Fixing to have a meltdown cos women dare to have a contrary opinion

Ok I am tired, busy and well…essentially lazy (plus I have a headache, a truck-tonne of study to get to and my net access is being throttled), so I’m not running all over the internet for you right now with a little link here and a little link there.
But what started the whole thing was a question over at Crikey which evolved from ‘why don’t women subscribe to Crikey’ to ‘where are all the female political bloggers’.

This got up the noses of quite a few prolific political bloggers (who happen to be women) – unsurprisingly enough. Why hello, we’re here. It’s not that hard to track us down. Almost everyone knows about Hoyden About Town and they have this excellent blogroll, and…Ah right…you don’t mean us. You mean ‘big P political’ for which I take it you need to have a big P penis.*We’re* just discussing media, law, rape, issues with the medical profession, disability politics, invisibility, breastfeeding discrimination, conduct of politicians, live blogging elections, internet censorship, race politics, divisions in feminism, transphobia, homophobia, talk back radio, life/work/study/family/friends/leisure balances, and about a million other things.

I don’t actually object to exploring why women might not blog about certain kinds of topics so long as the many reasons why are canvassed. But the question at hand quickly changed again.

Leaving that part of the discussion to one side, the discussion became one of why women are not participating in the larger political blog spaces like Crikey and Larvatus Prodeo.

To be fair the conversation has not been all bad, some stuff that came up was that women are far more likely to be blogging about the substance of politics, politics in action, politics in how it affects life rather than the dryer more technical side of politics. Other people raised the factor of extra demands on women’s time (and reading family law this semester I’d say that’s a valid issue to discuss). Some of these things could stand to be explored longer…but you know it really didn’t take long for the inability to focus on the issue at hand to set in and then of course we had the pissed off pot shots at women.

Larvatus opened up their own thread and as if in illustration of exactly why women do not participate in these spaces as much as men discussions at both places explored variations on themes such as:

We run a tight ship, if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen

They’re women: baggage, amirite?

Well ladeeez I read your so-called blog: my goodness you have some anger! Didn’t anyone ever tell you that’s unladylike and discomforting to me? (actually that was over at the Crikey post)

Male privilege? What the fuck are these overly emotional morons on about? If they can’t stand being called hysterical shrew feminazi bitches then they’re obviously unused to our short and jocular conversational style

I can’t be arsed engaging with it for much longer than this, but it’s a beautiful illustration of some of the stuff Melissa McEwan was discussing in her post I linked to from my last post right?

That women say ‘Look I’m really uncomfortable with the way you conduct yourself’ and men fall all over themselves asserting that it’s you, it’s your fault, we ARE SO TOO progressive and inclusive communities and if women have too many ovary-related hormones, victim-mentality baggage and fragile-nervous system issues then they should GET OUT and that is SO not our problem.

Apart from the instances of outright aggression about the issue the general tone of smug superiority of condescending ‘Oh yes dear but I meant to be disparaging…did you only just pick that up?’, the tittering ‘Oh whacky feminists, they can never just integrate can they’ – basically the condescension and unwillingness to engage, and the dismissal of experiences not their own is just something that means I *cannot be bothered subjecting myself to that SHIT in order to bump up the numbers of women engaging in their ‘conversations’ (more monologues really)*

I would *far* rather spend my time discussing politics in spaces in which questions of inclusion/exclusion and the effects of policy are discussed in open and respectful ways. No that doesn’t mean I’m going to be welcoming MRA’s onto my site. It means I’d rather know that a guy being a smug shit slapping a woman in the face in a sideways manner to avoid moderation would GET MODERATED. Don’t pull that shit, don’t think we can’t see it for what it is. And *please* for the love of god don’t tell me you’re progressive if you can’t even listen to a feminist perspective without pissing all over it. If you have that much trouble with a feminist perspective and can be that offensive in response, I *really* don’t want to read your defensiveness over racism, homophobia, transphobia and disability politics because then I might *really* loathe you. (Oh a little shout out to Hannah’s Dad right now: HD your man parts are safe)

That. Right there. Is why I don’t bother with your spaces. Because you’re only too ready, nay, damned eager to jump all over and trample upstart-0y women who have experienced the world in ways that question your cocksure belief that the need for feminism is over, equality for all, click your heels, zippity-doo-dah.

