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M@ Did Not Rape You. He Just Drew a Diagram About It!

Posted on Thursday, June 11, 2009 by Sady
My goodness, free speech is hard. Just this morning, I was reading a REALLY REALLY EXCELLENT PIECE by the really really excellent blogger Amanda Hess, which drove home to me precisely how hard it can be! It concerns a young blogger named M@ (no, really: he is named M@), who, on the blog Why I Hate D.C., wrote the following:

*** TRIGGER WARNING, TRIGGER WARNING, A THOUSAND TIMES TRIGGER WARNING ***

As I continue along the bridge, a young woman, too, comes straight at me and I think of Ralph Ellison and his Invisible Man and wonder why they cannot see my white skin gleaming under the towering lights. She comes straight at me in a game of chicken I cannot now lose… she’s just my type: thin, pretty, white with brown hair. A feeling arises in me hitherto fore unknown. I want to rape her.

In my animal mind, I force her against the railing and push into her, afterward tossing her over the side, burying her in the cold and the wet and the deep—satiating, for now, my love for the city, my hatred.

Okay. Raping a lady? Check. Killing a lady after you’ve raped her? Check. Rape framed as compliment (she is just his type!), and also as totally impersonal way for dude to work out his aggression? Check! Young white man citing his “gleaming white skin” as evidence of his kinship with RALPH ELLISON?!? Check-mate, my friends. Yes, we have determined, on a highly scientific basis, that this blog post is Very Offensive. The scale goes, 0 (Not Offensive), 5 (Kind of a Tool), 10 (What the Hell is Wrong With You?), 20,073 (M@). Oh, and did I mention that he included A DIAGRAM? He did! He included A DIAGRAM!


This is the diagram! See if you can spot the lady he wanted to rape! I know, I know: it’s subtle and complicated, like all the art that flows from M@’s fertile brain.

Say, you know what is just as offensive as the rape fantasy described above? All of the graphic rape and death threats M@ has received since then! I’m not printing them here, because they’re gross and even more super triggering (there is stuff about entrails and things going into other things that they’re pretty much anatomically designed not to have things go into). Amanda Hess has covered many of them, if you are curious. M@ has responded with rape jokes and comments about “feminazis,” of course! (“I’ve read my feminist literature and I know my shit better than most women on that subject,” also, is a thing he wrote, because HA HAHAHAHAHA ohhhhhhhhh, shit, I can’t even finish that sentence, HAHAHAHA, ohhhhhhhhh, we have fun.) Because he is such a grown-up!

What I will say, after much careful reflection, is this: sending a man who writes publicly about his rape fantasies YOUR rape and/or murder fantasies, starring Rape Fantasy Writer Dude, is wrong. It is wrong even though there is some poetic justice to it: these comments may actually prove to him, better than anything else could, that words (especially words about raping!) matter and can be scary and upsetting. HOWEVER. Framing rape as an appropriate punishment, for anyone, is very bad. So are death threats.

Fortunately, I am a professional Insulter of People on the Internet! I have, like, a Ph.D. in that! (DISCLOSURE: I do not actually have a Ph.D. It is a metaphor!) Therefore, I will share with you several more appropriate – yet still insulting! – things that you can write to M@.

  • As I read “Why I Hate DC,” I come across M@’s graphic rape fantasy. It’s just my type: poorly written and pretentious. It contains a reference to Ralph Ellison right next to an allusion to his “gleaming white skin.” I want to make him take a literature course in which he actually reads The Invisible Man. The required term paper will be very long. He will not like it. Afterwards, I will give him an F, because he is a bad writer.
  • While I peruse various blog posts, written by people with various screen names and pseudonyms, I come across “M@.” It’s just my type: stupid beyond the point of comprehension. I imagine pushing him up to his laptop and forcing him to edit his profile so that there are actual letters in his name. As he weeps gently for the loss of what he no doubt believes to be a clever pun, I will personally delete that fucking “@” symbol. “Your name is Matt. We get it,” I will say, showing no remorse whatsoever. He will be surprised that I have figured it out.
  • As I skim my blog reader, noting and enjoying blogs by many intelligent and funny feminists, I come across Amanda Hess’s article about, and interview with, M@. He’s just my type: an entitled, self-absorbed, narcissistic dickweed with no self-awareness, who will continue defending himself, no matter how wrong he is. A hitherto well-known desire overcomes me: I want to take him to a rape crisis center. I also want to take him to a women’s shelter. The women will come forth to tell him their stories, one by one, speaking softly and simply: about the attacks, about their injuries, about what went through their minds, what their attackers said, how hard they have to work each day not to be overcome by the shame and guilt and terror this world seems happy to thrust upon them. They will speak of the failures of the criminal justice system to prosecute and convict their attackers, the failure of communities and families and friends to support them or to understand that they did not “bring this upon themselves” somehow, the failure of us all, as citizens, to notice and care about and refuse to trivialize the huge numbers of women who are made subject to violence, this violence, this intimate violence, this betrayal which befalls our gender so disproportionately. As they speak, M@ will slowly, but surely, come to know what many of us know already: that there is much suffering in this world, that his concerns and troubles are petty and insignificant compared to theirs, and that his tiny, trivial, privileged existence is not the most important one on the planet. He will not be able to handle this, as it invalidates his entire worldview, so his head will explode. Whoops.
  • As I read the Internet, I come across M@. He’s just my type: the sort of dude who writes graphic fantasies about raping and killing women, then is surprised and petulant when people are angry about that. I want to lure him to my matriarchal bee colony. I imagine arranging a ridiculous series of coincidences through my chicanery, which will inevitably end with him in a bear suit, screaming about “BITCHES!” I will then sacrifice him to my pagan nature gods. “Killing me won’t bring back your goddamn honey,” he will exclaim! No matter. The drone must die. The drone must die. The drone must die, satiating my love for bees, my hatred (for M@).

Okay, so that last one was pretty violent. Sorry, M@! Nevertheless, I am sure that we could find many more appropriate punishments for M@. For example, what if we arranged some sort of panel discussion, featuring M@, Aaron P. Taylor, and Seth Rogen? It would be called “Stupid Dicks: How They Live Today,” and would feature questions such as, “no, seriously, what is wrong with you?” Or, “Jesus Christ, how dumb can you get?” Afterward, we could send them all out to a nice farm, where they could chase rabbits. Wouldn’t that be non-violent?

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Our House Is A Very Very Very Fine House, Unless You Smear Feces All Over It: Some Notes on Shakesville and Feminist Blogging

Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 by Sady
Well, this just blows. For those not keeping track: Melissa McEwan, maybe one of the better role models out there for those who aspire to cover the ladybusiness, and also (LET’S MAKE IT ABOUT ME) one of the first ladybloggers to treat Tiger Beatdown like a real thing and not just a serialized Internet drama about How Sady Is Cranky About Stuff, On the Internet, Again, is taking a “break,” due to unreasonable demands and generally shitty treatment of Melissa McEwan on the Melissa McEwan-owned, Melissa McEwan-operated, Melissa McEwan-reliant Internet blog, Shakespeare’s Sister. Given the fact that she’s written publicly in the past about how the blog drains her time, drains her money, and is a labor of love that could pretty much cease as soon as she stops loving it, the paranoid among us may, in fact, conclude that Shakespeare’s Sister is in some danger.

