I Blame The Patriarchy

Pressing spinster auntly business (I have to lounge by a pool again, dammit) will keep me away from my desk today, but I can’t see leaving yall without a photograph of some quiche. From the Blue Star Cafeteria. Which is a dumb name for a restaurant that isn’t a cafeteria.

Today’s unrelated arachnid predation photo: Spinybacked orbweaver weaves orb outside Twisty kitchen window; eats head off bee. Gasteracantha cancriformis, North South Austin, August 2007.

As longtime readers know, so that I can stay on top of developments in my field, Google sends me news’n'blog alerts, to the tune of hundreds a day, on topics relevant to spinster aunting. Dogs. Weird scientific research. Cool Whip. Only occasionally do I force myself to look through the ones on depressing stuff like feminism, abortion, or godbags. But that’s precisely what I did today.

Why?

For purposes of sloth! If I’m reading about how Log Cabin Republicans have launched a “video attack” on Rudy Giuliani, I can justify not running around town reading to the sick, or failing to grow up.

Of course, in order to more completely delude myself that information from the Internet improves me to a greater degree than chores, I need to turn it into a blog post. Toward that end I herewith present a small but representative sampling of web-based misogyny, godbaggery, and buffoonery culled from the Google alerts that showed up in my inbox over the course of just a few hours this morning. I’m omitting from the pool the zillion or so mainstream news items pertaining to violence against women; the sheer volume in that category is overwhelming.

Well, except for the report on this astonishing survey from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, which reveals, among other horrors, that 60% of men and 70% of women “believe that there are some situations in which a husband is justified when he beats his wife.” Pack that in your bong and hit it, patriarchy-deniers!

Meanwhile, this woman thinks that females, with their well-known predisposition toward mindless violence, shouldn’t be permitted to carry designer Tasers. Women, she argues — apparently basing her views on the behavior of that diaper-wearin’ astronaut who is so exemplary of all women everywhere — are such irrational flibbertygibbets, they might easily go off the deep end, Taser in hand. Somebody might get hurt!

This guy thinks that his job as a respectable white male tour guide in Germany is just like being a prostituted woman. Seriously, it’s the same exact thing! Why? Because sometimes his clients buy him drinks and “extra enthusiasm makes [him] much more money” (his “I am a prostitute” statement seems to be the product of an unsettled mind; in the post immediately preceding, he declares himself a “teacher/professor”).

Speaking of prostituted women, news that a Detroit ’sheriff’s deputy’s wife’* has been charged with solicitation continues to generate such thoughtful commentary as “can’t turn a whore into a housewife!” Media reports about women charged with prostitution, all of which employ the lively term “sting operation,” are nearly as numerous as those about murdered and raped women, and foster much dudely sniggering. Stories about johns getting busted? Not so much.

Contrary to what certain blamers have suggested, there are insane antifeminists in Canada: The distraught dude president of godbaggy Vote Life, Canada! responds poetically and threateningly to the news that Amnesty International has officially come out against compulsory pregnancy, and to the grim realization that not only are some members of Amnesty International probably Catholics, but that the sect’s pointy-headed bishops did not strike these heretics dead on the spot: “Woe to the Catholic Bishops of Canada who now share in the blood of a new and vast ocean of murdered Unborns appearing just on the horizon.”

“Murdered Unborns,” eh? And tell me, were they once mortal men of great power who became neither alive nor dead under the power of the Nine Rings? What next, I wonder? “Revenge of the Unborns”? Or “Thingonomicon: Book of the Foetuses”?

And some dudes debate abortion, with hilarious results! I mean, it wouldn’t be humor if nobody referenced a hand job.
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* In accordance with Natural Law, her actual name doesn’t usually appear in these reports until a subsequent paragraph, it being of secondary importance to her marital status.

Unrelated Hill Country Flood photo of the day: My critically-acclaimed golden retriever Bert taunts fate at the brink of deluge. El Rancho Deluxe, August 2007.

