Post number 1867

Published by Twisty on April 2, 2009. 30 Comments

proboscismonkey1

Your views may differ, but here at Spinster HQ the day just doesn’t feel complete unless we meditate on a study conducted by sexperts explaining patriarchy in unassailable scientific terms. In fact, we’re collecting evidence in support of the theory that sexperts — there appears to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of’em — are actually cybernetic minionbots engineered by a secret cabal of overlords to ceaselessly pursue a sacred quest: proof that H. sapiens is actually two distinct species, Homo masculomacho, (“regular guys”), and Monachus gluteus rosus, (alternatively known as “uteropods”).

But that’s another post!

Today’s boys-and-girls-are-different-species study finds that if you are a team of evolutionary psychologists, and you superscientifically “quiz” 571 young adults about whether they have a “positive outlook,” and then present the results of the quiz at the British Psychological Society in Brighton, the BBC will post an article in its “Health” section entitled “Sisters ‘make people happy’.”

Whereas — you guessed it — “brothers breed distress.”

According to Professor Tony Cassidy of the University of Ulster, families with boys need extra care.

“We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys.”

Then again, we may not. Because fortunately, female offspring, with their specialized cohesion, communication, happiness, and emotional openness lobes, can be utilized to stabilize the psychological health of otherwise crummy families. Girls, it turns out, are built-in family therapists!

[Professor Tony Cassidy] said many of the participants had been brought up in families where parents had split and the impact of sisters was even more marked in these circumstances.

So if you’ve got some sisters, and your family is still dysfunctional (dad’s a stinking drunk, mom lies in bed all day weeping, junior is amassing firearms for a school shooting, etc) it can only mean one thing: the girls aren’t doing their jobs. Most likely they’re hanging around coffee shops with dog-eared Rimbaud paperbacks, scribbling self-absorbed poetry. These slackers must be urged to put their shoulders to the wheel. I suggest grounding them and taking away their cell phones until the fam is once again purring along like a well-controlled Basic Patriarchal Unit.

Posted in Junk Studies, Keep your bias off my gender and Mass Media. Bite me, Chad.

That’s some catch, that Catch 22

Published by Twisty on April 1, 2009. 64 Comments

You think “enemy combatants” are the only people who can be denied access to an attorney and thrown in prison without having been convicted of any crime? Wrong-o. In Delta County, Michigan, USA, they’re doing it to homeless single mothers.

I allude to the egregious tale of Edwina Nowlin, who earlier this month was jailed for being poor. Behold a summary of the case, which I filched from the ACLU’s press release and legal brief. Recall that I am a spinster aunt, not a lawyer, so if my taking poetic license with some of the finer legal points chaps your hide, kindly kiss my entire monkey butt.

It’s like this. Nowlin’s teenage son is in juvenile detention. The court, skipping the nuisance of assessing Nowlin’s financial situation beforehand, has ordered her to cough up $104 per month to reimburse the state for imprisoning her kid. But Nowlin hasn’t got a pot to piss in. She lost her house after being laid off. She’s scrapping by on occasional part-time gigs and crashing on friends’ couches. Like all Americans, she’s already $17,000 in debt, and whatever wages she earns are being garnished. All this, while trying to support another teenage son.

When she can’t produce the dough, the judge holds Nowlin in contempt. Sentence: 30 days.

The 30-day sentence is fixed, by the way. Even if she had paid the $104 on Day 1, the judgment would have kept Nowlin imprisoned for the full month. Thus does Nowlin’s civil contempt sentence morph seamlessly and unconstitutionally into a criminal one. At which juncture Nowlin requests the court-appointed lawyer to which all persons accused of crimes are entitled. But apparently the judge has never heard of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Nowlin is dee-nied.

A few days later, they let her out of jail long enough to pick up a paycheck from one of her odd jobs. The check is for $178.53, more than enough to cover her son’s bill at juvy. Things are looking up. But wait! The Delta County Sheriff makes Nowlin sign the check over to the jail to cover her own “room and board”! Plus 22 bucks for a drug test and booking fee!