So, who loves metablogging as much as I do? Probably no-one. Probably definitely not you, the reader. To which I say: too bad for you. I do what I want!

Which, I would submit to you, is the point. I started this space because I wanted to write – I had a degree in that! I had not used it! I wanted to see if I could – and, while I was getting some very small, very poorly-paid, very pseudonymous or anonymous work, which I will never tell you about because it is embarrassing, there was nowhere that I could do exactly what I wanted to do, without compromise or the pressure of appealing to a specific audience. False modesty, or real self-loathing, is a very gross and very gendered thing, in which I participate too often, so instead of offering excuses for myself, I will just say this: I thought I had an interesting voice. I thought I could do interesting things with it. I just didn’t want to wait for anyone to give me permission.

Say, here is something that is in no way related to the above: did you know that sexism exists? Even in the very serious and important and high-minded world of professional writing? Es verdad! I myself, inexperienced as I am in that world, have encountered it: like, having to make nice with an editor who frequently went on rants about how women were “whores” and “crazy” and “liars,” or getting in serious trouble because I told a man that I would not publish his joke about raping an uppity woman, nor would I encourage him to make any further jokes along those lines. This weekend, I was having dinner with a lady, who made the (now by no means unfamiliar) point that many women get ahead in the writing world (and the music world, and many “creative” fields) by flirting or sleeping with dudes who have established themselves therein, and that there’s an economy of dudes who get laid by kind-of-sort-of promising career assistance and girls who end up sleeping with dudes for reasons only somewhat related to the pure and impersonal desire to handle that dude’s junk. Um, yeah: and it’s probably not a conscious conspiracy, either, on behalf of either party. It’s probably just a by-product of the sexist phenomenon whereby lots of dudes won’t even talk to you unless they want to fuck you, are fucking you, or are aware that you are fucking one of their friends. There are men who don’t do this, of course – more of them now than ever before, and they’re lovely. But when Derek Walcott and Harold Bloom are sexually propositioning students (and Walcott, at least, is marking students’ work down if they refuse) the whole climate starts to look unfriendly, both to your ambitions and your right to do what you please with your own personal genitalia.

Then there’s the fact that feminist-backlash pieces are seemingly published more often, and in more prominent markets, than feminist pieces, the way that female writers are often marketed in a sexualized way that their male peers aren’t, the fact that women who achieve success on a large (and typically male) scale are often viciously made sport of and torn down, and on and on and on and it really gets depressing, seriously, for a girl whose only comfort growing up was in books and in the hope that she might someday write one that would help another girl.

So, did I mention that this piece is meant to be about blogging? And marking the boundaries of your own space re: blogging? And Melissa McEwan, and Shakesville? Well, it is. But to say anything about that, we have to acknowledge this: that, in a publishing climate wherein women’s voices are less valued than men’s, and both women’s writing and women who write are often only considered viable if they can be crammed into “marketable” little not-very-feminist boxes, the Internet and the feminist blogosphere have actually become more reliable, vital, and important sources for feminist writing than old-media sources. When I go to the Barnes & Noble’s “Women’s Studies” section, I find the more well-known second-wave classics, a bunch of recent anthologies (containing essays that are, frequently, written by feminist bloggers), several books by blogger Jessica Valenti, one book by blogger Amanda Marcotte, some anthologies about women being bitches or getting married that have no reason to be in that section at all, and the Suicide Girls book. When I pick up one of the Important magazines of our day, I had better hope it’s The New Yorker, because they publish Ariel Levy: the others don’t tend to provide forums for openly feminist voices very frequently, or at all. When I go to the Internet: well. There’s a wealth of loud, impassioned, intelligent, readable, unapologetically feminist writing there for me. There are in-depth discussions of stories that major media outlets have swept under the rug. There’s complicated, well-informed discussion and debate of gender theory. There are calls for action on national and local issues. There’s everything I want and need, and I wouldn’t know half as much as I do without it. The publishing industry has been, I would LOUDLY argue, very much influenced by the feminist blogosphere: in this decade, more and more professional feminist or feminist-leaning spaces are opening up – spaces like Jezebel, and Broadsheet, and Comment Is Free, which publishes a refreshingly high number of feminists, and yes, when the moon is full, even DoubleX – and these spaces are, surprise, on the Internet, in large part because that’s where the built-in, loyal, passionate readership is located.

Without people like Melissa McEwan, this just would not be the case. She isn’t just participating in the feminist blogosphere: she actively took part in creating it. She does this for low pay (which is its own issue: writing takes time, and you need money to have time, and the people who are getting compensated for their time tend to be men or non-feminist women writers, and does this smell like economic marginalization to you? It is) and she does it all fucking day long, every day of the week. And then her commenters repay her by diligently working to insult her and drive her insane.

Look: we all need this space, right? This ever-expanding, nebulous, no-fees-or-blow-jobs-required-to-enter space known as the “feminist blogosphere,” right? We all know that Shakespeare’s Sister is one of the more important hubs therein, yes? We know that if Shakespeare’s Sister publishes less or (God forbid) stops publishing, everyone loses? Well, then. What I request is this: that, in order to keep this space as vital as it is, we do not become more cruel to each other than the world is already cruel to us, simply because we are mouthy women and mouthy-woman-friendly dudes. I am going to do something that I do not do often, and which will probably get me in some kind of trouble. I am going to approvingly quote I Blame the Patriarchy. More specifically, I am going to approvingly quote its author, on the relationship between her Internet persona (“Twisty”) and her actual self (“Jill”) and how both were involved when she made the – highly controversial! – choice to call a woman a “cuntalina” on a blog where she routinely takes people to task for using that very same kind of language:

Twisty, a staunch dogmatist, probably wouldn’t use the word “cuntalina” to describe some antifeminist knob unless I, Jill, had had it up to here with that relentless, sanctimonious, supercilious Metrical Formula of Internet Feminist Conformity and Propriety, and had given in to the urge to let fly a deeply satisfying misdemeanor, yup, on purpose, because it blows my lobe, this impossible effort to continually accommodate every little stultifying molecule of the feminist archetype… seriously, get off my fucking case already with this hypervigilant radfem hall monitor shit. The policey, self-righteous, gotcha bullshit around here generally is chapping my entire hide. When and if I commit some egregious ideological error that threatens the very fabric of the cosmos I’ll make Twisty fucking cop to it, as you fucking well know if you’ve been reading this blog for more than five minutes.

Now: the “cuntalina” thing is complicated. I’m not going to weigh in on it right now! Because of how complicated it is! But I will say this: when Jill and/or Twisty Fucking Faster says that we’ve got to stop being “hypervigilant radfems” and disagree with each other in a more civil way, something is up.