You know how you’re sauntering along through your life minding your own beeswax, and some sexist shit goes down, and you, a feminist, naturally respond as one who is sick and tired of sexist shit, perhaps saying aloud in mixed company “that’s some pretty sexist shit, yo,” and your unwillingness to just laugh it off with the rest of the ladies raises the hackles of some asshole pedantic dude who then, out of his profound concern for your well-being, tries to rescue you from pariah-dom, lavishing you with the benefit of his superior grasp of the human condition by setting you straight on the distaste with which every other rational person on Earth regards ‘feminism’? Perhaps even adding that if you really want to get anywhere with your arguments, you’ll get better at appeasing your oppressor with a more solicitous, more conciliatory, more sexyfun tone?

It’s time to stop suffering these ‘intellectual’ arguments with our dudely ‘friends’. They are unwinnable. This is not because the feminist position is flawed. In fact, the premise from which radical feminism proceeds, that women are human, is unassailable by any but the most fanatical, deluded, small-minded swine. No, these dude-arguments are unwinnable because it’s not a fair fight. The fucking pedantic assholes hold the advantage in every respect. Not the least of which is that they get to argue for the dominant paradigm from a cushy, privileged spot within the dominant paradigm, whereas the feminist must simultaneously argue for a wholly imaginary model (a surreal bizarro-world where she is fully human), from that wholly imaginary model, all the while resisting the overwhelming pull exerted by the old familiar patriarchal exemplar — making smiling, head-tilting concessions.

But the fucking pedantic asshole’s primary advantage is that he is motivated not by intellectual curiosity, but by the vulgar patriarchal domination imperative. He’s not really about discourse at all. He fakes you out by getting you to intone your feminist manifesto, but he’s really just baiting you for the old put-a-sock-in-it-or-the-consequences-will-be-dire gambit. The fucking pedantic asshole has made the exciting discovery that he can dominate the women in his midst merely by threatening to revoke that most golden and priceless of gifts: his favor. In generously condescending to converse with a member of the sex caste, these putzes pretend to want to engage in serious philosoph-socio-political debate, but their only real interest lies in forcing the uppity feminist to submit to their awesome power.

Fortunately, (perhaps because it doesn’t exist), nowhere in the Handbook of Radical Feminist Etiquette does it state that one is obligated to try to convince or win over or convert or reassure aggressively antifeminist dudes. The path to enlightenment is, for such amoral lost-cause pricks, beyond the purview of women. We’ve got our own problems.

“Not interested, Fucking Pedantic Asshole. Your argument is too unsophisticated for me to take seriously.”

It turns out I’m not the only one who holds this view. A kindly blamer suggested I check out blogger Dizzy’s account of an encounter with one of these cretinous antifeminist buttmunches. Some chump at a party actually passed her a note explaining her shortcomings as a feminist. Read the whole post. It will resonate. It sounded so familiar I had to check to make sure I hadn’t written it myself. Quoth Dizzy:

I know it must be hard to fathom that a girl doesn’t care what a smart man thinks about the thing that she cares most about in the world, or that there’s a movement that exists that doesn’t much take into consideration what men have to say on the topic. I know I’m supposed to 1) nod thoughtfully as I process your wisdom, asking clarifying questions about your points just in case I don’t immediately understand something you say, and then 2) offer up some powerful and intelligent argument on why feminism is important, and then 3) try to prove my point with examples from women in politics and a few stories about my grandmother, but of course, in the end, 4) concede that yes, you have some very good points that I will certainly think about, and thank you for educating me about feminism and correcting me on those things I didn’t fully understand about women and the world.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the patriarchal position is irrelevant to feminist theory, and the substance of feminism, the value of the liberation of women, is not itself a legitimate subject for debate among rational beings.

