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Fuck Politeness

“This is a revolution, not a public relations movement”

Tag Archives: Ask Sam

May 21, 2009 Sam in the city’s confused take on feminism

It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. Feminists and pole dancing, feminists and ugly bores, feminists neutering our manly men, feminists having changed society into one where the men are weak, meek, utterly unmanly. (Hi, has SHE been reading the news recently?)

She gives one example of one strong woman she knows who also wants the man to pay for dinner – not in reflection that men earn more than women and might care to recognise that occassionally by way of being a little generous at times – but cos she wants a ‘real man’ (and real men apparently foot the bills for food/wine/jewellery). Therefore it is proved: all feminists everywhere demand their men pay for dinners and are therefore hypocrites who deserve to be ignored (and are ruining men, sex and society).

Sam gives us some pearls of wisdom, telling us sadly that some feminists indeed bring their feminism from the boardroom to the bedroom (oh, holy end of the good sex life Batman! Except lookie here: it seems that feminists experienced more equality in relationships and that partners of feminists experienced greater relationship stability and greater sexual satisfaction than with non feminist partners – hat tip Rachel) and then:

Yet the biological truth is that in order for a relationship to have the necessary spark, sexual chemistry and va va voom, there needs to be masculine-feminine polarity – a balance whereby the man exudes masculinity and the woman femininity.

So same sex relationships don’t have that ‘necessary spark, sexual chemistry and va va voom’? Lesbians would be happier with men, gay men with women?

You wouldn’t know your biological arse from your biological elbow Sam.

So being a feminist means being masculine? Having any awareness of your own self worth is akin to having a great big cock? Insisting on decent treatment and noticing inequalities gives you chest hair? If you’re a feminist in a heterosexual relationship does that by Sam’s logic there are therefore two men in your bed, one in a woman’s body? Or that the feminist’s male partner is so ‘pussywhipped’ and ceaselessly ‘meek’ that he becomes the ‘feminine’ one (but that that polarity – of the ‘manly’ woman and the ‘womanly man’ is strictly of the NOOOOO BINGO variety for Sam). Please, your bigotry, lack of logic and bad writing is bumming me.

Masculinity and femininity as traditionally done equals good sex? The bedrock of a healthy happy society? Happy men, happy women, peace and calm across the land? Take a fucking look around. Think about last week’s news.

So far as I can see the majority of men defend their rights to ‘be men’ which rougly translates into being an overpriviledged thuggish arsehole to the death. They bitch and moan about the loss of traditional masculinity – usually in columns to FHM and Zoo. (Do you see where I’m going here). They bitch about it in workplaces with female employees (very few at senior management levels) treating their female coworkers as non people, of *course* their feminine brains accept their superior masculine logic, and their lack of acceptance would mean little seeing as how they have no penis and are therefore illogical beings. They bitch about it at family gatherings – goddamn it those FEMINISTS are ruining my fun – why CAN’T I holler out the side of my car at thirteen year old girls…look how they dress.

And yet…and yet rape stats, domestic violence stats, stalking stats, the amount of gendered abuse online, the male gaze in cinema, mens mags, jokes about fat chicks and feminists and wives are still in fucking GLORIOUS abundance are they not? What MARKERS of traditional masculinity are allegedly gone?

Men are still pushed in to competitive sports, ogling women in ways that objectify and demean them in order to bond with their mates, jokes about women and swallowing their feelings (which leak out in outraged screeching over The Big Nasty Feminists Are Trying To Take My Pee Pee Away) to be more stoic and manly. They’re still encouraged to look at their female partners as their ball and chain, still monitor each other with names like ‘pussy’ and ‘bitch’, still think they earn more because they’re better, still full of unexamined privilege and assumptions.

Women are still pushed into concerns over diets and makeup and hair and clothes and accessories, are still reading ‘The Rules’ and ‘He’s just not that into you’ (how IS that a feminist text Sam). We’re still in lower paid jobs, we’re still at risk of assualt from men we know and love, we still have to listen to sexist jokes in the workplace and watch the poor male host of a major show to examine ad culture can’t quite make the connections (oh, right, damn, fat chick jokes out the window – he actually asked for the list of people he could still make fun of…how’s about get some fucking comedy material?), we’re still emotionally battered with ‘if you don’t have a man, what have you got’, we’re still taught to smile when we’re angry, to laugh when we’re offended, to be nicey-nice-nice and to emotionally care take men.

Where exactly is the evidence of the feminists taking over? Of snivelling emasculated men slavering to gain the favour of the whip holding feminists? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Shut up.