I owe something to each and every person who reads and comments on this blog. I owe you intellectual honesty, a rigorous dedication to feminist principles, interesting topics, and a truly unprofessional and non-standard usage of exclamation marks and colons. ALSO A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS NOW AND AGAIN WOULD BE NICE. All writers owe at least some of those things to their readers. What I don’t owe anyone – what Melissa McEwan doesn’t owe, what Twisty Jill doesn’t owe, what no woman owes and what too many women have been asked to provide, as writers and as people – is the boundless patience of the Virgin Mary when it comes to how I or my ideas are treated. I am, as has been well-documented, a gigantic asshole to disrespectful commenters. This is because I want you to know exactly who makes the rules here. I started this place because I wanted to write what I wanted, without compromise and without having to make it “marketable” or appealing to a pre-defined audience. That is how it’s going to stay. Because I say so.

Basically, you are, right now, in the futuristic Internet-enabled version of my living room. I will fix you a drink. I will listen to your entertaining anecdotes and serious concerns. Sit on the couch, my friends! It is comfy! Relax here, in this overwrought metaphorical living room of mine! However: if you take a shit on my rug? Things will not work out so well for you. I, when commenting/relaxing in your living room, will try to uphold the same rigorous non-shitting standard of behavior. Like, phrasing disagreement respectfully. Or not asking you to respond to everything I have to say at once, and in the manner I have determined to be appropriate. Or showing up with a big bottle of 2009 I Think You Suck.

Which, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this post, is where I finally get to the point and realize that I am, in fact, writing an open letter to Melissa: it’s your house, lady. Don’t let them trash the place. Throw the fuckers out if they can’t behave.

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Come Ye Now and Heere of the Beating of Tygers

Posted on Monday, June 8, 2009 by Sady
So! My birthday is happening this week! Yes, it is true. As part of my birthday celebration, I went with my mom (hi, Mom! You are not allowed to read this blog!) to the Cloisters. Goodness, I love the Cloisters. They are beautiful. Also? They will bum you right out.

Thinking about Ye Medieval Tymes, in general, will bum you out. No literacy, no birth control, no rights (you got married off around puberty! Also, your husband could beat or kill you if you somehow managed to develop any independent sexuality after that, and slept with a dude of your choice!), most people were incredibly poor, lots didn’t even live past childhood (which is why your life would probably be spent pumping out baby upon baby upon baby until your body gave out), and maybe the closest you could get to self-determination would be to join a nunnery and spend your life within the EVEN MORE HUGELY AND GROTESQUELY MISOGYNIST church of the day. Also, no plumbing? And bathing was frowned upon? So your whole life would smell like poop? I am no scholar, but I am pretty confident that Ye Medieval Tymes sucked for everyone, and particularly for girls.

Which is why I am so glad that I am finally reading The Book of the City of Ladies, by Christine de Pizan. It is one of the first – if not the first – feminist texts ever written! And it is so, so good! Now, if I am ever transported accidentally into the terrible hell-world that was Ye Medieval Tymes, I know exactly what I will do: run away to France and hang out with Christine. Witness:

Following the practice that has become the habit of my life, namely the devoted study of literature…

Got to love a book by a lady that opens this way! In 1405!

… one day as I was sitting in my study, surrounded by books on many different subjects, my mind grew weary from dwelling at length on the weighty opinions of authors whom I had studied for so long.
In case you are missing this, Christine de Pizan is opening this – her book on feminism, which she wrote, before feminism existed, and before books on feminism existed, because she is basically inventing feminist literary criticism, right now, before your eyes – by reminding you that she is very smart. She is probably smarter than you! She has almost definitely read more books than you have! Also: she is a woman. Just letting you know about that, is what Christine de Pizan is doing. Also? The book she read this afternoon was kind of awful. And:

It made me wonder how it happened that so many different men – and learned men among them – have been and are so inclined to express both in their speaking and in their treatises and writings so many devilish and wicked thoughts about women and their behavior. Not only one or two… judging from the treatises of all philosophers and poets, and from all the orators – it would take too long to mention their names – it seems that they all speak from one and the same mouth.

Okay. Are you following this? Christine de Pizan reads. A lot. Christine de Pizan notes that pretty much every book, if it touches on women, says dickish things about them. (It is as if there is some prejudice against women, or something! Some sort of “privilege” or “oppression” thing going on!) Christine now gets really bummed, and is like, “what if all these guys are right, and women are awful? Gosh, I wish I were a dude, because they are perfect.” (No, really – she wishes to be “as perfect as a male is said to be,” because one of the things that is not often noted about Christine de Pizan is that she is amazingly funny.) Then, THE IMMORTAL SPIRITS OF REASON, RECTITUDE, AND JUSTICE – which are all ladies! By sheer coincidence! In the work of Christine de Pizan – come down from the heavens and tell her to snap out of it, because women are just fine, and they are here to tell her why she should not listen to all of those annoying author guys. And to deliver some hilarious takedowns!

For here is where the book shifts gears, and I learn that Christine de Pizan is, in fact, my long-lost medieval soulmate. For The Book of the City of Ladies, upon close examination, is revealed to be Tiger Beatdown: Ye Olden Tymes Edition (if, you know, Tiger Beatdown was anywhere close to being this good). Let’s just listen, shall we?

QUESTIONS WHICH SHE PUT TO REASON, AND HOW REASON REPLIED TO HER

… “My lady, how does it happen that Ovid, who is thought to be one of the best poets – although many learned men say, and I would also judge it so, in any case thanks to your correcting me, that Virgil is much more praiseworthy and his works seem to me much more important –

Ha, yes! It is not that Christine de Pizan has anything against Ovid. Christine de Pizan has been told about how great he is and everything, so it’s not Christine de Pizan’s place to deliver an incredibly mean criticism of Ovid or anything. But, you know how some men say that Virgil is a lot better than Ovid? I mean. Tell Christine de Pizan if she’s wrong. But that seems reasonable. Maybe The Immortal Spirit of Reason Itself could weigh in with some thoughts on Ovid, maybe, hmmm?

– that Ovid attacks women so much and so frequently, as in the book he calls Ars Amatoria, as well as in the Remedia Amoris and other of his volumes?”

She replied, “Ovid was a man skilled in the learned craft of poetry, and he possessed great wit and understanding in his work.”

Ah, we’re going easy on Ovid, I see. OH SHIT WAIT NO:

“However, he dissipated his body in every vanity and pleasure of the flesh, not just in one romance, but he abandoned himself to every woman that he could, nor did he show restraint or loyalty, and so he stayed with no single woman. In his youth he led this life as much as he could, for which in the end he received the fitting reward – dishonor and loss of possessions and limbs…

Yes, Ovid was a filthy man-skank. Tell your friends! Isn’t it crazy that people are founding their ideas about women on a guy with such dubious moral authority? Really, I don’t see how this takedown could get any meaner or any more personal. Unless…

… when afterwards, thanks to the influence of several young, powerful Romans who were his supporters, he was called back from exile and failed to refrain from the misdeeds for which his guilt had already punished him, he was castrated and disfigured because of his faults… when he saw that he could no longer lead the life in which he was used to taking his pleasure, he began to attack women with his subtle reasonings, and through this effort he tried to make women unattractive to others.”