To recap: Nowlin’s got to pay $104 a month for her son’s imprisonment, but since she’s in jail for being poor she couldn’t earn the money even if she had a job, which she doesn’t, so next month she’ll be in contempt again, beginning the cycle anew. The situation is ludicrous. It’s as though a civil rights-era black-and-white courtroom drama crash-landed into a Dickens novel.* A white-haired, pink-faced judge in a pale linen suit, a sheriff in Ray-Bans and beer-gut, one child jailed, a second left motherless, a beleaguered pauper doomed to languish in debtor’s prison with no hope of release, the untenable and insane condition that a destitute person must finance her own incarceration.

I’m a spinster aunt, not a mentalist, so I will never know precisely what caused this judge’s justice lobes to malfunction to such an astonishing degree, but it would not be pushing the limits of reason too far to speculate that a lifelong immersion in unexamined patriarchal privilege has caused a toxic buildup of the chemical compound assholamine. Studies conducted at the Twisty Institute for the Study of Lobal Instability have shown that this compound is found exclusively in the lobes of people who have power over other people. Assholamine produces quite the buzz.

In any event, there can be little doubt that this Voice of Authority, drawing on his** professional familiarity with the Global Accords Governing the Fair Use of Women, seeks, with his ruling, to appease the gods/ restore the natural order/ satisfy public demand for the state control of the sex class. He punishes Nowlin for daring to exist in a condition of poverty while demonstrating, through the son in juvy, an unconscionable inadequacy as a mother.

It blows all available lobes in rapid succession to contemplate that people in positions of power are capable of justifying this kind of bogus shit, but you see it over and over again: Americans hate poor people, especially if those poor people are single women with kids. Impoverished single women with kids in juvy are a special kind of abomination. That’s your patriarchy at work.

UPDATE: Happily I am informed that the ACLU got Nowlin sprung yesterday. But damn, somebody needs to get that judge off the bench and into some sort of grim state institution for the incarceration of persons too mean to roam free.

_____________________
* This post at 2 Political Junkies also makes the observation that Nowlin’s situation is Dickensian. I read that post before I wrote mine, so it is possible that I cribbed the allusion, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Which I reveal now in the interest of transparency in the blogular process, attribution, and good manners.

** Yes, I am perfectly aware that patriarchy can similarly infect women judges, but we’ll just assume that this one’s a dude so I don’t have to keep typing “he/she.”

Posted in Lobe-blowing, Patriarchy, my patriarchy and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Yesterday. Bite me, Chad.

The power of porn

Published by Twisty on March 31, 2009. 35 Comments

The spinster aunt typically leads a quiet life, so naturally the sordid movie-viewing habits of British politicians ignites an enormous conflagration of interest here at HQ. When the sunny skies, cool breezes, and furry woodland creatures start to wear on the nerves, one turns to the Internet for titillating news from Parliament. Huff-Po doesn’t disappoint! The website says Home Secretary Jacqui Smith expensed pay-per-view “X-rated movies” consumed by her husband Richard Timney.

Busted! Smith was obliged to issue one of those meaningless politician apologies. She’s sorry she made an accounting error. Her spokewoman added helpfully, “X-rated is not the same as porn.”

Smith’s better half also issued one of those meaningless politician apologies. Timney’s sorry he embarrassed his wife and he’s sorry he erroneously put the naughty 10 quid on the taxpayers’ tab, but of course it was all a silly mistake.

Timney did not apologize for his interest in films featuring the graphic representation of rape, or even explain why, in addition to the porn, he found it necessary to watch “Ocean’s Thirteen” not just once, but twice.

Just once I’d like to see a prominent political figure hold a press conference and say “My husband is a slimy pornsick shitbag and I’m initiating dehitchment proceedings forthwith.” But no, they always make with the “X-rated is not the same as porn,” and “Dick and I just want to put all this behind us and get on with our lives” crap.