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March 5, 2009 I’ve been to the gym, I KNOW the lyrics to ‘Put a Ring on it’

Ah women…we hold *such* a prized place in society don’t we?

If we diet and exercise we can adorn the pages of men’s mags between the ages of 16 and 25. If we look like what they demand of us they will call us ‘Princess’ for a while. As if the role of Princess was ever good to women, ever allowed them any freedom or self determination.

Even that is only until they’ve fucked her a few times and the novelty is gone, or she says something inconvenient, or she’s not wearing makeup one day. Then they remember how much they HATE the Princess ‘type’: so SHALLOW; all concerned with looks!

Did you notice that? How they demanded what they want: LOOKS (because everyone KNOWS women aren’t real people, don’t have desires/careers/personalities/opinions strong enough that they could possibly bother mine – I’ll take mine straight up hot and otherwise utterly blank, thanks) and they got it, and that they then become angry that what they ordered didn’t necessarily come complete with all the shit they dissed earlier as *chick stuff* in favour of LOOKS? Well hey guys, it might be time to reassess YOUR priorities since you’re the ones sounding pretty shallow here.

Shallow? Where did that come from. Oh Sam in the City’s latest effort, Why the Younger Generation Fail At Relationships. See the thing is she’s looking at young men who wanna hang around Playstations all day (!! Is this even a TOPIC??). Is it their fault that they’re more interested in acting like morons than dating? Or that when they DO date women they treat them like shit? Why of COURSE not!

It’s WOMEN’S FAULT!! How, I hear you ask? Well it’s women’s fault because men see us as “dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging”. I don’t know about you, gentle readers, but I’d call that men’s problematic attitudes to women rather than it being somehow conclusive of men treating women badly being women’s fault.

And the women they would use to back that up? Well let us assume since it’s the same guys that don’t give a fuck about personality/mental health/fulfilled lives/intelligent opinions since all that matters is if a chick is HOT ENOUGH chose women on that basis who are proclaiming they don’t bother since women are disease ridden gold digging whores…that maybe once or twice they got what they wished for. Hot. Perhaps she’s not dishonest at all, maybe all she represented herself AS was hot, which she is, but now you don’t like it that when you’re a pig she calls you on it. You want a ‘traditional woman’ so she’s nice and compliant how you like, but when she expects you to pay for dinner (all nice and ‘traditional like’) she’s a gold-digging whore. You want her to be all Maxim style Up For It Anytime, but when she is she’s slutty. You want her to groom herself out of existence for the sake of your cock, but when she does she’s self absorbed. So basically women can never win? Plain? NEXT!! Hot? SLUTTY SHALLOW BITCH!

Sam goes on to quote a reader. It’s really a simple technique to write like Sam. Pick a topic, any topic that’s likely to sound FASCINATING when you reveal the SHOCKING conclusion that…wait for it…WOMEN ARE TO BLAME, for everything, everywhere, the suffering of men, and their own suffering, the suffering of all women everywhere, and possibly the collapse of the economy too if she can find an angle. So what you do is pretend to examine an ‘issue’. Then you find an ‘expert’ (dude you SERIOUSLY need to examine your ideas about what constitutes an expert, a cock with a typewriter who got published because his wildly misogynistic ideas are already hugely popular? Not so much an expert in anything but wankery) for a soundbite on why it’s women’s fault. THEN she follows it up with some sick-fuck reader to lay it on even thicker about how it’s women’s fault, and OMG Q.E FUCKING D, it HAS BEEN PROVED, CAN I GET AN HALLELUJAH!?

This weeks sick-fuck reader?

“Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.”

Sam’s response: “Ouch!”. It’s her favourite. It lets her sound like she’s distancing herself from such brutal and as Richie from Crimitism would say bare-knuckled misogyny, while allowing her to include it to underpin her own argument and sail on by. Can’t you just see it? A flip of the hair, a widening of the eyes, and “Ouch!” Sam, he’s talking about YOU here as well as about me and about all women everywhere, it’s your goddamned column could you muster some strength of character and kick his arse for the misogynist prick he is instead of a blithe little ‘ouch’?

Apparently not.

Anyway, believe it or not the final straw was a misquote of Beyonce. Yeah, I know. It’s just that, well, this level of misogyny is in its heyday it seems, we’re all discussing Bettina Arndt’s suggestion that women ought to ‘give men sex’ when they don’t want to have sex…I’m reading about feudalism and how women were chattel, women were things men owned to beget heirs ‘on’ them (no, that’s the language used). How has anything changed, except now the priorities of men have shifted and instead of heirs, we chattel are expected to lie back and let our husbands get to an orgasm ‘on’ us – NO. MATTER. WHAT. Cos that’s what it amounts to if it’s sex you don’t want to. We are seen as chattel for men to get off on.