That and I can hear more interesting discussions elsewhere – gasp! Sorry, some of the posts are quite good, but as far as conversation afterwards goes, well I don’t mean to shock you with the revelation that the political and philosophical universe doesn’t centre around the nattering of a couple of dozen overly privileged middle class uni graduates in white collar employment, but your discussions in threads is mediochre, your inability to focus on discomforting issues that might require you to examine your own privilege, your attempts at ‘wit’ and your self congratulatory, protecting the status quo smugness is off putting and tedious and on the whole your conversational ability really just doesn’t get me there you know?

So…don’t call me…um…I’ll call you. When you start working out on your inclusion issues k?

Posts I wish I’d written

So I wasn’t going to hop on the net this morning as I’ve got quite a bit to do. But I just checked in and I found a link to this article on a friend’s facebook wall (hi Beppie!).

Now that I’ve read it…Melissa McEwan is a beautiful writer – clear, concise, passionate and articulate. It takes immense courage to formulate and express opinions in the way that she does (since as women we’re expected to incessantly apologise whenever we make some discomforting observation of society) and it does unsettle to read so clearly articulated the discomforts and indignities of being a woman in a man’s world.

I think that at various times in my life I’ve chosen the easier route to joke along, to do what it took to be ‘one of the boys’, to ignore the ‘jokes’ or to make them myself. I try not to do it any more, but this description of being somewhat on guard even in the company of men you know, respect and like rings true all the same. The knowledge that you’ll be required to just calmly accept a casually made nasty bigoted joke, resigning yourself to the fact that most of the world thinks that to use a woman as a source for your nasty humour (haha, insult her, undermine her, make her jealous, it’s FUNNY) and that even people you love will do that and you’ll have to ‘perform’ not being disappointed and hurt, exhortations not to take things ‘personally’ when men take far less serious things far more personally, and on and on and on and on…

I added the link to my facebook wall.

How will that go? Well if I’m lucky it will go below the radars of the vast majority of my ‘friends’. I suspect it will not and the guy who is one of my oldest friends, the guy who’s declared he loves me countless times, the guy who says he wants to sleep with me when he sees me cos his desire is so lasting, the guy who thinks he knows me, who thinks he cares, who thinks he’s being a good friend…that one, the one who moved way north (thank fuck), got a job down the mines and embraced Redneck as though it’s a religion? He’ll be first in line with rude and aggressive assertions on what a fucking whinging paranoid feminist idiot I am. If it plays out anything like the last time I tried to mention an instance of entrenched sexism in the form of not acknowledging women in music then guys I don’t know well, who think themselves progressive, who can’t out argue me in real life without this tag-teaming of idiocy will jump on that first fuck-knuckle’s bandwagon with some generic dismissing crap. School friends may or may not comment, but they will think I’m a moron. Family members won’t read and if they did they’d roll their eyes and despair of me. Friends I get along with well will be discomforted ‘But…what? She *seems* to enjoy men’s company? Is she having a breakdown?’.

Anyway…I’m gonna go do those things I need to do, and try to ignore the anxiety of what might be sitting on my facebook wall when I get back. It’s an excellent post and the reason I linked to it publicly (and not just in a space one step removed from my regular interactions and already marked as feminist) was because I’m a little sick of ‘the way things are’ being used to keep women in line. Make your jokes, have your clubs ladies, but don’t rock the fucking boat. You rock the boat and we’ll make sure you feel like a crazy bitch idiot. And the thing is that my feminism means more to me than the approbation of the guys like Captain Redneck these days. Plus I have to go study like a hundred more fucking pages of family law and delving into the way things are is unsettling and sad-making and I don’t feel like pussy footing around. Guys, yep, I do love you, but read the fucking article, and if you see yourself in it, then don’t come at me for being ’sensitive’, instead stop being a fucking JERK.

A man rebukes, a woman snaps apparently

Lord above. I woke up and saw headlines about Hilary Clinton not being a ‘happy camper’. I was confused – what she’s camping? What do I care if she’s not a tent and cold showers woman?

Later I saw headlines that Hilary ’snapped’ at a student.

