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Sexist Beatdown: Youth Is Wasted On the Young, and Also on GREGG Edition

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2009 by Sady

Oh, Elizabeth Wurtzel. So readable. So relatable (NOTE: this is more true if you are a thirteen-year-old girl). So seriously, seriously problematic and scary.

Like, for example: have you read this new essay of hers, about WHEN BEAUTY FADES? Well, Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I have! It is chock full of the self-loathing and the inappropriate messages for ladies! In it, she states, many many many many times, that she would seriously rather die than not be pretty or get laid any more, laments her age and withered, haglike condition (she is forty-one years old – yep, time to put Grandma in a home) and shares her regrets about the men that got away, AFTER they punched her, threw glass bottles at her, and chased her down the street with frying pans. Because, you know, it’s a shame she didn’t settle down with those dudes. Before it was too late.

Oh, and also, there’s GREGG. GREGG, you see, is the perfect boyfriend. He comes equipped with an extra G on the end of his name, a heaping helping of boyfriendly condescension, and a bottle of Body Shop peppermint foot lotion that he may or may not throw at your head in a fit of pique.

Seriously, you guys. GREGG is so terrible.

ILLUSTRATION: GREGG totally has one of these. He will wear it on all your dates. With his “special” flip-flops.

AMANDA: hello!

SADY: hello lady. your beautiful dream of talking to me while i’m all hopped up on the cough syrup is about to come true. and also we get to talk about how wacky elizabeth wurtzel (still) is! is she not wacky?

AMANDA: she is, Sady. I was introduced to her wackiness at a tender young age, when my mother bought me Prozac Nation. I was maybe 13, so I loved it.

SADY: yes. I recall reading Bitch in junior high. and hiding it from my mom, due to its provocative cover!

AMANDA: looks like she hasn’t “aged well,” though! ha ha … hmmm.

SADY: well… she still has mermaid hair! actually, this article is weird, because it is like, “i am old and ugly now. i should have settled down. however, i am neither old nor ugly, and still have lots of dates and sex.” so, when you’re reading it, it’s like… “sad! umm… happy! umm… happysad?”

AMANDA: but those dates want her for what she used to be (young and not ugly), which leads me to believe, you know, it may be a personal problem. but i think she admits that throughout.

SADY: yeah. i think she still misses gregg. can we talk about how gross gregg, the perfect boyfriend, sounds? is that cruel? “sensitive, an inveterate graduate student who used to rub my feet at the end of the day with a lovely pink peppermint lotion from the Body Shop.”

AMANDA: yeah, who was surprised when he threw a bottle at her face?

SADY: that was a shocking twist! he also pronounced that he was “her only chance at happiness,” and that she would now fail at life, due to not dating GREGG. GREGG is a witch! He laid a curse on her!

AMANDA: i found that part really interesting. a few of the commenters were chastising her for “bragging” about her looks, but i thought she made an interesting point about societal expectations for young women … i definitely identified with that, not with the “beautiful” part, but with the “smart young woman” part. not that i’m old and ugly or anything, but it was always like “you’re so smart, why are you [with him]?” or you’re so smart, why [aren’t you happy]?” stuff like that. and in her case, it turned out to be, you’re so smart and beautiful, why aren’t you with someone like GREGG who doesn’t fucking understand you at all and who does not make you happy? (and throws bottles). (like all your other boyfriends).

SADY: yeah, seriously. i mean, i get that she felt like the world was offered to her – and it was! she was elizabeth wurtzel! – and it still didn’t make her happy, and that would be enough to send anyone into a tailspin. i can identify with that. but also: tying it to your looks seems to gloss over sooooo many of the other problems. like, there’s this undercurrent of abusive bottle-throwing (or lamp-throwing, or frying-pan-chasing-with) relationships that i think it would be worthwhile to get into. yet she seems to blame herself for MAKING the dudes be all abusive, like so: “Now that I am a woman whom some man might actually like to be with, might actually not want to punch in the face—or, at least, now that I don’t like guys who want to do that to me—I am sadly 41.” Ummmm… maybe they did that because they were jerks? Also: maybe it’s good that you DIDN’T STAY WITH ANY OF THEM? Due to the jerk thing?

AMANDA: yeah man. i’m not sure she takes away the same lesson from GREGG—beautiful, perfect, peppermint foot-rubbing, complete jerk—that we might, either. Surely, she can’t be serious that she ACTUALLY THINKS her one chance of happiness was with GREGG?

SADY: Right? I mean, she’s all like, “if only I had stayed with GREGG – a dude i was so unhappy with that I cheated on him, multiple times, and also he broke into my computer, and also he threw a bottle at my face – I would be happy.” Um, probably not. Probably you’d be begging him to throw away his damn hemp necklaces. And then banging the mailman. Interesting fact: Elizabeth Wurtzel passed the BAR EXAM! She became a LAWYER, for a LAW FIRM! I find it interesting that this whole “I wasted my life” thing does not take into account the fact that she has had two separate careers that require a pretty tremendous amount of work and intelligence to pursue. Apparently, if you’re not with GREGG or a GREGG analogue, it’s all for nothing.

AMANDA: points for honesty i guess

SADY: yeah, and wurtzel always gets those points. i just think it’s weird that we have this narrative for women – and you see these pieces ALL THE TIME, it’s not just her – that are like, “i once thought i could date around and not settle down and pursue my career, but now I know I should have SETTLED. For I am SAD, SAD, SAD.”