So this level of misogyny…it’s hard to keep on hearing it, to bear it, to see how wildly fucking popular it is, to see more and more evidence of how little women are respected or even seen as fully human, so sometimes when it gets too much I have to kind of blank it out, go numb. For a beautiful explanation of the pain it causes women when they haven’t managed to block it out on a given day, see Helen at Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony’s post ‘You’re Soaking In It’. But this day the rage induced white noise was getting loud enough to do damage (DISEASE RIDDEN????) so I had to go blank, but then this misquote just tripped me up. She researches so very very little that she can’t even get the main line from a hit pop song right (it’s called GOOGLE, look into it shithead):

Sadly, along with Hymowitz, many experts (including Freud himself) blame it on the behaviour of the fairer sex. Case in point: one minute SYFs (Single Young Females) want something casual, a fling, an F-Buddy or a one-night stand because, heck, we’re modern women who can have sex without emotional connection or a ring on our fingers. And the next minute, we find ourselves asking that very same one-night stand what he thinks about marriage, when he envisions himself having kids and how he feels about raising a family in the suburbs versus the city.

Oh, ok dick, except we do fucking NOT so thanks a whole lot for making us all sound both deranged and marriage obsessed as if we don’t have fucking lives of meaning outside the all important fucking MARRIAGE. Like everything else is just a decoy that we can drop once we’re married, because marriage is SO GREAT for women! (LOOK AT THE STATS! SHIT! Men live longer, women less long if they’re married, men’s finances recover more quickly than women’s, men go for round two quite quickly, women do not – hat tip to Wildly Parenthetical for this last point).

Then she UTILISES Beyonce for this bullshit and says:

As Beyonce recently crooned in her new go-girl anthem, “If you like what you see, put a ring on it,” encouraging women to dump a dude who refuses to propose. (No wonder we’re all single.)

Except that she DID FUCKING NOT!!! I’ve been at the gym a lot and that song is literally ALWAYS on, and she DID FUCKING NOT! I can’t get the goddamned song out of my head, and I was scandalised on first listen, but I’ve looked it up and she DID. FUCKING. NOT!

It’s about being out dancing and her ex is there and is getting jealous that she’s dancing with another guy, and she’s saying get out of my face, you had me for three years and you weren’t very nice to me then, you don’t own me, and maybe if you wanted to ‘own’ me, to be able to treat me like an ‘object’ you should have ‘put a ring on it’.

Now it may be too much to hope that it’s also a critique of the institution of marriage and the way it reduces women to objects men now officially own (though it does seem to be a bit of an anthem to the single ladies to stick up for themselves and NOT be *owned*, and not let dudes act like commitment is HER desire and pathology, and he wants nothing to do with all that, and to treat em like shit and also THEN get all possessive of those women they’ve not wanted to commit to in any way), but she is still NOT singing that men can window shop and slap a layaway tag on some chick they see walking down the street, which is what ‘If you like what you see put a ring on it’ suggests – it’s a song of get out of my face fuckwit, you had me, you took me for granted, I’m moving on and you can just fucking DEAL. Possibly somewhat problematic in what it may suggest about marriage, but it’s NOT what Sam suggests, the line is “If you liked it you shoulda put a ring on it” – ie/ if you liked WHAT WE HAD, if you liked BEING WITH ME, if I AS A PARTNER meant all that much to you, maybe instead of treating me badly and letting me go you ought to have worked on it then, so now you can take your jealousy and go fuck yourself.

Is it too much to ask that Sam does a quick Google before she just ASSUMES that Beyonce is as much of a passive, simpering lapdog of misogyny as she is? FUCK!

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February 5, 2009 Ok, I’m going in…

So Sam in the City asked the question “Is it worth dating a divorced woman (or man)?”.

It’s probably unnecessary to tell you she doesn’t answer what is a ludicrous question to begin with.

As far as Sam goes, it’s – well it’s almost a radical feminist moment by her standards. She actually engages with the fact that the myth is that through divorce women get it all and live a life of luxury, that less than a third [this is apparently in the U.K] get any maintenance, and over a quarter end up living in poverty. Now I’m never that sure of Sam’s studies and stats, but fuck me, she’s dug up and published one that doesn’t trash the women as greedy, ballbreaking shrew bitches!