Of course, when a thing as idiotic as this makes international news, it can mean only two things. The political party to which the beleaguered personage belongs is throwing her under the bus, and/or the opposition is seeking to prove its moral superiority. How convenient for whoever is using Jacqui Smith as a political red herring that she married a slimy pornsick shitbag, and that pornography is a no-fail attention-grabber. From the Telegraph:

There was no sign of Mr Timney at the property today and the only notable activity was a visit from a glamour model sent by a tabloid newspaper to offer him a selection of pornography.

Posted in Politics, Rape Culture and The Entertainment Industrial Complex. Bite me, Chad.

Schmucknozzle of the Week: Hamid Karzai

Published by Twisty on March 31, 2009. 47 Comments

You know that zany, completely unfounded Unified Patriarchy Theory proposed by eccentric spinster aunts and certain other women who advocate flat shoes? The theory that defines patriarchy as a culture of domination composed of default humans (males) who maintain dominion over everyone and everything else, including a class of indentured sex receptacles (women)? The theory that further proposes that, not only does patriarchy exist, but it is experienced as oppression by the indentured sex receptacles?

Well, here’s another little piece of evidence to toss into the “Patriarchy Exists/ Sucks for Women” column.

As usual, some power-wielding dude is trading women for votes. This time it’s Afghan head cheese and ex-Bush henchman Hamid Karzai, who will gladly endure the suffering incurred by women whose husbands now have codified, legal carte blanche to rape them whenever the fancy strikes. In return for signing his great sacrifice into law, fundamentalist woman-raping hooligan godbags will vote for Friende Hamid come August.

In a massive blow for women’s rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman’s right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent.

Get a load of Article 132:

Article 132 requires women to obey their husband’s sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least “once every four nights” when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

Here’s more from the Telegraph:

The law [...] is believed to state women can only seek work, education or doctor’s appointments with their husband’s permission.

This throwing-women-under-the-bus behavior is routine and universal. Liberal American dudes do it all the time. They love porn, think Camille Paglia is a feminist, and only support abortion rights because it distinguishes them politically from, and therefore makes them feel morally superior to, the “repugs.” Women never had it so good, according to Amerian liberal dudes. Discrimination and violence against women are “fringe issues.” What about the men!?! Take, for example, this randomly selected comment at the Liberal Dude Circle Jerk site, Daily Kos. The commenter is responding to a post on the Obama administration’s announcement of the new Throw’em A Bone Council on Women and Girls and Nuclear Families.

Men die sooner, have higher suicide rates, prostate cancer kills about as many men as breast cancer kills women yet receives a fraction of the funding, men make up the vast majority of combat deaths, suffer the most from overall violence, suffer the vast majority of workplace deaths and injuries, and are falling further and further behind women in attending and graduating college. There are plenty of issues affecting men. So it would be nice to see a program of general social advancement, as opposed to another one just favoring group X.

Dudes are the core of humanity, women are “group X.” Afghan godbags want it written into law that it’s OK to rape a few members of group X? Who cares? That’s well within parameters set by the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women.

Fucking barbarians.

Thanks, Luisa H

Posted in Godbagism, Men Hate You, Politics, Rape Culture and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Psychologists conduct studies, or, The Boothroyd Show

Published by Twisty on March 30, 2009. 80 Comments

It strains the lobe to contemplate what passes, in mainstream media, for women’s health reportage. BBC News, for example, has a passel of crap in the “Health” section on how women attract men, how women select men, and how women’s behavior is a function of our essential receptacality with respect to men. Check this sexist, heteronormative shit out [*]:

Everybody knows women are crazy. We constantly run amok on psycho shopping sprees. Do we stock up on wool socks or books of poetry? Hell no! We buy buttloads of “jewellery, make-up and high heels.” Well, you know why? Because it’s that time of the month! Just ask some psychologists who did a study. Menstruation is a health problem causing unbridled extravagance.

Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes.

Blowing dough on makeup has nothing to do with the Femininity Industrial Complex.

The menstruation shopping spree article linked to this one, which reveals a handy tip for getting men to pry open the old money clip for you. Obviously, anyone interested in blaming reproductive functions for their credit card debt would probably also be interested in “boosting [their] attractiveness” to men. So guess what. Psychologists did a study. It turns out that the color red totally unlocks the dudely wallet. “[M]en said they would spend more money on a woman pictured in red, compared with the same woman wearing a blue shirt.” It’s easy to guess why. That’s right:

[A] lot of female monkeys have bright red sexual swellings, which show that they are around the time of ovulation.