Oh, daaaaaaaamn. See? Don’t worry, ladies. Ovid is just mad at you because he’s bitter! Because he has no genitals! Yes, a genital-free man of extremely dubious moral authority: that is Ovid. Gosh, he certainly was a man learned in the craft of poetry, though!

Now: The Book of the City of Ladies is definitely a product of its times, in terms of its ideas about scholarly responsibility. For example: as far as I can tell, Christine de Pizan was the only person to argue that Ovid was called back from exile and subsequently had his junk cut off. On the other hand: Christine de Pizan was frustrated with Ovid and dealt with this by writing a book in which she said that Ovid literally had no balls, holy Christ, that is amazing. And its coyness – letting the really vicious stuff rip via The Immortal Spirit of Reason, or Justice, etcetera – leads to some truly fun passages. Such as this:

I can assure you that these attacks on all women – when there are so many excellent women – have never originated with me, Reason, and that all who subscribe to them have failed utterly and will continue to fail.

Yes: Christine de Pizan has summoned the spirit of EPIC FAIL upon misogyny. There are many excellent women, my friends! Christine de Pizan just so happens to be one of them.

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Who Has Written a Piece About Race And Gender In "Obsessed?" In JUNE?

Posted on Friday, June 5, 2009 by Sady
That would be me, my friends! I have been planning it forever, I have been holding off – as per suggestion – until its UK debut, I have had my spot uncomfortably stolen by Elizabeth Wurtzel (WURTZEL WILL HAVE HER REVENGE, I tell you; never cross that woman, not even in Gchat format) and now, NOW, the Obsessed piece is upon you! And upon the Guardian’s Comment is Free!

What can Beyonce teach us about female aggression? This is a question I do not often have cause to ask. Regardless, I am asking it today. For, after a nasty couple of weeks in which the coverage of women’s issues has been dominated by news of conflict between women (the classy among us refer to it as “catfighting”), I found myself with a free afternoon, a few dollars of spending money and (naturally enough) a ticket to Ms Knowles’s latest motion picture event, Obsessed.

Obsessed, in case you haven’t heard, is a movie whose marketing platform (and vaguely shocking US box-office success) is based almost entirely on the promise that, should you elect to view it, you will get to see Beyonce beat some other woman up.

That woman is Ali Larter, an actress I have come to admire for her commitment to appearing exclusively in terrible, campy B-movies. Final Destination, Resident Evil: Extinction, Varsity Blues – these are Larter’s bread and butter. “This will not be a high-quality film,” Larter seems to convey with her presence in a movie. “And, to be honest, is that what you wanted? Probably not! If you did, you would not have purchased a ticket for a movie starring me.”

Go read the rest of it. Yell at me a little! For shockingly, there are not so many comments on the piece. CiF readers: I neeeeeeeeeed your yelling, like the sunshine. Everybody’s got to yell, sometimes!

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Sexist Beatdown: The Future of Comedy Edition!

Posted on Friday, June 5, 2009 by Sady
Hey. You know what I don’t write about very often? Dude comedies! Specifically, “slacker man-child eventually embraces maturity and/or women which are both about as fun as having his genitals personally mutilated by Lars von Trier” dude comedies, of the type popularized by one Judd Apatow!

Oh, wait, no. That is ALL I write about, pretty much! Regardless: I have found a staunch defender of the Dude Comedy in one Amanda Hess of The Sexist! In this week’s installment of Sexist Beatdown, we discuss the subtle charms of the bro-com, share tales of how Judd Apatow ended our own personal relationships, and ask a VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION: where are all the funny, immature, non-traditionally-gendered, somewhat self-destructive ladies? (HINT: They are all having mean things written about them by Linda Hirshman.) Behold our scintillating dialogue!

ILLUSTRATION: I found this on the Internet. Now you have to see it, too.

SADY: hello there lady. are you prepared – prepared, that is, to debate the fine points of dude comedy?

AMANDA: i can’t say i’m as prepared as you are, sady. but i am willing to confess: i believe that i enjoyed nearly all the films you profiled in your apatow series. when i saw them. in the theater.

SADY: yes, it’s true: apatow has become my great white whale. he is basically all i think about these days. i dream in Apatowvision. well: i enjoyed some of them too! (shhhhhh.) I enjoyed “Knocked Up” immensely, for example.

AMANDA: i CRIED at the end of knocked up. i was on a really bad date, which may have had something to do with it.

SADY: OH GOD. YOU SHARE MY TERRIBLE SECRET. i cried too. also, broke up with the dude i saw it with?

AMANDA: same. well i’m glad we’ve cleared the air.

SADY: yeah. my reactions to “knocked up” kind of define my relationship to the Apatow canon. I was totally digging Leslie Mann’s character – oh, that poor lady! She is totally at the end of her rope! – and then left the theater, and discussed it with people, and realized that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ROOTING FOR PAUL RUDD. In that particular sub-plot.

AMANDA: i think i had the same reaction as you did, honestly. i thought she was sympathetic, but totally pathetic. all of apatow’s male characters are pathetic, too, but they seem to ease out of that gracefully without having to think about it too much.

SADY: right – plus, they are pathetic in a totally fun way! they get to hang out and do bong hits and fart on each others’ pillows and such! so, by the end, where it’s like, “sadly, we realize that procreative monogamy with one of these strange ‘woman’ creatures is necessary to maturation” you kind of get their sadness at giving up the pillow farts and lightbub battles. whereas women are just grown-ass-adults by the time they hit puberty, apparently. or at least they’re scripted that way.

AMANDA: yeah, so the women are just haggard at the end. one thing your reviews always touch on are these coiteries of man-children that apatow scripts. and you mention the rejoinder from defenders of the movie that ‘you’re not supposed to LIKE or IDENTIFY with them.’ and i do think that you are supposed to like these characters, and even like them for (and not despite of) their date rape punch-lines. but they’re still in a context, i think, where they’re there to provide a contrast to the hero of the story. their douchiness must be overcome, basically.

SADY: yeah, exactly. they’re given such loving attention, and their little world of date-rape jokes and vague bromosocial lady-avoidance is presented as so much fun. so you forgive them for being immature in order to forgive your own immaturity, like, “well, my wife may be at home sobbing but i can’t help it! i’m a regular bro!” and then you get a Valuable Life Lesson that sticks for maybe ten to fifteen minutes.

AMANDA: … but they’re funny!

SADY: it’s true! sometimes they really really are! I subconsciously repeat Jonah Hill’s pronunciation of “abortion” as “shmushmortion” at least once a week! and then i realize it’s a joke about making a lady have an abortion because obviously her fetus is YOUR decision!

AMANDA: yeah. and apatow’s versions of women i cannot excuse. they are either bitches or whores. but caricatures of douchebags, even lovable ones, i cannot resist. see: paul rudd in wet hot american summer. i think it’s just possible to love the character and not the character if they were a person.