Really, as a divorcee myself, I’d suggest you don’t follow either suggestions of Sam here:

Either avoid the topic altogether and pray to the relationship gods that your date never checks your personal records. Or, get it out in the open within the first few sips of your vino so ensure oh-so-coquettishly that there are no secrets between you too.

Ok, stop. First of all checks your personal records??? I reckon any argument starting with ‘I went through your documents/I hired a detective/I looked you up through Births, Deaths and Marriages and you were MARRIED??’, ends with ‘You’re fucking insane and a stalker and you’re upset about the marriage?’. You win any argument that starts that way. SHIT!

Second…I don’t think that the other option to keeping it a deep dark secret is to blurt it out on a first date. What the fuck? A/ on a first date how is it their mother-fucking BIZNEZ? B/ Just…don’t for fuck’s sake. A first date generally speaking is about banter and flirting with maybe a hint of anxiety-induced nausea. I’m prepared to accept there’s all kinds of first dates, all kinds of topics that might feel natural and acceptable, but I don’t think that screaming “BEFORE THE SHRIMP COMES OUT YOU SHOULD KNOW I’M DIVORCED” is really the conversation starter you’re looking for here.

Then there’s some generic boring crap filler (no, really!) then THIS:

I reckon the most important tip for divorcees, and anyone looking for a new relationship really, comes from US matchmaker Patti Stanger (of the hit reality television show Millionaire Matchmaker) who says that there is to be absolutely no sex until you’re in a “committed monogamous relationship”.

So first she just obliterates any consideration of the specific pressures on divorcees (or whether they’re worth dating) to dole out her inane uber-prude advice.

Second. WHAT? God DAMN this woman is a prude.

Third…you want people to commit to monogamy and a serious relationship BEFORE they have sex? How exactly are you supposed to discover you like someone enough to get serious, to commit to them in any way if you aren’t sleeping together? I would imagine it ends up being advice to dangle the possibility of sex in front of someone in order to lock them down and extract promises, which – YUCK!

Where are the spaces for different kinds of relationships, different times and spaces? Different ways of dating? Shit. Perhaps if your sole goal was getting re-hitched you’d listen to her…but even then…it feels like headfucking and manipulation to me.

So here’s my sex advice: if you like someone, if you’re having fun, if it feels right to you, feel free to have sex. Regardless of whether you’ve been married before or not. And if you have some ‘secret’ like ‘Once I was married by I didn’t like it so much’ or ‘I have a secret stash of James Blunt cds’ , well for fuck’s sake!! You don’t need to blurt out your secrets on a first date.

IF you get to know one another well enough that you think it’s any business of the other person’s, then tell them, but IN YOUR OWN TIME! If you feel a need to ‘confess’ then I’d suggest not putting it off for so long that it feels like you’re about to confess to killing their pets, making their pelts into vests and hiding the bodies down the back of the lounge, but god! If some person you’re just getting to know gets angry and all up in your face that you didn’t lay out your Virgin Credentials or lack thereof prior to sharing your first meal? I reckon I’d be thanking them for a nice time and getting the hell out of there.You don’t need other peoples absolution for previous relationships. Shit.

And finally, what a shit stupid question to begin with.

You like the person or you don’t.

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September 3, 2008 Deal breakers…no, not you Charlie Manson!

Sam in the City has written another delightfully insightful post – this time she talks about ‘deal breakers’ – what attributes can another person have so absolutely heinous that you will not consider dating them? Atrributes that make your stomach turn, your knees tremble (in a bad way) and have you heading for the hills screaming “Get behind me Satan [not in a good way]”?

Her list is fairly instructional for the novice ‘Ask Sam’ reader as to who her bread and butter commentors are and what sort of tribalistic fevered ‘let’s assert our power by verbally tearing apart women and the kinds of women we *particularly hate*’ kinds of comment themes she’s fishing for. If you can get them going on that the comments (and therefore the hits) come rolling in.

So. What makes the list? Let’s see? Violent crimes? Blatant aggression? Terrifyingly poor attitudes to life? No?? Um…wait…gambling addictions? Fundamentalism? Wait, wait, I’ll pick one…a lackadaisical attitude to personal hygeine?

No. You guessed it. *Chicks with tats*, *Feminists*, *nice guys* and *pretty boys*

It’s just so EASY – she’s like a sitting duck. A big one. Out in the open. In duck season. With two broken wings, one leg and you’ve got a bazooka. Doesn’t seem fair really.

Let’s see. First up a *friend* with a dilemma “My b/f will dump me if I get a tat…should I do it anyway?”. Heavens NO young child, a man (ANY man!) is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD!!! What are you THINKING???

