October 25, 2007 The “shrew” is not yet tamed, I think
Well fuck me rigid masculinity pisses me off sometimes!!!
I’ve been in a bit of a grump about the state of the world all week, so it’s a kind of cumulative rage that possesses me today. But I do get very sick of living in a world that gets defined by men, for men. This morning I woke up, and for some self punishing reason, decided to see what Arsehole de Brito had to say about the world. WHY oh WHY do I do it to myself? Worse still I clicked on the comments section! MMMMMMfuckityfuckityfuckinfuckincunts!
Seriously, it’s such a self serving community of bigoted women-haters…they’d argue with that and say they *love* women. I’d counter that they love access to pussy on the condition it’s not too old, is perfectly groomed and comes attached to a conventionally gorgeous and compliant but perky young woman. Also, said pussy has to be available on demand, but not have too many demands of its own, else it gets labelled a “slut”. And in all of this, who makes the calls on defining women? Men. Men just stating ‘facts’, just ‘observing’ truths.
What was the article about? About a bitch of an old woman having a go at her husband on the beach (oh if ONLY my job was to take one little glimpsed interaction and to spin it out into a full length sound off with no rules about how my article should actually be thoughtful/insightful/a genuine attempt to engage with the issues). The article then touched on male rape in prisons (oh so delightfully referred to as ‘man love’ – love/rape…one of these things is not like the other, right?), concluding that there was none of this happening in the particular prison setting as the guys are 18-21. Clearly then rape would never be an issue.
It was a bit of a diatribe on men needing to grow balls in the face of nagging, gnashing, petty high-strung women. NOW – let me go on the record to say I cannot stand watching two people nag/shout at each other or treat each other poorly in any way. Not defending this behaviour. But an isolated incident turned into a diatribe on Sam’s favourite topic – how men need to grow bigger kahunas in setting boundaries on their women, or their women will run all over them. It’s a bit of a theme for him. Women it appears are quite like children (which is possibly true of the women Sam likes to shag) – if you don’t show them where the limits are they will run riot on a grown up version of the sugar high, and before you know it, your life will be reduced to ruins by a full-scale, adult sized Veruca Salt. Put your foot down Sam, show em whose da boss.
Anyway, whatever right? Just another fuckwit with a keyboard. But what happens every freaking time is that it becomes a hate fest over women and their maniacal, hysterical ways, the fact they’ll screw you within an inch of your lives if you let em, they’re shrews, harridans, they wanna trap you into marriage and babies, take your money and make you miserable. Poor, poor men. Generalisations are flying around so thick and fast that if you aren’t careful you’ll lose an eye. Now. I do not have a problem with someone observing the behaviour of people in public and then examining it. But in order to examine it, you would need to put some genuine thought into what’s going on. These articles are never truly about resolving these issues and making peoples lives happier, they are about tapping into deep seated bitterness and anger towards women, about reinforcing stereotypes in ways that make people feel good for “knowing” stuff about life. So when it results, every freaking time into a disgusting display of bigotry – then I have a problem with it.
I’m so sick of being told not to worry about this – I mean I get it. On the one hand, blah blah, be the bigger person, he’s an idiot, not to worry…but, he has access to publication in a mainstream newspaper’s website, he preaches to the masses and the ‘masses’ lap it up. Bigotry towards women is everywhere in society, in its extreme forms, and in ‘jokes’ and song lyrics and leers and generalisations. Why is it that I should just say “water off a duck’s back”? I’m no duck, I’m a woman, and I live in a world where there is appalling levels of violence and hate directed at women, and I’m supposed to put up and shut up?
Well, no. I mean, yeah, I have my own blog. Big deal though, what twenty ppl read me a day? It’s hardly turning the tables on the Sam de Brito’s of the world. To say ‘ignore it’, to say ‘start your own blog’ is all well and good, except it ignores the fact of the institutionalised nature of discrimination against women. It’s gonna take way more than a blog to redress that. But apparently it ain’t cool for me to say I’m a feminist, to be angry. I’m supposed to say I live in a “post-feminist” world. All cos of Ally McFuckinBeal. I’ll tell you what? You men who say I’ve got ‘no sense of humour’, I’m ‘too angry’, etc…go out and do something yourselves to ensure that women can walk the streets safely, that they will no longer be beaten, that they can choose if and how and when they would like to procreate, that they can make choices about how to support and care for their families, that they can define their desires and sexuality for themselves, that they can access equal incomes and high positions in the workplace. I’ll sit back and observe, and then I will happily talk about our post-feminist world and laugh at every shitty joke you tell me.