SADY: exactly. question: where the lady douchebags at? where are the stoned ladies that can’t get it together to have an actual apartment, and get jobs that require nothing of them because they’re afraid real jobs would be too much of a commitment, and pretend to be gandalf or some business when no-one’s looking? the ladies who would rather watch “the muppet show,” again, than do anything useful with their lives? WHERE ARE THOSE LADIES? Because I want movies about them! They exist! So I am told in a way that has nothing to do with my own personal life, at all.

AMANDA: i know, which is why I desperately want Apatow to write a movie for them. partly because i think his brain might explode, but also because i think it would be funny.

SADY: exactly. like, writing a movie about a lady that is not a sexy/stupid harlot or a knife-tongued scold would be fantastic. because the closest we’ve got to an Apatowomany character, right now, is Juno. I DON’T WANT JUNO.

AMANDA: sometimes i look at popular culture and i think of the female characters who have had abortions and i get really sad that like carrie bradshaw is the only one i can think of. but that’s a tangent.

SADY: yes, well, my forthcoming feature movie film, “50 First Abortions,” will be an exciting new direction for film, i think.

AMANDA: indeed. I think we should start a letter campaign that mirrors the request of Pixar to make a film with a heroine who is not a princess.

SADY: but, you know? i think that women have all the same maturity/commitment/not-being-an-idiot problems that these dudes have. PLUS, what with all the work we have to do to make our bodies presentable, there are many more occasions for gross jokes about our inherent schlubbiness. HUMOROUS BIKINI WAXING SCENE? I think so!

AMANDA: because us girl-women desperately need an Apatowian heroine who is not a boring slut

SADY: Right. Plus, I would love to see a movie that is just mostly women TALKING to each other, and having FUN. you never see that! unless it is in “Sex & the City!” And then it’s like, “blah blah blah shoes new boyfriend!” ZZZZZZZZ.

AMANDA: but does this mean our love interests are going to be Boring Professional Dude Who Doesn’t Understand?

SADY: deep in my soul, I say yes. Just to bother the dudebros. Make them all be played by John Corbett, and have them be like, “look! We have got to get married! Because, ADULTHOOD! Also, please stop playing the Wii for five seconds and clean the damn kitchen with me!” But no, I don’t think there’s any reason, really, why you can’t have two equally funny and interesting genders. EVEN IN A MOVIE.

AMANDA: that’s crazy! i also think it might be interesting if apatow would produce a film with a female director. a la one of the greatest Dude Comedies of all time, Wayne’s World.

SADY: WHAAAAAT. this was the work of A LADY? Tell me more! I knew there was a reason Tia Carrere sort of had a personality!

AMANDA: yeah, perhaps that’s why there is a “GRATUITOUS SEX SCENE” joke instead of a gratuitous sex scene? who can tell?

SADY: seriously. it’s just gross because there are (a) so few female directors and (b) so many stereotypes about women and comedy (namely, that we can’t do it because of our vaginas) that it’s kind of nuts to know that this huge – and, i believe, very humorous – dude comedy was directed by a lady and I don’t know who she is. I don’t know who ANY lady directors are. kathryn bigelow? kelly reichardt? SOFIA COPPOLA? yep, that’s it. i’m depressing myself now.

AMANDA: well, once 50 first abortion hits …

SADY: right? “you’ve got to stop having all these abortions!” “sorry, i forgot where the condoms were!” “let’s get totally married!” SUCH IS THE DIALOGUE OF MY FUTURE COMEDY HIT. you will laugh! you will cry! you will get an abortion!

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Ned Hepburn and Gus Menary: Ain’t No Party Like a Boner Party, ‘Cause a Boner Party… Well, It Really Should Stop

Posted on Thursday, June 4, 2009 by Sady
Ah, blogging. So futuristic! So full of promise! Such a way for people to connect! For example: sometimes, while blogging, you can connect with people by being a total dick. Then, people will connect with you for the express purpose of pointing out what a dick you are! This can be kind of uncomfortable. Such is the sad tale of Ned Hepburn and Gus Menary, the two gentlemen behind the hit comedy website Boner Party.
Now, the Boner Party is, as you may have noticed, on the Tumblr, a site that I have just recently figured out (WHAT I HAVE FIGURED OUT: it is Livejournal, but for sexy people). So are the personal blogs of Hepburn and Menary! So, when Menary posted a charming little bit on the new, underreported, decidedly unstereotypical and unsexist true fact that women – have you heard about this? – are not funny, this made its way, through Tumblcentric means, to my personal “dashboard.”

Goodness! Thought I, arrested in the flow of Tumbling. It would appear that this gentleman writes for a comedy website! Let’s see how funny that is!

Ladies, gentlemen, the writing of Ned Hepburn on Boner Party:

women, you’re still fucking crazy. its not fair that you have this sort of power over us because its like giving your keys to a Kennedy. you make irrational decisions. you collect shoes. you have periods at the same time as other women just because you are in the same vicinity as them what the fuck is that about that is some fucking werewolf shit im fairly fucking sure. i’m also fairly sure a woman invented The Snuggie. a sizable minority of you fucking ENJOY Sex & The City (hint: anyone who likes that show is a secret whore). so its totally NOT fair. sure, we think farts are fucking hilarious and cry at Wonder Years episodes when nobody is around, but women – fuck – to put it in the simplest way possible: you can’t “emotion” your way out of a problem.

The rest of the site is about women they would like to fuck! Delightful! I, of course, publicized my findings immediately. Yes, that’s right: I take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the downfall of professional comedy website The Boner Party. (Not its real name. Its real name is BONERPARTY!!!, which I refuse to type, because even I find those exclamation marks egregious.) For several folks weighed in, afterwards, to note that, not only were they not funny (ha ha, women have periods! Sex & the City existed, and all women everywhere watched it! Women destroy men’s lives by existing!) they were also frat-boy sexists dressed up in vague approximations of hipster clothing. That is to say, they were giant dicks.

Now, sadly, Ned Hepburn and Gus Menary have shifted gears from acting like giant dicks to acting like giant… well:

ARTIST’S REPRESENTATION: What Ned Hepburn and Gus Menary Are Totally Acting Like Right Now.

In addition to writing multiple posts on how not-sexist they are, and one post on how women who object to sexism will be treated to a thoughtful and considerate deep-dicking by either Hepburn or Menary, they are bemoaning the loss of “200 followers,” and saying things such as “obviously there is a time and place for men to ruminate on the nature of femininty, to have opinions, which however wrong they may be, can be changed… may this be a lesson to all the (ACTUALLY degrading) porn Tumblr blogs out there.” That was Hepburn. And Menary, who is delightful enough to quote at length:

As for BonerParty!!!… Yeah. You’re right. That’s what it is. Congratulations. You cracked the code. What’d you expect? But I would argue that it flips the intention on those more visceral thoughts and can really get to the crux of what attracts us (men) to women. There is nothing wrong with sex or fantasizing about it or the lead-up that precedes it, which Bonerparty!!! and Ned especially, excel at capturing. As evidenced, people and not just “frat dudes” or “dumb girls” identify. Are you willing to say all these people are wrong?