Then to illustrate her pearls of wisdom she goes for a little Paris Hilton slut-shaming and advises (quietly, carefully, like her friend’s an easily spooked animal who’ll freak being talked to like a real grown up) that said friend try a henna tatoo first – the alleged result?         

                   ” So she did. Half an hour after getting it done, she was ready to scrub it off. “It’s ruining all my outfits,” she wailed, and then removed it. Luckily she could …

PHEW!!! Luck-Y!!!

She *wailed*??? After *half an hour*??? And a rose on her hip was ruining…all…her outfits? I’m beginning to suspect Sam in the City is not a *real* journalist, like sometimes she makes up pretend idiot friends who can’t make decisions and wail helplessly over the dilemma of a temporary tattoo that is ruining their outfits. Cos that is how women act. For real. We don’t know what we want. We change our minds more frequently than our underwear. When something goes ‘wrong’ we can’t fix it – even if it’s just washing a little texta off our hip, we have to sit on the floor and shriek over it first. We’re just *like that*

Then – feminism – new friend/contact “Oh helps! I’s feminist. Can’t find boyfriend! Should I sell out beliefs for boyfriend? Because clearly I must choose!” [Of COURSE you should ditch the lezzo hairy legged politics *girlfriend*, you”ll never get a root otherwise, and then HOW will you fake a pregnancy and make him marry you and fulfill your destiny by hating your husband, making him miserable, stealing his kids, taking his money and leaving him a shell of a man???]

Then…nice men. Oh yes, that old chestnut, thrown out by angry men world over. “It’s because I’m too nice…that those fucking bitches won’t fuck me! Goddamn those stupid sluts! They’re all the same! And they all want Collin Farrell! Or James Dean. Treat em mean keep em keen! They LOVE that shit! Why don’t they realise how NICE I am, that I’m hot shit, ready for action and they’re useless dumb girls who don’t know what’s good for them? I mean SHIT! It can’t be me right?”

Then…pretty boys. Because men should be rugged, manly and able to open beer bottles with their eye sockets. And if they are “hotter” than you, you will spend your life an anxious wreck, breathing into brown paper bags and vomiting into pot plants…because you couldn’t have anything else going for you. Since a woman is just a decoration, if he “outpretties” you, you’re FUCKED! (duh!) men CHEAT! Biological destiny! Written in the genes. Poor buggers.

Then she opens it right on up asking what are deal breakers for the readers, and what they think of her list. Let the slut-shaming, judgmental, woman bashing CRAP begin in earnest. Yeeeehaw! I gots me rifle, let’s shoot some kangaroo and drink rum til we pass out in our own vomit! (Where are all the supermodel hot, sports watching women who think that’s hot???)

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August 31, 2008 Ask Sam: She’ll ALWAYS tell you bad shit about women

Sam, Sam, she’s at it again.

I am loathe to make a judgment call against another person that they are deeply and profoundly stupid – but sometimes the alternative is that they’re hiding behind a dimwitted persona in order to push an ugly agenda…stupid or woman-hating that is the question, at least as it relates to Sam in the City.

Are Women Naturally Monogamous is her second latest gift to the world. It opens with the line:

It is a universally acknowledged truth (and discussed many times over in this column) that for biological reasons, men are unable to be monogamous.

Ok. I mean I fundamentally disagree with an assertion that men are ‘unable’ to be monogamous, that they are ‘unable’ to control their sexual desire, that they are ‘unable’ to choose some self restraint, that they are ‘unable’ to keep The Mighty Penis under any sort of control. Both because I respect them as fully functional human beings with a capacity to make deliberate decisions about all areas of their lives, and because it’s ludicrous and dangerous to suggest that the influence of the Mighty Penis goes even further – that men’s genes exercise such all consuming control over their every thought and choice that they are puppets to the DNA. If men are *biologically*, *genetically* UNABLE to control their cocks – well then…I mean, you can’t REALLY hold them responsible when their genes go haywire and they rape. It’s not them, it’s not their choices, it’s not even their penises anymore. It’s genetics, it’s science, it’s the vibe, it’s Mabo.

So…moving on to the rest of the article (since is supposed to be about teh wimmenz) Sam informs us that ‘traditional theory’ says:

that men evolved to make love, women to demur.