Here’s the thing. She’s the fucking Secretary of State of the United States of America. She was asked:

Mrs Clinton, we’ve all heard about the Chinese contracts in this country, the interference drom the world bank against this contract ….What does Mr Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs Clinton and what does Mr (?? unclear) think on this situation? Thank you very much.

To which the Secretary of State of the United States of America says:

Wait, you want ME to tell you what my HUSBAND thinks?? [vague 'whoa' noises from the crowd],  My husband is not the Secretary of State, I am. [Crowd...'whoa ho hohhh', one or two people clap, nervous laughter. Few people chatter, sounds like some says 'United States' then chatter gets louder, more forceful, more laughter] So you ask my opinion, I will give you my opinion. I am not going to be channelling my husband.

Ok. She was an invited speaker with the highest of authority to speak on the issues at hand, she was on the stage in an official capacity and she was asked what her HUSBAND thought on a particular issue…what he thought THROUGH HER MOUTH!! Because she is clearly just his mouth piece, his puppet, there’s obviously no point asking the Secretary of State *her* thoughts on the matter when she’s married to a guy who used to run the country but is now retired.

Goddamn it to hell and fuck it all up: a man in her position would NEVER have been asked that question. Never. What a fucking joke.

You know even if she were NOT the Secretary of State of the United States of America, she would have been well entitled to remind the speaker to have a good hard look at her question and the offensiveness of asking a speaker for their *spouses* opinion.

The fact that she does so, bluntly and with astonishment that she was ever asked and without apology in reminding the speaker to afford her the respect that is due, does not mean she ’snapped’. Or at the very least it would never have been constituted as such if a man had done it. Men remind people of their authority/their right to speak for themselves all the time and it’s never them being an ‘unhappy camper’ or ’snapping’, it’s their *right* to remind people of their position and to address them with respect. But when a woman does it it’s snapping. Dude, she must be pms-ing or something!?

You know, the woman asking the question probably did not *think* about what she was saying, probably meant no offence. But fucking COME ON people: if you had worked your arse off your entire life, if you were representing your country as their top diplomat, if you were the secretary of state and you were asked for your *spouses* opinion “through your mouth” I don’t reckon you’d give a good god damn about intentions…particularly when you’ve had to put up with this shit forEVER as Clinton has.

Snapping? I’ll give you snapping!

I just wish once some dumb arsed man would use that pick up line on me so I could scream with laughter like I just did

Oh my fucking GOD.

I’m a little tired, sure. But I don’t think I have EVER laughed as much as just now.

A friend linked to Snacks and Shit a website that quotes select idiot phrases/sentences from rap lyrics (yes, they like rap, but for real, most of the selected sentences are definitely WTF worthy). And you know, some are not that thrilling, but whether it was the cumulative effect of reading such crazily meaningless/obnoxious stuff, or my general tiredness or just the shock of ‘And just WHY would a person say that/think that’s hot?’, I just lost my shit like a shit collector with amnesia when I got to 353, I mean seriously I laughed, I laughed louder, then I really just made various disbelieving screaming/snorting/wheezing noises of helpless, hysterical mirth for the next ten to fifteen minutes to the point I thought I was in danger of hyperventilating/wetting my pants:

“I can make your pussy whistle like the Andy Griffith theme song.”
- Drake, Best I Ever Had

“Cry me a river dickface”

See I know, as a woman I’m supposed to act with nurturing empathy, to take the world to my bossom and give it a big maternal life-giving hug.

But some days I can’t be arsed right.

A guy goes apeshit over the fact that he couldn’t get a date in years. He walks into a gym, turns off the lights to make escape harder and open fires on a latin dance class – a latin dance class he KNOWS will be full of women cos he did his research on how to kill the maximum number of women. He’s been planning to kill women and then himself for a super long time. Because he can’t get a date. Nobody loves me I think I’ll go eat worms just got a whole lot more aggressive.

So this son of a bitch HATED women right? I was tipped off by the fact he tried to kill a whole bunch of them, but apparently there are a whole lot of people out there saying he’s just misunderstood.

No, no, he didn’t hate *women*, he hated himself. He was lonely and sad and frustrated and in need of affection.