“The more I think and read, the more Twisty Faster makes sense, which bothers me, somehow.” — this dude Bruce

Fans of compulsory pregnancy should be pleased that a new law in Missouri, taking effect next week, will put the government all up in women’s business and further solidify the state’s claim to ownership of American uteruses. The law twists the coathanger in several gruesome and trendy directions. For instance, suddenly abortion clinics will have to become ‘ambulatory surgical centers’, which are subject to unnecessary government regulation and are vastly more expensive to maintain. A clinic in Columbia, MO, home of the University of Missouri, will have to shut down unless Planned Parenthood can cough up the $2 million for renovations. Leaving thousands of women in the lurch.

Not only that, but representatives of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers will be barred from anything to do with sex education (teaching, educational pamphlets illustrated with cross-sections of gonads, et al) in public schools. Instead, abstinence programs — where the gym teacher says “grow an iron hymen or Jesus will kill your parents” — will receive funding. This should be a real godsend for compulsory pregnancy advocates whose niche-fetish is loving teen pregnancy.

Last but not least — my personal favorite — the law will rubberstamp a program that gives grants to compulsory pregnancy centers where embryos are promoted as sacred fairies encrusted with their mothers’ entire sense of self-worth.

Planned Parenthood is suing for an injunction.

It may be too late for Missouri, but have you heard what’s about to go down in Ohio? Check out this troglodyte state house bill, HB 287. No time to read tiresome legislation? Here’s the money shot: Anyone seeking an abortion first has to secure the “written informed consent” of the father. Don’t know who the father is? You have to buy paternity tests for the usual suspects. Were you raped? Relive the experience by providing proof of this to your abortion provider. Think you’ll get your best gay dude friend to fake consent for you? It’s “abortion fraud,” a first degree misdemeanor. If you commit a second abortion fraud, it’s a felony.

This bill is actually being framed in terms of the terrible unfairness to men presented by the idea of woman’s personal bodily sovereignty.

So in Ohio, the state is generous with its awesome power. It has faith in its male citizens. And to demonstrate that faith, it’s willing to cede ownership of your uterus to your asshole ex-boyfriend.

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Oh, and an FYI: the next time you’re in a hot debate with an embryo-worshiper, and she trots out that tired old crap about how abortions — particularly medical (RU486) abortions — cause complications in later pregnancies, tell her that the New England Journal of Medicine just published findings that abortions of any sort have no impact on subsequent reproductive efforts.

Of course you care what I had for lunch: a spinach and goat cheese crepe with caramelized onion and tomato from Flip Happy Crepes.

To the two 6th St. joggers who ducked into Whole Foods, made for the produce section, proceeded to cool themselves by rolling cucumbers over their sweaty B.O. hides, and then put the cucumbers back:

I look forward to the day when I can return the favor.

To the merry prankster who linked here from Something Awful, thus flooding my moderation queue with asinine schoolboy vulgarities:

I look forward to the day when I can return the favor.

To the genius women who run Flip Happy Crepes out of an old Airstream in that pecan grove off of Lamar and Barton Springs:

I’ll never be able to return that favor, so I’ll just return. Every day. See you tomorrow.

To poor divorced Anna Pasternak, whose column in Australia’s Herald Sun suggests that “the intrinsic emotional make-up of high-IQ women [is] flawed,” resulting in an inability to sustain love relationships, and that “big brained” women shouldn’t be “too dominant or competitive” unless they want to die old maids:

If your smart-women-are-unlovable theory were accurate, you’d have more dates than a palm tree.

Damn. Sorry. That was juvenile. What I meant to say was this. You might consider that “brilliant” women, from whose eyes the scales have fallen, are not “flawed”, but are merely more difficult to dominate, thus ensulkening the partner who sees her/himself as the rightful heir to patriarchal privilege based on the traditionally lopsided power differential of the heteromonogamogodly model. In other words, it’s the weenie’s fantasy, i.e. the culture of domination, that’s flawed, not the brainiacs.

Blamer Maria sends in this link to a photo of a Manhattan billboard. The billboard advertises mini-storage. It has a picture of a wire clothes hanger and the words “Your closet space is shrinking as fast as her right to choose.”