Ok, so Sam wants to get to something else here: she wants to get to women aren’t angels, they fantasize, they cheat, they perpetrate paternity fraud. There’s a long way to travel from ‘men are biologically unable to keep it in their pants, and therefore we can never REALLY hold them accountable for any of their actions, and we’ve only got ourselves to blame cos we all know what they’re like, and women’s job is to say ‘Sex? WHAT? GOD no!’  (DUH! Universally acknowledged TRUTH!)*

So…first she mentions this article by Sarah Hrdy; Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at the University of California. I read the link (and to the dude who spanked me last week for following up on links and experts it’s called ‘research’) and it’s actually quite the interesting article. But of course it’s about unpacking the myths we build up and ground in science by misinterpreting or misunderstanding animal sexual behaviour. It appears to me to say that Darwin et al read into animal behaviour a monogamy that wasn’t there – because they were looking at things through the lense of the sexual ethics of society at that time.

It reminded me quite strongly of a trip to the zoo where the announcer was discussing the  heterosexual monogamous faithfulness of giraffes – and yet there is much evidence that giraffes ‘feel’ less constricted by heteronormativity than we like to assume. [It also reminds me of a story I heard whereby Fred Nile had been urging us to embrace and protect monogamy and the family from the insidious influence of homosexuality, particularly the idea that gay or lesbian couples could raise children. Anyway, apparently he directed his listeners to look to nature – particularly the black swan. Unfortunately for Fred and his agenda, male black swans quite frequently form male pairs who steal babies from the nest, or temporarily hook up with female swans, then abscond to raise the babies. So far swan society seems to be surviving]  (Shit I love that story!)

So it’s an interesting read, and with some thought could open up fascinating discussions about our assumptions about sexuality and ‘nature’, but she does a little *tee hee, I’m blonde* hair-flick and says she didn’t really understand that article (well, I’d like to suggest she doesn’t use articles she doesn’t understand in the future to lend scientific credence to her scatty articles which almost always appear to be about the moral turpitude of women but that’s another story) and sails right on by to another theory.

This theory comes to us from Michelle Langley…who is qualified to write about What Women Do  because she’s…a professional public speaker…who at 27 began to feel bored and unhappy…tried to figure out why and, well the rest is history. The bullet points on the homepage for her book go like this – just for reference ‘They’ are teh wimmenz:

  • They push men for commitment

  • They get what they want

  • They lose interest in sex

  • They become attracted to someone else

  • They start cheating

  • They become angry and resentful

  • They begin telling their partners that they need time apart

  • They blame their partners for their behavior…and eventually, after making themselves and everyone around them miserable for an indefinite, but usually, long period of time, they end their relationships or marriages. 

    •  

     

    Now I kinda hate this formulaic ‘this is what people do, for real, for all time’ stuff. And wow, don’t you love the whole slide gently from ‘neutral’ descriptors of ‘facts’ into ‘and then women make everyone’s lives utter misery before destroying them completely’ crap at the end. But leaving aside that it’s just cited briefly as it’s Convenient Theory For Sam 1546 for her to push some final premise of Women Are Decietful Sluts** Emasculating Their Poor Innocent Boyfriends And Ruining Mens Lives Everywhere, the one quote she gives us actually doesn’t appear so bad:

     

    By Langley’s reckoning, when a woman hits her sexual peak – usually around the mid-30s mark – her libido awakens. And if a bloke isn’t meeting her demands mentally and physically – which he often isn’t considering a man peaks in his early 20s – there’s going to be more chance of her looking elsewhere if she isn’t entirely happy.

     

    This to me speaks far more to heteronormativity, conditioning of women into early marriage, communication issues, patterns of relationships, frustration with ‘womens roles’ etc – it doesn’t appear like it would *have to* back up a Sam-like conclusion about Teh Chicks Are Slutballs**.

     

     

    But that’s not quite good enough. Sam assserts:

    *Of course, it’s entirely disgraceful and cowardly to cheat on your partner* (it would appear though, it’s only *really* disgraceful for a woman, since it’s a Universally Acknowledge Truth* that men are unABLE to be monogamous). She goes on to explain the rush and the addiction of an affair, sails right through this stuff, flits about banging on about women not trusting men and therefore never leaving them alone lest their manly genes render them unable to resist fucking someone else simply because their wife is not in the same room – and then goes ‘Uhmuhmaaaaaa! Who would have thought that WOMEN could do this too???’ (Especially since *everyone knows* we’re designed to demur! A side point – if you’re going to utilise evolutionary psychology crap…does it not make more sense for the continuation of humanity for women to ‘evolve’ to like/want/need sex too???)