Why, yes! Yes, I am! I am not of the opinion that sexism is an unpopular thing!

(Hepburn, for the record, also left a comment on a friend’s blog to note that her jokes about his prowess in the boudoir were “sexist towards men,” because clearly (a) his weiner stands in for all men, everywhere, and an affront to Ned Hepburn is an affront to Manhood Itself, and (b) only men are allowed to make blog posts about how well they imagine people of the opposite gender would facilitate their orgasms.)

But I am trying not to be mean, these days. This is hard, because Hepburn and Menary are clearly wusses of the highest degree, really the Platonic ideal of “you can dish it out but you can’t take it,” and it’s tempting to be mean to those people simply in the hopes that it will help them to get the point. However! Let’s move beyond them. Let’s make this relevant. Let’s talk about how sexism works: specifically, “benevolent sexism.” A topic I have been wanting to address for some time!

Here is a regrettable fact for you: some men really, really, really hate women. I’ve met them! They are very scary! They do things like hit women, and rape them! We all agree that those things are bad, and based in woman-hating, right? (Right, Ned? Right, Gus? Good, I’m glad you follow me.) It’s hard to miss how much they hate women, with the hitting and the raping and all.

However, the vast majority of men, in my own personal experience, do not hate women. They like women. They have the best of intentions toward women. They even agree that hating women is gross and bad, when it takes the form of hitting and raping. Also? The vast majority of those men? Still totally sexist.

For example: they assume they have the natural, God-given right to fuck a different girl every week, yet think that ladies who get around are “kind of slutty.” (This is especially fun when you are the “kind of slutty” girl who has made the choice to fuck them – for which choice they must, of course, condemn you.) They don’t broach serious topics with you, out of respect for your tiny lady-brain, but when you raise those topics, they lecture and condescend and talk over you even when it’s apparent that you know more than they do. They don’t see why they can’t talk publicly about whether or not they’d “hit that”; they know that rape and domestic abuse and stuff like that is bad, but don’t see why they can’t tell jokes about it; and, you know, it’s not that they hate women or anything, but they don’t see why they can’t call someone a slut or a tease or a cunt or an uptight bitch if she is, you know, acting like one. Also? They know it’s not PC? But they think that women, with their emotions and hormones and stuff, are… um… crazy.

They don’t hate women, though! They haven’t hit any, or raped any! So, if you call them “misogynist” or “sexist,” they will check to make sure that they don’t remember any hittings or rapings, conclude that they haven’t done those very bad things, and dismiss you. They forget that condescending to women, objectifying them (not fantasizing about them sexually, but defining them as objects that are only good for sexual fantasy or sex), and thinking about them in terms of demeaning stereotypes is also sexism. That’s just normal bro-stuff! They are normal!

Yes, Virginia and/or Ned Hepburn and/or Gus Menary, sexism is normal. It is a huge part of culture. Men are raised with male privilege, which allows and encourages sexism, and disallows women from challenging it (or stereotypes them as “militant feminists” who are angry and bitter and un-funny if they do). Every man, I am telling you – along with, unsurprisingly, many women – has some sexist attitudes that he needs to address, even if he is the nicest and most well-meaning man in the world, because every man is raised in this current world, where the norm is sexist. I know several men who are very nice and well-meaning, and I like them very much, and on occasion I have had to point out that they are being sexist! Because I get that it is not conscious! I have had to be like, “excuse me, friend/boyfriend/coworker/what-have-you, I understand that you mean well, but please back the fuck up, stop treating me like a girl, and start treating me like a person.” The guys who are actually decent people listen, and stop with the sexist behaviors! The others… well.

Part of male privilege is that you don’t have to listen to people when they call you out on your sexism. There are so many, many, many convenient stereotypes that you can use to dismiss them! And the world will back you up! That is what “privilege” means! So, your commitment to listening and changing the way you behave – your commitment to not being sexist any more, and to not getting defensive when people point your sexism out to you – really doesn’t rest on anything but whether or not you are a good person. Whether or not you genuinely care about women enough to listen to them when they speak about things that are disrespectful, hurtful, or holding them back. Or, whether you want to pay lip service to women being humans, and continue with the frat-boy/”ironic” lady-hating.

The question, Gus and Ned, isn’t whether you’re sexist. The next step isn’t explaining why you are not sexist. You’re sexist. It’s obvious. You got caught out, and you got called out. So: the question isn’t how you’re going to defend yourself. (YOU CANNOT, AT THIS POINT, DEFEND YOURSELF.) It’s how you’re going to change.

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TRIUMPHS! Of Original Filmmaking! And, HUMOR!

Posted on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Sady
Say, have you heard about this The Hangover movie? Probably not; it is a little art-house picture destined to be seen only by the more discriminating cinemaphile. Oh, wait, no! It is that movie where the trailers and the posters and the press and the whatnot are already everywhere, and they greenlighted a sequel (THE HANGOVER 2: IT TURNS OUT I AM STILL HUNG OVER, WHAT WITH ALL THE DRINKING) before it even hit any movie theaters or made any cash money for the studios!

Yes, the motion-picture making establishment is certainly confident in The Hangover! Eerily confident, actually. Why, it’s almost as if they already know exactly who will watch it and why… as if this movie adheres to some kind of well-trodden formula or something… as if… no. NO.

Awwwww, crap. It’s one of those. Again. (Although I do appreciate the construction of the headline – the “fun” in “eternal frat boys” is something that needs “finding” now! MEN WHO ACT LIKE CHILDREN, IF CHILDREN WERE TOTAL ASSHOLES, AND ALSO HAD ISSUES WITH WOMEN: A Neglected Topic in Cinema, Experts Find!) I could quote this article at you, but it is full of lines such as, “‘Old School,’ about middle-aged men who start their own fraternity… made the theaters safe for countless more regressive male comedies” – um, yay? – and yeah, I guess you have to write lines like those if you are writing an article like this, because you probably cannot interview Todd Phillips and then turn in a piece that is like “turns out Todd Phillips is making yet another stupid fucking movie about the dudebros! He tried to taser Zach Galifianakis in the face, also. I wish I were writing about Werner Herzog.” So, let’s move on.

Let’s move on to the by-all-accounts-quite-graphic blowjob scene! Ha ha, DID I NOT MENTION THE BY-ALL-ACCOUNTS-QUITE-GRAPHIC BLOWJOB SCENE? Because there is one – a by-all-accounts-quite-graphic blowjob scene, that is – in The Hangover! NY Vulture blog reports: “The film ends with the main characters discovering a camera that contains photographs of their disastrous guys’ night out… there are also several explicit photographs of Zach Galifianakis receiving a full-on blow job from a middle-age woman. Like with close-ups and everything!”

