly hang it on your wall, though, if you lived nearby, along with a printout of Williams’ artist statement, because I would like to come and see it sometimes, and enjoy the heartwarming validation of the creepy sensation of the self-doubtiness of the sex class experience, and because it is funny and horrible at the same time, a pairing I find appealing when “horrible” is unavoidable.

_________________________
* Sorry, I don’t own this painting, so the best I can do is this is crappy scan from my coffee table book. Another online image is available here, it’s smaller but sharper.

** Rickett, Helena and Peggy Phelan. Art and Feminism. New York: Phaidon Press. 2006. p 160.

Posted in Art is my LIFE and Rape Culture. Bite me, Chad.

LA Times publishes article about woman; global reserves of sexist stereotypes dangerously depleted

Published by Jill on July 2, 2010. 19 Comments

In the news: a woman known as Anna Chapman is accused of being some sort of Russian spy (Russian spy? Seriously? I didn’t realize we still had those. It’s comforting to know that at least some beloved artifacts from my idyllic Cold War childhood endure).

This LA Times story, the gist of which is gripping speculation concerning Chapman’s future as a reality show celebrity or the subject of “blockbusters”, is a real breathtaking pile of asswipe antifeminist hate speech. The authors don’t seem to know, or care, who or what she is, or isn’t, beyond the assertion that she is a “sultry red-head.” This is demonstrated by the photograph accompanying the article, which is about as sexy as a yearbook picture, and is therefore worth a thousand sexist words.

Here is a selection of the delightful metaphrasery employed in this article (some of which the authors breathlessly quote from other “news” sources). Chapman is

a “sexy antagonist”
a “red-haired beauty”
a “femme fatale”
a “Natasha”
a “secret sexpot” who “partied, shopped & schmoozed”
a “modern-day Mata Hari”
a “vivacious vixen”
a “practiced deceiver”
an “attention-seeking sensationalist bimbo”
a “beauty with a captivating tale”
a “romantic young woman”
a “billionaire or a hooker”

Because Chapman is such a red-haired sexy romantic billionaire mata vixen, her 15 minutes as a bankable piece of ass appears to be in the bag. On the subject of femmes parlaying their fataleity into fame and fortune, one interviewee was moved to recall that the woman Eliot Spitzer paid to rape now has a sex column in a newspaper. Sluts sell!

The LA Times omits to cite any evidence that Chapman is/was, in fact, a prostituted woman, but this is America, and evidence is hardly necessary. According to the authors, Chapman’s Facebook page reveals all relevant information: she is hottt, so obviously she’s a whore, which apparently renders the entire nation verklempt, and that’s all we need to know.

There are 10 other spies in the spy ring, but the LA Times doesn’t speculate about their marketing potential. A separate article reports that one of the dude spies jumped bail in Cyprus, but neglects to provide details about his sexiness, vivaciousness, wealth, hair color, or the dollar value of his “story.” Instead, the reader is forced to make do with boring minutiae such as the charges he was brought up on (failure to register as a foreign agent), and trivia regarding the diplomatic relationship between the US and Cyprus.

Thanks, PhysioProf

Posted in Bloodsport, Mass Media, Sexploitation, The Entertainment Industrial Complex, The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.