Ergo, human men are hardwired to spend more cash on a woman who resembles a monkey butt. Duh!

But wait, there’s plenty more where that came from. Psychologists — ever eager to unlock the secrets swelling in the luscious red subconscious of Unknowable Woman — did another study. This one, which I consider to be particularly relevant to women’s health, showed that women with high testosterone levels want to bone a movie star named Daniel Craig.

But wait, there’s even more. Psychologists — they just can’t help themselves — did another study. Women select men who look like their fathers. This is because [gross-out warning] Daddy “imprints” his sexual attractiveness on Baby-Girl. Step off, Freud! “[S]imilarity makes people more fertile” is today’s hep psychosexual mantra. Or so saith Dr Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham.

Dr Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham really has her finger on the pulse of the Feminine Subconscious of Today, because here she is again in 2008 with another momentous piece of health information. This time it’s “the secret to successful flirting.” Stop wasting your valuable time macking on dudes who wouldn’t fuck you with some other guy’s dick; it is crucial, for the sake of dating efficiency, that you learn your “level of attractiveness.” In other words, if you’re butt-ugly, don’t bother hitting on Daniel Craig.

Oh, and “smile.”

Dating efficiency is apparently a most exigent health issue. It was discussed in 2007 as well, when another study with almost precisely the same findings as the above appeared in the health section of the BBC website. Do not, cautions the article, avert your eyes when you’re trying to hook up with some dude, according to this other bunch of studying psychologists. Also, have a symmetrical face and “healthy” skin. Taking these steps will prevent you “wasting energy on pointless courtships.”

Mating effort is a finite resource that should be allocated judiciously, and preferences for direct gaze in opposite-sex faces would increase the likelihood of allocating mating effort to potential mates who are most likely to reciprocate.”

Good to know!

It may not surprise you to learn that psychologists did another study. I admire their tenacity, but shit, don’t these people have jobs? And once again, our old pal Dr Lynda Boothroyd appears to be the instigator. It turns out that you can tell from a person’s face whether they are “promiscuous.”

Boothroyd said it, I believe it, and that settles it!

______________________
* Note that I have not read any of the studies. For all I know their actual findings concern the nesting habits of the red-bellied woodpecker. I critique only what appears on the BBC website.

Posted in Femininity, Junk Studies, Knobjectivism, Mass Media and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

UK shrinks suffer case of double-barbaria

Published by Twisty on March 26, 2009. 87 Comments

Lobe been blown yet today? In the UK 17% of psychiatrists surveyed said they “had agreed to help at least one patient ‘reduce’ their gay or lesbian feelings when asked to do so.”

Hey, UK psychiatrists! Enough already with the Dr Frankenstein crap. This “cure” shit is fraying the Twisty neurons.

Many straight people in the US — home of the Jesus-cure boot camp — have already established that godbags have their head up their ass with this fundamentalist brainwashing crap. After decades of protesting and consciousness-raising and Pride parades and we’re-here-we’re-queer, pesky gays have forced straight people to grudgingly accept that homosexuality is not quite a form of insanity. Some straight people even admit that gay people are human, albeit (they are quick to point out with their anti-gay legislation and heteronormative mass media) in a different way than normal people. But the point is, anyone who has bothered to answer the clue phone has had to acknowledge that the Jesus-cures don’t work.

And why should they work? Why should they even exist? The problem is not with being gay. The problem is the aforementioned straight people and their institutionalized homophobia. Homos freak them out, so they want to get rid of the homos. Stupid straight people. It never occurs to them to just stop being freaked out. If they’d simply ditch their neurotic fucked-up social mores, their freak-out lobes would be happily unaffected by homos, and we could all go home and play Scrabble. What doesn’t work is pretending that neurotic, fucked-up social mores are right and natural by inflicting even more neurosis on marginalized individuals. It not only doesn’t work, it’s barbaric.