Oh, my goodness! The hilarity quotient of The Hangover rises with each piece of news I hear! Let’s count the ways in which this – the by-all-accounts-quite-graphic blowjob scene in The Hangover – is inherently funny:

  1. Zach Galifianakis is fat! Ha ha, a FAT person, having SEX? I chortle just thinking about such a ridiculous and unlikely scenario.
  2. The woman is “middle-age.” Not YOUNG, like the women with whom one OUGHT to be having sex. If you are keeping count, 1 not-thin person + 1 not-young woman + 1 sex act = one MILLION laughs!
  3. Ha ha, the male genitalia! That’s certainly not something you would expect to see in a major motion picture! Well: unless you have seen the male genitalia in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Walk Hard, and Stepbrothers, and… oh, forget it. THE MALE GENITALIA! IN A MOVIE!
  4. Also, sex exists? I find this inherently hilarious! Nothing could be more shocking and transgressive to me than one of the more basic and universal human activities. Boobies! Weiner! Vagina! Butts! Ha ha ha ha ha.
  5. That stupid slut got caught making porn. Ha ha, why don’t you suck a guy off some more, slut? Everyone is looking and laughing at you, because of how slutty you are! I feel so superior to that stupid slut who got caught making porn, you guys. Also, in no way inspired to pass equally harsh judgment on the protagonist of the film, whose dick she is sucking? It’s weird how movies encourage me to feel that way sometimes. Almost like they just assume I am a horrible person, who doesn’t get how fucked up this is, and are cynically pandering to my stupid fucked-up self without challenging me or offering me any new insights, maybe because they don’t think smart or decent people buy movie tickets? Anyway! That girl’s a slut, and it’s funny!
  6. Have I mentioned that Zach Galifianakis is fat?

So, there you have it: six reasons why people who appreciate sharp, intelligent humor, which in no way relies on stereotypes, worn-out tropes, or the lowest common denominator of humanity, will totally love and be inspired to purchase tickets for The Hangover, the hugely original comedy that studios have already decided will be the smash hit of the summer. The Hangover fever: catch it! In time for the sequel! Which is already happening! And there is no way you can stop it! The Hangover: probably not worse than an actual hangover, pretty much!

Now, you’ll pardon me while I go test that last theory.

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SALETAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! No, Seriously. Saletan. WHY?

Posted on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 by Sady
Say, remember yesterday, when I was like, “I really need to stop making fun of other writers, because they are just doing their jobs, and their jobs may be pretty tough as it is?” Remember, also, how I was specifically thinking of William Saletan there? (No? I totally was! Thinking of William Saletan, that is!) Have you ever wondered what William “Pro-Choice, and Also Abortion is Murder” Saletan could do to inspire me to go back on that promise? What lines he could cross? What unimaginably stupid and wrong-headed and crass and just plain awful thing he could write to inspire me to go back into the closet and get out the ol’ rocket launcher? Well, HAVE YOU? Because:

Yep, that’ll do it. Hey, let’s check out the lede!

If abortion is murder, the most efficient thing you could have done to prevent such murders this month was to kill George Tiller.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Now, perhaps unsurprisingly, William Saletan does not actually take the side of a for real, honest to God murderer, who shot someone, with a gun, in his column. He is just using the patented Saletan Curveball (BLAM) to reel us in and/or cause us to damage our computer monitors by throwing cell phones at them. (What? Just me?) No, the bulk of the article itself is just more of the “I am totally pro-choice! Also, abortion is like killing toddlers with a machine gun! You should totally be able to have an abortion, though! But it will make you a terrible person if you actually do” waffling that is so characteristic of Saletan, who (I really regret having to make this point in every single post about the guy; I do; Saletan, if you have a Google Alert set up for your name, please know that I bet you are a perfectly nice person) is notably missing the plumbing necessary for a pregnancy and/or abortion and should therefore maybe leave the choice-making up to those of us who do. Like, for example:

To me, Tiller was brave. His work makes me want to puke.

Awww, how lovely! I sure do hope Saletan sent this heartfelt tribute to all of George Tiller’s family members and friends. I imagine they would have a lovely time reading it. You know, after the funeral. Because he is dead now, from being murdered.

Anyway, there’s a lot that’s wrong with this article – for example, as Jill at Feministe points out, the use of notably made-up pro-lifer word “abortionist” instead of “doctor.” (Me, I prefer “abortioner,” or “abortionologist,” or “AbortionMatic 2000.”) Or the comparison of abortionology to war, in which you kill actual real live grown-up people with guns (you know, sort of like GEORGE TILLER’S MURDERER) when it is actually a medical procedure in which you remove a not-yet-person from your uterus. I could go into that. I could. But I promised not to be mean. So, I’ll just say, yet again: SALETAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN.

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A Supposedly Feminist Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Mistakes I’ve Made While Blogging

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2009 by Sady
You know, friends: the Tiger Beatdown Internet Infotainment Experience has been around for a while now. Eight months, to be precise! That is like, seventy-seven years, in blog terms! Also, as I have been writing it, I myself have been getting older. I will be twenty-seven years of age soon! That is, like, seventy-nine-hundred years, in terms of how old it makes me feel! (Yes, I know. You are all older than me. I am a tiny infant baby. I should shut up.)

So, in a surprising twist, it turns out that I have a point here. It is this: with age, they say, comes wisdom. While I find this to be personally untrue (with age, for me, comes steadily decreasing lung capacity due to chain-smoking) I will concede that with blog-age has come the determination to be slightly less blog-stupid.

It is tricky, putting your thoughts out there once per day for the world to behold! Especially when you are dealing with a really complicated subject, like the feminism! I have put a lot of thoughts out there that I shouldn’t have! And, considering that I have been nattering on about the feminism for even longer than I’ve been blogging, I’ve put some “feminist” “thoughts” out into the world that haunt me, even though they are not available through Google Search.

What I am saying, here, is that now that I am an old lady (no, I’m not. I KNOW. I will shut up) I have been thinking a lot about responsibility: as a person, as a blogger, as a conductor of ladybusiness. And, after thinking about it, I want to share with you a few lists of things I don’t intend to do in the future.

The first list focuses on mistakes… in BLOGGING!

1. AIMING ROCKET LAUNCHERS AT MOSQUITOES. I like to write about things that are silly and trivial. I know! Are you SHOCKED? I think that misogyny in pop culture is important; I think that even the small things can help to show how the larger structures and myths of sexism function; I will probably never be your source for intelligent, measured critiques of US economic policy, but I am pretty definitely going to see “Funny People” and blog about it, because whatever. Nevertheless! Getting worked up and unleashing all of my rhetorical fury on some weird mommy-issues-having dude who writes a blog, or an obscure op-ed, or a vaguely-but-not-really-but-actually-yes-vaguely-offensive article only wastes my time and yours and it makes me look (sshhhhhh) hysterical. Even though, when I do these things, I am not actually hysterically angry, or even all that angry. I am just bored.