Sure, I buy all that. If I could wave my magic wand. we’d all have hugs and puppies and fulfilling sex lives and any types of relationships/non relationships that we want.

But the thing is that the world *doesn’t* work like that does it? We’ve all got our pain, our dysfunctional historys, our childhood traumas and mortifications, some worse than others. And sometimes we’re lucky and sometimes unlucky in love/sex/flirtation/what have you.

I personally went through almost EIGHT FUCKING YEARS of ‘accidental celibacy’ and I’m here to tell you I was not happy. I was twitchy and starved for affection and sexually frustrated to a point that I turned into a blithering idiot around anyone I was attracted to (and after eight years I was attracted to most people) because the lust would nearly knock me unconcious.

And I had to go through all those uncomfortable emotions that we’re supposed to pity Sodini for – confusion, a sense of failure, loneliness and isolation, feelings of rejection, and blah blah fuckitty blah.

You know what I *didn’t* do though? I didn’t start deciding that the world was against me, I didn’t decide a whole gender was simultaneously my lifes goal and my achilles heel, my one desire and my biggest hatred, I didn’t decide that a whole gender was full of worthless whores who deserved death (unless they’d bone me which would grant them a short reprieve) and plan a massacre.

So…life is complex. People have problems. People have WAY bigger problems than a dick with no happy place (and really it’s not ME being crude there, this is ALL he saw women as even on a happy day – go read his posts the guy is a complete turd). So I’m drawing a line in the sand. You couldn’t get a date? Well cry me a river dickface – don’t sit there blithering misogynist hatred for months on end plotting your fucking massacre because you hate women for daring to live their lives without you and your boner as their focal point and expect ME to be sympathetic.

And you others? STOP fucking shitting on about mental disorders etc – cos you don’t fucking know. Thus far, all we DO know is that this guy was a self absorbed, self pitying turd who HATED, that’s right HATED women. He held THEM responsible for his whole life’s woes. He showed a distressing level of joy in imaginary notions of them being raped and punished FOR enjoying sex – the very thing HE was so obsessed with that he decided to murder women. We DON’T in fact know if he had a mental disorder, so stop talking shit until you do – it’s been said before and will be said again – MILLIONS of people DO have mental illnesses and do not commit heinous acts of violence, and many people with no diagnosable mental illness DO take pleasure in inflicting violence, rape and murder. STOP treating all murders/rapes and other unsavoury acts as the ‘result’ of mental illness when you know shit about shit.

Thus concludes my rant. Sodini: fuck you. You should have sought help a long time ago to fix your thought patterns, but you didn’t cos you felt they gave you power. You should have stopped and sought help at several points along the way but you didn’t. You KNEW you wanted to kill women (and kill them because you HATED them) and you still didn’t. So EXCUSE ME if I don’t lament your itty bitty feelings. If you wanted to end it you could have killed yourself and then MAYBE I’d have had it in you not to be harsh and uncaring. But you didn’t. You couldn’t get a date? Oh cry me a river dickface.

Can you believe the nerve of her?

Honestly, I ask you – HOW MANY TIMES have you heard me complaining of yet another slut shaming article by ‘Ask Sam’?? I mean she has told us that women must NEVER EVER have sex on a first date. Because men will know we’re rampant sluts who asked for our impending ill treatment and no matter what they do to us, how unkind they are it will be ALL OUR FAULT.

SAM has crapped on about how she has NEVER had sex on a first date – she’s even prudish about KISSING on a first date. (I find this hard to believe and if it’s true then she has my sympathy for being a boring prude who makes her own life more complicated by adherence to pointless and self defeating idiot rules).

It’s never MEN who should be concerned about all this because men are about the cock and care not for anything not involving them coming and coming hard and women are sexless marriage hunters, the moral gatekeepers of the universe, if THEY don’t say no, if THEY don’t cajole, manipulate, browbeat, withhold sex, play games, follow rules and ensure at all times that they come off like shiny happy (fun) puritanical wowsers (can you see the impossibility as well as the idiocy of the task set for us) then WHO WILL MAKE THE WORLD WORK RIGHT?? If they don’t constantly take on the role of moral enforcers then their own beatings/rapes/mistreatments at the hands of men=all their slutty fault.