And if it’s barbaric for godbags to do it, it’s double-barbaric for health professionals to do it. These are people who have supposedly had some exposure to, you know, science.

But, says the BBC report, one in six Brit shrinks has tried to cure homosexuality. And get this: their “intentions” are good. Well, that makes their paternalistic, homophobic delusions all right, then!

Apparently there actually exist whole organizations of well-intentioned sadistic morons whose sole purpose is to “campaign both for an individual’s right to seek treatment and a professional’s right to offer it.” They’ve heard about a study conducted in 2001 by some asshole American shrink saying “Yes, you can force a depressed, disenfranchised Christian queer to switch sexual orientations.”*

So what are these UK “researchers” doing? Because none exist anywhere else, they’re looking for “stories” from India, South America, and China, “where little is known about the prevalence of ['reparative' therapy],” that will confirm the efficacy of therapeutic assimilation brainwashing.

There can be little doubt that they will succeed in finding their “stories” in those three well-known hotbeds of tolerance and enlightenment.

Earth. What a rotten place to be gay.

____________________
* The shrink was Robert Spitzer. His self-selected sample of reformed homos were all evangelical Christians.

Posted in Godbagism, Junk Studies, Keep your bias off my gender and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Hugs, Twisty: blamer proposes new occupation for spinster aunt

Published by Twisty on March 25, 2009. 88 Comments

If a person is lukewarm about the blogulative oeuvre of a given Internet feminist, the last thing she’s going to do is send that Internet feminist a transmission expressing the lukeness of that warmth.

The Twisty inbox, for example, has never once contained an email reading “Dear Twisty, I could go either way about women’s liberation from patriarchal oppression, I am indifferent toward your views, and although your writing has not particularly inspired me, I guess your punctuation is OK.”

Nope, according to research here at the Twisty Institute for Blog-based Interfacing, readers who initiate electronic interactions with Internet feminists are either really pickin’ up what the Internet feminist is layin’ down, or they really, really hate it.

Many of those who hate it become so sodden with hate that they begin to hate the Internet feminist personally, even though they have never met her and never will.* Sometimes their hatred is so dreadful, irrational, and acute that they actually lose the will to live. To wit:

You, Twisty, are unquestionably far more oppressive than the patriarchal regimes you rail against. You are clearly a loser who cannot finesse her way through the world and cannot tolerate the opinions of anyone who does not dig their nose deeply and firmly up your ass.

I am signing off forever.

Serene Wright

Don’t do it, Serene! That whole afterlife thing is a scam!

Happily, the lovas outnumber the hatas. Today’s “Hugs, Twisty” email contains not one, but two instances of the word “love.” Love, according to recent research at the Twisty Department of Pleasantness Studies, is significantly nicer than hate.

[Dear Twisty,]

I’ve been reading your blog for a while now – love it. Have you written a book? Would you?

I was feeling like the entirety of feminist thought had disappeared without a trace and it’s a real relief, and galvanising, to read your commentary on pole dancing for empowerment etc. etc. Would still love to see a book though. I promise if you write one I will get all my students to buy it. I was going to write one myself but think yours would be much better.

Cicely

Dear Cicely,

Write a book? Certainly. Your wish is my command. It will make an excellent excuse to start drinking whiskey from small, heavy glasses, wear a tattered bathrobe around all day, and sit, staring at the horizon, for hours on end.

I do all of those things already of course, but now, instead of “She’s a crazy antisocial old hag,” the answer to “What’s up with that chick, anyway?” will be “She’s writing a book.”

Would you prefer this book to be scholarly, or may it avoid all allusions to Lacan?

Also, I believe it’s customary to have a subject, or some sort of unifying theme, lest the work be mistaken for random typing. How about a slender volume of trenchant poetry about body hair? Or the case against religion, TV, public schools, the nuclear family, prisons, “luminous” skin, cheese, and reproduction? 101 Snappy Comebacks for the Radical Feminist? A translation of The Dialectic of Sex into Esperanto? An explication of the femininity continuum using examples from The Simpsons to keep it accessible? A scathing denunciation of Oprah as the opiate of the female masses, Protector of Rape Culture, and Collaboratrice-in-Chief?