2. ALLOW ME TO USE THE INTERNET TO DEMONSTRATE THAT I AM A DICK. Here is a fact for you: I am a vulgar and immature person. Here is another fact: as a young writer, I had it drilled into me, again and again, that I should basically never criticize another writer publicly, ever, because they would, as the Mortal Kombat game says, finish me. As a vulgar and immature person, I had but one recourse: to start a blog, where, if it so pleased me, I could express my well-reasoned ideological disagreements by saying that so-and-so, in addition to being wrong on the issues, is well-known to eat ass for breakfast. (And ass for lunch. For dinner? More ass. It’s a remarkably ass-centric diet, is what I am telling you.) And, you know? I really don’t want to become the sort of person who measures her words so carefully that she’s incapable of outright saying that someone is wrong or acting the fool. I am, however, steadily becoming more aware that people are actually reading this weird Internet thing of mine – and that when I promote a back-handed, arrogant, dismissive, snide attitude, not just toward a particular piece of work, but towards a person (with feelings! And a life! That I know nothing about!) others follow suit. Also: if I’m just feminism’s playground bully, there’s really no reason for anyone to listen to me or take me seriously. I’m not accomplishing anything if I devote most of my time to being a dick.

3. OH, LOOK, AN ARGUMENT! I MUST TAKE SIDES AT ONCE! I love an argument! I basically think conversations can only get better when people are unafraid to challenge each other, or call each other out. However: it is my understanding that lots of people do not like an argument as much as I do; they apparently find them hurtful and unpleasant. And, even in the high-minded world of ladyblogging, it’s tough to keep arguments issue-focused. You know how it goes, when an argument goes south: an argument ensues, people appeal to the folks around them for backup, teams form, old resentments and grudges are unearthed, a lot of people are like “hum de dooo de dooo, not getting involved, la la laaaaaaa,” someone else makes passive-aggressive comments about people who refuse to get involved in the argument (these can be made to sound very issue-based! Which is even more annoying when you realize that they are, in essence, somebody going “X smells bad and I hate her and you aren’t helping me hate X, WHY, now I hate you too”) and before long it’s all about who you like and who you don’t like and NOT the issue at hand. (Note: THIS IS NOT ALWAYS HOW IT GOES. It does go this way sometimes, though.) And then I, a person whose opinion nobody asked for, show up on the scene with one of my very useful blog posts! Which add nothing to the discussion, lots of times, and really only give me an excuse to work out my own personal thoughts on the issue being discussed! Here’s how I would like this to go in the future: not like that. So, when an argument raises important issues, I plan to, you know, WRITE ABOUT THE ISSUES. And not about how X thinks Y is a big stinky poophead and have you heard about it and ooooh let’s add fuel to the fire, it is so warm and shiny and whoops, HOWDITGETGETBURNED, HOWDITGETBURRRRRRRND. Yeah, no more of that, please, Sady.

4. REPEATING THE PARTY LINE BEFORE I UNDERSTAND IT. It is tough to determine whether this belongs in the “blogging mistakes” post or the “feminism mistakes” post. However, it’s really a problem with writing – so, here you go. Feminism is a complex philosophy (yes! I would describe it as “a philosophy!”) with lots of differing lines of thought, and arguments which link back to other arguments, and variations on a theme. You’ve got your Radical Feminists, your third-wave feminists part A: Reclaiming Femininity and Sexuality, your third-wave feminists part B: It’s All About Intersectionality, your second-wave feminists who are glad about the third-wavers, your second-wave feminists who hate them and use words like “funfeminist” and “empowerful” and think intersectionality is just an excuse to place women last (DO. NOT. GET that one, really – there’s going to be a whole blog post on that at some point), your third-wavers who don’t seem to get the point at all and just want to trash the second-wavers for being so old and earnest because that’s helpful, and basically it can be hard to look over all this and write only what you know to be true, rather than buying into some pre-packaged feminism that contains a lot of concepts for you to mouth before you truly understand them. But when I look back at the blog posts that really, really make me cringe – there are a lot of them, actually! – the chief mistake I made was always endorsing an argument before I’d analyzed it. This is not to say that the arguments were always wrong! (Some of them were wrong.) It is to say that I was writing what someone else would say, or what I thought I was supposed to say, rather than what I actually knew and believed. And it doesn’t make sense to say anything, ANYTHING, about this incredibly complex and rewarding and necessary discipline of feminism before you know what you are talking about. So. I’m going to write my take on things, from now on, and not anyone else’s.

4. WAS THIS JOKE FUNNY THE FIRST TIME? NO? HOW ABOUT THE SECOND? Or the third, or fourth time? By the time I reach iteration number 50 of this particular joke, I trust you will be well-acquainted with its subtle intricacies and laughter-generating potential! Basically, the thing I would like you to think about – carefully, and at length – is how funny this joke is, and how much funnier it will become after I have told it in eighty-seven different versions. For example! What if I ended several short sentences with exclamation points?! HUMOR!

Oh, OK. I’m not going to stop doing this. Sorry. It is the Tiger Beatdown way.

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Everyone Can Succeed! But Not, You Know, At Music!

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 by Sady

Oh my god. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. The best thing ever has happened. Are you ready for it? BECAUSE HERE IT IS:

Okay. I am aware – thanks to numerous posts on the subject – that some of you may not be able to make it all the way through this without having a rage-based aneurysm. Others may simply object to awful rapping! Therefore, I shall provide you with some of the highlights.

0:40: He is one man! (Well, two. I guess.) He is outnumbered! He is the Miss California!

0:45: “Can’t support abortion and call yourself a Christian” = BABY WEARING SANTA HAT! Don’t abort! Think of the Santa babies!

0:53: Black-and-white “SOCIALISM” graphic. Seemingly unrelated to lyrics. Still awesome.

1:09: Oh God! The other, taller guy started rapping! He is even more terrible! Thank you, Internet, for giving me this beautiful gift. The tears you see, streaming down my face? They are tears of joy.

1:15: DRILL, BABY, DRILL. Yessssssssssssssssssss.

1:16: Ha ha, I don’t hate you, Giant Conservative. Even though you are praying for me. I hope you live a long, happy life, and continue to think you have various talents that you do not actually have, so that you can post videos of them on YouTube. Young Conservative Rodeo Clowns, anyone?

1:32: “We need more women with intellectual integrity.” Women like Megyn Kelly! Note to Young Conservatives: “intellectual integrity” does not mean “boobies.”

1:51: “The Bible says we’re a people under God.” Um, I think that is the Pledge of Allegiance, actually? WHATEVER.

2:00: Oooooh, fun blurry effect on the word “soldiers” for no reason. We are heading into hardcore “no such thing as discrimination! Because soldiers die sometimes! And God, and the Bible! I’m gonna fuck me a fish” territory now.

2:55: OMG WTF HOLY CRAP THE BRIDGE SUPERMAN WATERBOARDING YAYYYYYYY

3:10: “Jesus, Ronald Reagan, plus Atlas Shrugged.” I LITERALLY JUST SCREAMED AT MY DESK. I CAN’T LET GO OF THE ALL CAPS. I THINK I MIGHT PEE MYSELF. THIS IS TOO EXCITING.

3:58: Oh no! They turned into photo negatives, then the song ended! Now it is just a minute and a half of a black screen. You guys. HAS THE LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT SILENCED THE YOUNG CONS?

4:38: Click: play. Again.

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