Because everyone knows GOOD GIRLS, SMART GIRLS, NICE GIRLS WHO DESERVE GOOD TREATMENT *never* have sex on a first date. They use it as a tool of manipulation and capture (her utopia is somewhat disturbing to me).

But now: now Sam wonders why women hold onto sex like it’s a treasured possession to give away (or a dog biscuit for tricks learned, or a tool of manipulation to ensure he mawwies you and gives you The Baybees)!? WIMMINZ – what is WRONG WITH YOU you big ninnies!?Where did you get these WHACKY ideas??

Why women believe that it is sex they need to use to exert their power over men is lost on me. Sure, we’ve been fed the axiom time and time again that women need to have sex with a man in order to feel loved, valued and cherished, while men need sex to, well, they just do. But the reality is: does it really hold as much power as so many women believe?

Let’s leave aside that her promised *reality* is in fact another stupid typically vacuous, meaningless and circular ‘Ask Sam’ style question and focus instead on the staggering weight of her BLATANT HYPOCRISY!

WHY do women believe it? Because of arsehole money spinners like yourself who make a living TELLING them that that’s what they need to do, that it’s the magic formula, making them responsible: want to change your fortunes as a woman in a man’s world: try THIS handy tactic.

I honestly cannot believe the fucking gall of this gigantic twit to make it her life’s work to insist upon this sort of sex-withholding manipulation only to turn around and pretend it’s just come from nowhere and is a shock to her.

Why? Because a random guy said so.

A random guy said basically women should stop withholding sex and if they want not to be treated badly the fucking morons should stop being idiot chicks and instead do something worthy like read Tolstoy and if they don’t they’re dumb sluts who deserve mistreatment. Huh. Wierd right? DIFFERENT to the old premise and yet…SAME! More wimmin-hating, wimmin-blaming, misogynist self-serving, double standards CRAP. Published by Sam. Because nothing she believes is actually worth *fighting* for, and however strongly she believes in something it’s all just a house of cards blown over by the wind of some trumped up turds breath as he unleashes a waft of his utter shit. Phhf…gone. Just like that. Why? Because HE has a cock and is therefore the gatekeeper of KNOWLEDGE and TRUTH about the UNIVERSE whereas WE don’t have them – as women we can only be gatekeepers of morals, here to make sure all is nice…not so much for us cos we deserve to be treated like shit for the sluts we are, but to make the world a comfier place for the hardworking super clever men.

Posts I wish I’d written

So when the Kyle/Jackie O ‘incident’ blew up (where they agreed to have a scared and upset 14 year old strapped to a lie detector so her mum could ask her about whether she was having sex and where when she said she was raped at 12 Kyle immediately brushed this off and asked if that was her ‘only experience’…yes, with sex).

I wanted to write an articulate post at the time but my head kept exploding. I wanted to point out that it did not *matter* that he didn’t know what she was gonna say, that the WHOLE PREMISE is sick and messed up, that even if you thought it wasn’t, it surely was when they hooked a CHILD to a lie detector for the amusement of their audience…when they goofed along discussing how she was scared, how she was right, that it was not fair…and they still fucking did it.

This was *not* surprising – this was the inevitable outcome of the sorts of shit they pull – again, and again and again. The show is trash, the people are arseholes, the station is irresponsible and all of it combines to bring out the worst in humanity: hey, let’s crowd around the radio and guffaw over people’s intense misery, HOO-boy, what a treat!

Anyway, there are many jumbled together thoughts on this, and I keep thinking I should post on it, but other people are articulating it all perfectly in elsewhere locations. I don’t know how I missed it, but I stumbled across Richie’s post on how very definately ‘ignore it and it’ll go away’ is NOT the answer. It’s a fucking corker of a post, so please go read it.

Richie? I love you!

Ahahaha

I am having a moment of mirth. Kyle & Jackie O’s program has been suspended (eat of the shit people) and Austereo is calling it a recess in which they are ‘retooling’. This makes me laugh. Are they getting a new tool in to replace the giant tool that is Kyle Sandilands? Might they call removing him ‘detooling’ rather than ‘retooling’?. Honestly, this has made me laugh so much I am repeating myself everywhere. It’s a great joke, even better since they didn’t intend to make it.