Or perhaps some pulp sci-fi? Lard, I’ve got a million of’em. How about the one where radical feminist lesbian separatist aliens — they have giant pulsating obstreperal lobes and also a few superpowers — are on the run from oppression on their home world (not because they’re radical feminist lesbian separatists, but because they owe back taxes). They end up making an emergency landing on Mars, which is where human dude-culture and its bitches had to evacuate once they killed everything on Earth.

But, instead of what usually happens in this sci-fi scenario (or in any pop culture narrative) — which is that earth-dudes show the sovereign aliens the error of their dude-indifferent ways and whip them into porn shape for the good of humanity — the plot takes a female-normative turn. The radical feminist lesbian aliens are so mighty-mighty that they’re all “Fuck all yall rapist motherfuckers!” And off they biff to Earth — which, you remember, is barely more than a smouldering radioactive rock — where they fix the biosphere and live for a couple of centuries in an idyllic paradise with sentient bungalows, giant technicolor butterflies, margarita-mixing robots, talking dogs, and free healthcare.

Once the patriarchal Mars colonists realize how nice Earth has become, they decide they want their planet back. They mount an invasion.

But wait! There’s something about the essence of the idyllic paradise that the Mars colonists don’t know!

And wait again! There’s something else, left behind by a long-dead cabal of patriarchy-blaming Earthlings, that might surprise the radical feminist lesbian separatist aliens!

So! Will enlightenment prevail? Or will the transplanted Martian assholes enslave the radical feminist lesbian separatist aliens in big hot-tubs of translucent slime, co-opting their superpowers to fuel the Viagra plant, McDonald’s, and the stripper pole manufacturers, and turn Earth back into a giant, noxious, barbaric brothel, proving once and for all that vulgar desire is the most powerful force in the universe?

Just let me know.

Anyway, I sincerely thank you, Cicely, for the compliment about the blog. Yet a nagging worry plagues me. Just because I am now writing a book, it doesn’t let you off the book-hook. You still have to write one, too. You can’t foist your personal unrealized goals off on me, lady!

Hugs,
Twisty, book writer

________________________
* Hatred is not only mean, it’s unhygienic. That’s because it is an emotion. I was recently apprised by a television commercial that “emotions can cause you to sweat up to 5 times more!” Holy shit!

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

Spinster aunt biffs off; leaves link in stead

Published by Twisty on March 23, 2009. 79 Comments

“I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.” — Sarah

“I like it because is very useful.” — Jennifer Macleod

“Thank you for the informative work!” — Christine & Josepha

“Take care of it and keep it on the road!” — John en Lia Maan

“Buy Viagra…” — Buy Viagra

“An excellent work! KEEP IT UP!” — Hannes Schneider

That’s right. I Blame the Patriarchy is very highly respected among spammers.

But occasionally even non-spammers write in. Sometimes they recommend other useful informative excellent work that needs to be kept on the road. 23 minutes ago, blamer Samantha sent me a link to a blog called Gin and Tacos.

Tacos? I’m on board.

The Gin and Tacos post in question skewers with gusto a patriarchy-denying opinion piece written by collaboratrice and nationally syndicated knob columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez. Which is totally wild, because weren’t we just talking about another collaboratrice and nationally syndicated knob, that sourpuss troublemaker Kathleen Parker? Lopez — who actually namechecks Parker in her piece to demonstrate that they are two hearts that beat as one on the subject of whataboutthemen?! — has hurled a wad of antifeminist phlegm at a pop singer named Rhianna. Rhianna was assaulted by her boyfriend but is now back together with him, and because they are both famous, the story has been all over the tabloids. Lopez avers that blaming the Rhianna for her own assault is wildly popular among a few Boston schoolgirls, and blames feminism for this. Blogger Ed responds somewhat feministically.

Behold an excerpt:

Let’s summarize the historical record of America: the K-Lo version [K-Lo is Kathryn Jean Lopez; how cute is that! -- Twisty]. Everything was great for women. There was no oppression. Then feminists invented some, and now everyone’s confused because they said there was some when there wasn’t and now when there IS some (which, according to the original K-Lo hypothesis, there isn’t) we react incorrectly.