     

     

    THEN…BANG. We have arrived at the destination we were hurtling haphazardly and nauseatingly towards all the time, in a bizarrely unruly fashion a little like travelling on The Knight Bus in Harry Potter:

    No *wonder* the Poor Innocent Menfolk (innocent cos they can’t HELP where their cocks end up, but OMG you SLUT** for even fantasising about someone else!) are quaking in their boots (a *fact* she doesn’t need to back up apparently, it’s just self evident that men everywhere are undergoing a crisis over the stability of their relationships), filled with mortal terror that their marriage/monogamous relationship (that they are allegedly biologically destined to not want, and will definately shag the first person who is not their wife/partner cos Thats How Much Biology Makes Them Hate Monogamy and Wives and Women Who Fuck Them) is NOT SECURE!!!!!! Women MIGHT IN FACT like sex, and they might in fact not be Biologically Predetermined Asexual Virgin Types which clearly makes them rampaging sluts**…and then….screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech, BANG, the doors fly open and here we are: Paternity Fraud Central.

     

    Oh yes. Not only are Teh Menz Innocent and Teh Wimmenz Eeeevil For Fantasizing, but they are EVEN MOAR EVIL because they likes to fuck around, get knocked up and then say Suprise, I’s Havin Yo Baby (except is not yours, is lies…heh heh is funny). Is just the TRUTH now. Sam says.

     

     

    Here we go. According to Sam, in Australia one in four babies is the ‘victim’ (???) of paternity fraud. Yep. Sorry, but a quarter of all kids you know, don’t know their daddies (and is VICTIMS). Cos Women Are Lying Sluts** according to the world of Sam. Sure, she tells us it was on an ABC show. She doesn’t give us a link, we just have to take it on faith. When I do a quick Google Search (Sam, do you need me to show you how this works?) I see MRA sites devoted to paternity fraud, but I find this article by a sociologist who calls bullshit on these claims. I did find a 7:30 Report transcript of one man’s story of this happening to him (and sure, it can happen) but the other ABC link I found was this article explaining that the percentage quoted is for an extremely small subset of men very suspicious of their partner – that the overall statistic is around 1%.

     

     

    I’m just so sick of seeing this woman trot out the same crap. Tune in this time next week, I’ve just spotted the headline for her new post of “Is staying with our first love the secret to a great relationship?” – if I had to give a knee jerk reaction to that, I’d bet money on usually NOT.

     

    * I have deep and abiding problems with the idea of Universally Acknowledged Truths about human behaviour.

    **I have just as many deep and abiding problems with the fact that women still get to choose between virgins and sluts, the old “Damned Whores And God’s Police” division. I hate the word slut used in this way, I’m using it to get at this shaming going on in these sorts of articles. Apologies if the use has offended anyone, I certainly don’t advocate it EVER to describe someone who enjoys sex/does not conform to quaint and rustic ideas of how a ‘lady’ should behave.

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    November 7, 2007 Sam does Sam

    So Sam in the City fashions herself after Carrie Bradshaw, despite lacking any of the wit and charm of that character, and despite being a truly awful writer. However, she holds herself out as something of an ‘expert’ (ahem) on the ‘issues’ of the modern [read hetero, ‘post-feminist’ – ie anti-feminist] women, dating and sex. This usually manifests itself as such cliched crap as when it’s “okay” to kiss or have sex on a first date, irritating in itself as even this less “serious” topic is laden with gender expectations, implications about your moral character and the future of any relationship should you kiss or (god forbid) fuck on your first date.  

    The thing (correction, one of the things) that shits me about her posts are that she frequently bites off more than she can chew – in fact, more than she ever fucking INTENDED to chew. So, what she’ll do is crap on for a few sentences, throw out an age old gender cliche, ask two or three fuckwits she knows what they think, make a couple of shithouse assertions,then opens it up to let the masses. She also frequently seems to be the apologist for women’s existence, taking up the “men’s position”, or rather, the fuckwitted males position before they need to do it for themselves. As in her conclusion that women are attracted to power, men to looks, her hints to men on how to ‘reel a woman in’ by manipulation of emotions etc.

    So today?? “Do ex-wives (or husbands) deserve 50 per cent?” – as in payouts upon splitting. Well, you would think that for a topic this serious and sensitive that Sam would hit the books, right? NAW man, why do that? She’s a “sexpert”, therefore, she can crap on about a subject which causes hurt feelings, anger and bitterness to come out of the woodwork.