It’s delightful the way the hanger image is a sort of visual double-entendre. Abortion, closet space; it’s a natural! Co opting — for the purpose of selling mini-storage — an image that for decades has been emblematic of violent oppression may seem, at first blush, to trivialize it, but see here: as long as it’s done cleverly, and serves capitalist enterprise, how wrong can it be?

I was mucking out the Twisty Archive of Abandoned Projects when I came across this funky and anomalous object. “Oh yeah,” I said. “That thing!”

It’s a self-portrait in cancerbroidery, incompleted a summer ago as I recuperated from, and felt compelled to represent in a medium with which I was entirely unfamiliar, assorted barbaric cancer cures. I’m no embroiderer, but I can attest to the therapeutic forces contained in wool thread.

I thought some of you crafty types might appreciate the vigor of its naivete.

Are your horizons unbroad? Your existence eked out within a 5-mile radius of your living room? Your perspectives tinted by your position on the geopolitical map? Well, that’s what I’m here for. I bring you a nugget of horror to remind you that being a woman isn’t just about the right to a disfiguring boob job.

While Oprah hand-picks the gals with the most “moxie” for her zillion-dollar leadership/beauty school, South African thugs have been raping and murdering lesbians. Among the most recent wave of executions were prominent Soweto AIDS activists Sizakele Sigasa and Salome Masooa, found dead of multiple gunshot wounds on July 8. Although South Africa has amended its constitution to disallow discrimination against lesbians and gays, it has no hate crime legislation. Homophobia continues to flourish, which leads to assertions that vastly more numerous incidents of anti-GLBT violence have taken place than have been reported; victims themselves are closeted, or their families don’t want anything to do with The Gay. Like the US, this is a country with leaders who like to trample over two or three hundred human rights before breakfast. Which South African official suggests lemon and garlic as a cure for HIV? That’s right. The health minister.

You will not find reports on this story without venturing out beyond Google News. As far as dykes in the media are concerned, murdered black South African lesbians are not 1/1000th as riveting as an upcoming “steamy lesbian romp” featuring Portia de Rossi in some cable TV dudefantasy.

More information about this and other gay-in-Africa issues at Behind the Mask.

Internet pornographer Jason Gunstra’s desk accessories. Video capture from Yahoo!News “People of the Web: Hooter Heaven.”

Hurricane Erin is watering my lawn for me today, freeing me up to read wonderful things on the internet. Like the heartwarming story about another guy who pimps women on his “social website.” A true choice and master spirit of the age, this specimen pays women in boob jobs to supply his pervy subscribers with DIY porn.

Here’s how it works (there is no way I can describe this without an excess of quotation marks): Women who want “free” boob jobs sign up at myfreeimplants.com to “interact” with horndog “benefactors.” They do online chat and post hottt pixxx of themselves. The “benefactors” then “donate” loot to their favorite “real girl.” They can also “help the ladies” by selecting other services, such as purchasing their underwear and requesting “custom” photos and videos. The women continue this “participation” until they have racked up the 5 or 6 large necessary for their surgeries. One woman, who freely admits that “a lot of [the "benefactors"] are creeps,” estimates she has to spend 100 hours online for every $1000 in “donations.” Which, as the article points out, isn’t much more than minimum wage. But it’s “worth it,” because she’s always wanted “big ones.”

Why is this an example of women’s oppression rather than of sassy, boob-lovin’ ladies who know exactly what they’re getting into making an informed, empowerful choice?

The pimpy little predator who runs the site gets 25¢ for every dollar that goes to the women, which he can spend however he likes. He thinks of himself as a philanthropist. The woman, on the other hand, gets pornulated on the internet and invasive surgery to improve her conformity to male sexual ideals (i.e, to improve her “self-esteem”); paternalistically, the “donations” go directly to her surgeon. She thinks of herself as sex.

Prostitution, as Kate Millett said, is the very core of the female’s condition, and all women are political prisoners.

[Thanks, Nancy]