Tags: Ally McBeal, bigotry, feminism, hate, love, prison, pussy, rape, Sam de Brito, sex, sexuality, stereotypes, Sydney Morning Herald, Veruca Salt
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Fuck Politeness 
Permalink #
dredgirl
said
I stumbled across this response posted on de Brito’s blog. Please read it, and below I will offer a commentary on what I believe is in operation here.
“Prisoners of war often say that the mental torture is much worse than the physical, yet society is focussed only on woman-bashing domestics…which I contend are often the RESULT of female mental torture- and the guy finally snaps…
AND I never understood the “Don’t suffer in silence” campaign to women who suffered domestic violence…whenever I give me missus a slap upside the chops, she howls like a banshee….
Posted by: marcusbondi on October 25, 2007 11:37 AM”
Why am I shocked to encounter this on a SMH blog? Because it seems to suggest that when men hit women it is a result of women subjecting men to mental torture? This is certainly not the first time that I have been subjected to symbolic and or material male violence. Yet every time it is shocking. It slams against me, pushes me around and tries desperately to silence me, or make me doubt my experiences as a woman in a patriarchal society. I start to question my position. Am I making outrageous claims? Am I pumping up a minority status? Fuck no!
I am shocked because the comment is slipped in under the umbrella of ensuring that the public sphere is “free”. It’s media-determined democracy in action. Professional mainstream blogs have become the internet equivalent to Talk-Back Radio (I am not conflating these blogs with all blogs; indeed I think may blogs are excellent!). We have a regular personality/entertainer (Sam de Brito) who makes a regular post about a “common” issue. Then the calls/posts start coming in. Now, in the name of “free speech” most posts are accepted, unless the regulator deems them to contain offensive material. This is where I take issue. Offensive material must surely include the abovementioned post? But no, it is labelled an opinion, having equal weight to the next opinion. The remedy to such a situation? I should simply respond to the blog, contest the comment made by Marcus Bondi. This naturally would result in a equal playing field (inject sarcastic tone). Do I waste my energy and time asking Sam why such a comment was not excluded on the basis of its offensive content?
Sam de Brito is not the only one riding on the wave of this latest phenomenon. Sexist, racist, homophobic comments are invited on blogs such as this one and in other public and private settings as a result of the backlash against so-called “political correctness”, but they do have a very VERY long history. This backlash regained momentum in 1996 when the current Prime Minister, John Howard, campaigned against the perceived privileging of “minority interests” in politics and public debate. One of these minority interests is feminism. Women’s right. Women’s equality. Women’s interests. Over 11 years, Howard’s government has contributed to a general shift in attitude toward things such a feminist movements. In policy speeches Howard has even referred to Australia as being in the “post-feminist” stage of the debate.
But underlying this debate is the politico-philosophical doctrine of liberalism. Liberal theory generally argues that each individual is equal regardless of gender, race, sexuality etc. Structures and institutions are blind to difference, and individuals, if sexist, racist, etc, are only so in the “private” sphere. Because Australia is defined as a Liberal Democracy, this is taken for granted as fact that institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, doesn’t exist and that as a result when individuals express such sentiments it is a private issue that can be countered by another private individuals voice. It has nothing to do with society generally, or with historical contexts. Liberalism is necessarily ahistorical, it cannot account for historical disadvantage and fails to see it as informing the present (Howard’s refusal to apologise to Indigenous Australia’s is a prime example of this). A liberal theory of free speech says that we all have the right to speak freely without suffering violence as a result of our speech or a legal restriction to our rights. It is as if words are floating around on an equal platform. Within a liberal discourse there are some limitations and ‘hate speech’ is condemned with legal remedies available if cases arise of, for instance, race hate speech. But what a liberal theory can’t account for is the inequality that exists prior to speech even taking place, and the impact of this on how speech is taken up. Before we speak we are positioned in relation to our ethnicity, gender, class etc. We are also positioned in a broader political and social context, which for us is the dominance of economic rationalism and social conservatism: the hyper-consumerist, free woman who has attained equality and has no need to politicise gender anymore. It’s the post-feminist paradise, where women rebel against their feminist predecessors who didn’t shave their legs and burnt their bras; where women can regain their femininity and access the workforce.
Of course, this paradise is somewhat unreal. Post-feminism, dressed up in hyper-consumerism, is itself a conservative politician’s wet dream. The real statistics about violence against women, the continued stereotypes, and the everyday sexism attests to the on-going need to politicise gender and to fight against discrimination, not on the post-feminist terms offered where my opinion carries equal weight to the misogynists opinion, but on other grounds which disrupt the very logic of equality as having arrived.