    First she mentions Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, talking about the “whopping” 50 mill Mills stands to gain in the settlement (not, in fact 50% of Paul McCartney’s fortune, though I understand the confusion given the use of the number 50). So “poor” Paul is feeling sad at the media coverage…so I hear is his ex who is being called a whore and a gold-digger, who has had a visit from the Bobbies to inform her she’s had some serious death threats. Anyway, this is not about Paul and Heather right? I mean WTF do celebrity marriages have to do with the rest of us and the issue Sam claims to address?

    So she craps on about various celebrities, contradicting earlier ‘points’ and just generally being both a knob and a shithouse writer, then…then we get to the argument surely?

    Well she raises the abolition of no fault divorce, which she attributes to ‘individuals’ being manipulative and contriving fake scenarios in which they could show the ‘fault’ of their partner, with absolutely NOTHING to back up this claim. I would suggest that a massive change in family law had something more at its basis than a concern that some individuals were rorting the system in order to wrangle out of their marriages. Of course, she manages to make the point that it’s easy for many to walk away, leaving their ‘innocent’ spouse behind and make a packet. She’ll claim it was gender neutral, but it’s not…not when the media diatribe, the men’s rights clamouring, and the word-in-the-pub bitterness is all about the women making money out of men, not when she’s already written on women partnering up for money and power. Step one in opening the floodgates to the hard done by misogynist pricks to come forth with their tales of woe from which to generalise. 

    Then she asserts (again with nothing to back it up) that the divorce rate is 400 percent (or four times, though admittedly that does sound slightly less apocalyptic) than forty years ago…you know, back in the days when Australia didn’t ever really say ‘no’ to violence against women, not even in tokenistic ads, back when you ‘just didn’t’ leave. The only thing she offers in this post in any way resembling a “conclusion” is that it might be easier to strengthen relationships and marriages rather than fighting them out in courts.

     Mmm…thanks for such a simplistic solution with absolutely no suggestions about what form such an effort to do so would take. Absolutely inspired. No WONDER you are a relationships expert!!  

    She raises “domestic relationship agreements” – a non-marriage type of prenup. Surprise, surprise, she raises it in the context of a man “protecting” himself from a woman. This is entirely consistent with the rest of her implications about the motivations of women and the dangers for men that women present. Now I’m a big advocate of the independantly legally advised prenuptials, I am a massive advocate of independant finances. However, I know from working for a law firm that all of this is contingent upon sufficient education, pragmatism, and the sense of self preservation. I also understand that women are at a disadvantage again. When we have lower income capacity, we will not have the same negotiating clout. Factors that complicate any attempt at a simplistic and generalised stance on issues of marriage, divorce and prenuptials include gender, race, class, religious beliefs, education, world view. None of these were taken into account in Sams “assessment” of the issue.

    So, in failing to engage with any such issues, in doing her usual trick, ask a psuedo question, give a psuedo answer, she opened up the comments section with:

     Do you think ex-wives or husbands deserve 50 per cent? Do you think domestic relationship agreements for domestic couples are necessary?

    I have included some fragments from the charming comments section below. I truly believe her comments section reflects her target audience, the mentality, ethos and world view of her audience and her writing. Here goes:

    As for DRAs [domestic relationship agreements] I don’t see the point – ever met a woman that was capable of sticking to her word???

    Not frikkin likely so why bother paying for a DRA

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    great topic sam!! It’s such an interesting one, considering I have just been through a messy divorce and had to give up about 40 per cent of everything which I definitely do NOT think she deserved.

    I do not know what the law should be, but all i know is that the court definitely favours the women, especially when there’s kids involved, and there are no winners, sadly.

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    The divorce laws are from an ancient time of housewives and low divorce rates, these days it should be every man or woman for themselves.

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    Am I bitter, sure.

    Do I resent the legal system? YOU BET!

    Moral is guys, if it looks like getting bad, hit first. Hit hard and make it a complete knock-out. Don’t bother trying to be nice of decent. There’s no upside to it for anyone but lawyers.

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    Most women in this country still have the gold-diggery mentality when it suits them

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    Mmm…Thanks Sam, thanks SO very much…with women like you writing, the Men’s Right’s Activists and their hateful misogynistic vitriol are hardly necessary. While you pass yourself of as a harmless sexpert, you play right into the hands of misogynistic arguments, while holding yourself up as a women’s writer. If you’re gonna tote yourself as a tee-hee, harmless blonde woman who likes to talk about dating, then stick to topics in which you don’t induce so much hatred. It is possible to write about dating and sex without being such a fuckwit, without continuing to beat women over the heads with the rules they have to obey, with the labels they need to fear, with the stereotypes that they are greedy gold-diggers. It isn’t like the SMH needs you to be such an anti woman writer – they already have Sam de Brito for that.

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