I almost didn’t recommend this post because Ed is in a band, and like all dudes in bands, he can’t resist taking a swipe at Rhianna and her boyfriend for not being Rawk. But you get what you pay for at I Blame the Patriarchy, and sometimes that means links that blamers send in when I don’t have time to write anything myself.

Posted in Blogulation, Mass Media, Rape Culture and Women hate you. Bite me, Chad.

Non-Radical Feminist Patriarchy-Blaming Blog of the Week

Published by Twisty on March 21, 2009. 80 Comments
Raccoon skull (adult); providing me with these is one of Chuck's chores

Raccoon skull (adult); providing me with these is one of Chuck's chores

El Rancho Deluxe employs, part-time, a strong-willed, eccentric rancho hand named Chuck. Chuck’s job description is “do chores.”

To my mind, “chores” are activities like splitting logs, making piles, digging holes — pretty much anything involving backbreaking labor that is not directly related to spinster aunting. In Chuck’s mind, “chores” means arguing with me about every little goddamn thing and then doing whatever the hell he feels like doing until it’s time to kick back with a Miller Lite tallboy, which daily sacrament he refers to as “beer-thirty.”

Once I arrived home from a trip into town to discover that, in my absence, Chuck had taken a sudden dislike to some opuntia cactuses that were minding their own beeswax in a field near the bunkhouse; he’d ripped out about 20 of’em before I could, after much vituperating, intervene and stop the madness. Another time, for no discernible reason, he spent hours scouring the environs for 20-pound rocks, which rocks he repurposed as weird little Stonehenges here and there, ignoring completely my warmly and oft-expressed antipathy toward the wanton erection of weird little Stonehenges.

It is with a shudder that I recall the Great Straw Bale Debate of Aught-Eight. In that harrowing episode, which endured for the entire month leading up to Christmas, I prevented only by the narrowest of margins Chuck’s unilateral implementation of a nauseating Yuletide decoration scheme. The scheme involved festooning the front gate with giant, cutesy, ornamental “presents” made of straw bales and oversize red ribbon, objects with which Chuck had become unnaturally obsessed, having espied with an increasingly envious eye similar creations embellishing a ranch entrance down the road.

We had daily arguments about it, Chuck yearning for straw bale presents like a kid begging for his first puppy, me explaining that I would never in a million years sanction gunking up the countryside with tacky Christmas crap, particularly tacky Christmas crap copied from godbag neighbors. The arguments always ended with Chuck scowling and sighing heavily in such a manner as to express his opinion that my failure to comply with Christmas Spirit on a straw bale level was an affront to Truth and Beauty. I never succeeded in impressing upon him the wrong-on-so-many-levelsosity of his horrible idea, and in the end was only able to quash his Tex-imental outburst of xmas-induced nostalgia by consenting to stick a dumb wreath on the gate.

Thus it is that my relationship with my rancho hand has been compared to the 60’s sit-com Green Acres, where I am the stodgy killjoy Mr. Douglas who doesn’t get it, and Chuck is Eb, the liaison from a fun-loving alternate universe.

But I digress.

In addition to being wacky, Chuck is also considerate, and often brings me wine, tacos, pretty rocks, animal bones, pizza, and newspaper clippings on such riveting topics as power washers and tool shed shelving. The article he brought yesterday, from the Austin American-Statesman, was about the sad plight of one of my favorite wild birds, the Rio Grande turkey.

Drought is the defining issue in Texas right now [...]. Not only do months without rain mean there’s nothing to eat for the turkeys living there now, they also mean that turkey hens can’t find suitable thick cover for nesting and hatching eggs.”

You might surmise, based on the excerpt above, that the author laments these conditions because of the suffering they impose on the endangered turkeys. But you would be wrong. Instead, the article focuses on the drought’s tragic effect on turkey hunting. The author suggests that hunters bait starving turkeys with feeders, lest they (the hunters) altogether “miss out on the thrill of calling to and interacting with a hot gobbler.”

Indeed. “Interacting with” is apparently a bloodsport euphemism for “blowing the head off of.”

At this juncture I will take the liberty of awkwardly segue-ing from the practice of killing animals for fun to the practice of eating animals for fun, with today’s link to the Non-Radical Feminist Yet Still Patriarchy-Blaming Blog of the Week. Blamer meerkat suggested it a propos of yesterday’s discussion on women and food. The website is Suicide Food, which focuses its deadly charm on marketing imagery that portrays food animals as joyful, accommodating, and thrilled to sacrifice their lives to ghoulish human appetites.

We are all accustomed by now to the coarsening of our culture, the cheapening of our history, the defiling of our profoundest yearnings. It has happened so often, many of us no longer know the difference between authentic lives lived and the greasy speeches and grimy lies of the advertisers, the hypnotizers, and the bamboozlers. [From this post]

Primo stuff! Smiling cartoon pigs throw themselves onto flames, anxious to become palate-pleasing morsels; beer-guzzling crawfish contentedly paddle a soup-pot down a river of broth with celery oars; libertine barnyard animals yuk it up pre-mortem in a full-blown debauch. And yes, blogger Ben addresses one of the most repellent TV commercials ever aired, the one where a couple of talking pigs, seated at a restaurant, tuck into an enormous plate of ham and toss off one-liners about enjoying the “flavors of a fallen friend.”

The parallels between the myth of the happy hooker and the myth of the self-sacrificing meat animal are legion. Both prostituted women and livestock are the creations of a culture of domination. Both are controlled by organized systems of oppression. Both are ostentatiously and gluttonously consumed by a privileged class. Once consumed, both are left to rot with last night’s garbage. Both represent the privileged class’s celebration of itself and its contempt for anything it happens to debase in the course of its daily pillages. And the myths about oppressed individuals choosing to serve the vulgar interests of their oppressors have been created to allow the dominant culture’s beneficiaries to sleep at night.

Posted in Blogulation, Bloodsport, El Rancho Deluxe and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt forced to do housework; blamer has idea

Published by Twisty on March 20, 2009. 39 Comments

No time to think up trenchant remarks today. Horribly, the architect who designed the new habitat here at El Rancho Deluxe is sending over a photographer in less than an hour — apparently the house is up for some award at Bunkhouse Quarterly Review — so I’ve got to clean the entire shack and finish unpacking. That’s right, I said unpacking. Remember six months ago when Spinster HQ relocated from North South Austin to Cottonmouth County? Well, it probably won’t shock you to hear that I completely forgot to unpack until just this minute.

These are Worst Case Scenario conditions, people. Strangers crawling all over the domicile, rearranging furniture and depositing glass bowls of Granny Smith apples on counters; me frantically fumbling books onto shelves and shoving piles of dog hair under carpets all before 10 AM, when any normal person would be out frolicking in the dewy morn photographing spiders.

So, while I chug coffee and try remember where the heck I could have put the Dustbuster, I leave you with a transmission I just received from veteran blamer Rootlesscosmo on the subject of the word “porn” and the fairly gross way it has worked itself into the everyday English idiom appended to otherwise pleasant words, like “food.”

By the way, rootless, your shift key is broken! It only works intermittently. Just an FYI.

Hi Twisty,

There was a thread at IBTP a while back that discussed the use of such phases as “food porn,” etc. I’ve been thinking about that and had an idea; I’m not sure where to post it, so I’m sending it to you direct. It’s this: “food porn,” “real estate porn,” and suchlike promotional materials focus on the desire of the viewer; we know better than to think the pecan pie wants to be eaten or the beach house to be sold. But this is exactly what the producers and defenders of real porn — pictures of rape — always try to do, because that takes attention away from the women being raped in its production. So I’d venture that because “food porn” (etc.) foreground the viewer’s desire and fulfillment, the use of these terms (which I’ve used in the past but will try to eliminate from my vocabulary) reinforces the pimps’ marketing.

Best,
rootlesscosmo

Posted in Announcements. Bite me, Chad.