AMANDA: yeah, but based on her earlier work, i mean, she’s been sad throughout. the essay is just a sequel: “Sad at 40.” that’s not to belittle it — i like her work — but given what we know, i can’t say that 40 has much to do with it.

SADY: exactly. i like a lot of what wurtzel has done, too. yet: it doesn’t make sense to position oneself as a cautionary tale about regret and wasted youth, if your youth was also spent feeling sad. i guess it’s just the positioning of this piece – as a one-more-lady-regrets-not-

settling thing – that i have a problem with. that and the “i’ve finally learned how to make dudes not punch me in the face, because before it was my fault that they did that” thing.

AMANDA: that one little aside … she puts it in parentheses! i would like to read more about that little aside and why it is the case.

SADY: Exactly. That aside, for me, is the story.

AMANDA: i, too, have a lot of problems with this essay, but i think she’s writing about what a lot of women experience and don’t talk about. it’s not acceptable for women to feel that this is “their fault” — but it’s understandable to me why they would feel that way, and productive to talk about that feeling existing. she should write a book about that aside, though.

SADY: Yes, definitely. I would buy that book. Even without the provocative cover.

AMANDA: she should interview all the dudes. that would be great. where is GREGG now?

SADY: Playing acoustic Bob Marley covers on the subway.

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Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 by Sady
Oh, no.

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.

Abu Ghraib abuse photos ‘show rape’

Oh, no.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
I mean: you knew it was happening, right? Even before you knew it was happening, even if you didn’t know it was happening, for sure, until today: you knew it was happening. It was in the context. It was in the other photos, the ones where the rape wasn’t shown. Eroticized violence; sex as violence; sex as humiliation; “feminization” as both violence and humiliation: it’s a dynamic, a dynamic you know, something that’s a part of jokes, fraternity initiations, straight-guy porn, something woven into the culture at such a deep level that you can’t help but recognize it, get that sick taste in the back of your mouth when you see it. Especially when you know where it leads. And you know where it leads. It leads here.

So you knew it was happening.

But now you know it was happening.

Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.

[President Obama] said: “The most direct consequence of releasing [the pictures], I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

Right. Not to point out that military culture is tied to the performance of a very specific, very violent form of masculinity in which to be a “pussy” or a “bitch” or a “faggot” is the worst thing imaginable, that it is a culture that promotes and tolerates pro-rape attitudes, that it is a culture that promotes and tolerates rape. Not to point out that military culture systematically cuts the hearts out of our young men and women, makes them into sociopaths and racists and misogynists and sadists and murderers, in the service of allowing them to more efficiently torture and kill an Other, because recognizing the Other’s humanity would only slow our boys down. Not to point out that rape is inevitably a part of war, that rape is a weapon of war. No. None of those would be the most direct consequence.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

Right. Because we can construct a hierarchy of offenses against the basic humanity of others, in which rape is lower down on the list than pretty much everything else. Because that’s not an argument frequently used by those who wish to minimize the impact of rape or anything. Whatever. The President is telling you that torture is worse than rape. That torture is more sensational than rape. As if rape isn’t torture.

Oh, no.

Oh, Jesus Christ, no, no, no, no, no.

[NOTES: First, you know that “triggering” thing people talk about so much? Here is how that looks, with me: I get VERY VERY ANGRY. So I cut out bits of this that were just anger and not insight. Second, I started writing this after I saw Breslin’s DoubleX post, but before I saw the Shakesville post. You should check the Shakesville one. We have a similar take – which take, apparently, includes the need to type some variant on “oh holy shit” over and over because what else can you say, really? – but Melissa McEwan is, as always, really insightful. And doesn’t go off the deep end, as I tend to do, with the whole scorched-earth anger thing.]

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Blogger, Walk With Me: BOB and Internet Feminism

Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Sady

I am always happy when there is a new post from Emily Magazine in my reader. It is a wonderful little gift! So this post – about women of her generation, and feminism, and inter-lady internet shaming – was exciting to find. It’s really interesting! And you should read all of it!

I don’t quite agree with all of it, however. This bit, for example:

I feel like Rebecca Traister and Linda Hirshman and their ilk imagine a hypothetical audience member — male, I guess, so let’s call him Bob — who is constantly trying to make his mind up, about Women. Bob is on the fence, and everything he hears and reads might sway him. Should women be paid as much as men, should women have the same opportunities as men, can they be trusted to run our corporations, our media, our country? Should they be raped, or not? Rebecca and Linda don’t give Bob much credit for being able to parse ambiguities. They would like everyone’s message to be as crystal clear as possible, so that Bob doesn’t get confused and start raping people. “No, no!” they keep trying to tell him. “Those aren’t women, we are! And we don’t like those women!”

Well. Huh. First of all: Rebecca Traister and Linda Hirshman in the same sentence? Really? Second: As far as I can tell, most people who write about feminism, or Women, are not actually writing for the benefit of men, or Bob. (Reducing this culture’s complex, ambivalent relationship with gender, feminism, and misogyny to one imaginary dude who needs to “make up his mind” about raping women is, yeah, a weird thing, and maybe an explicit attempt to trivialize feminism itself: but whatever, let us roll with it.) That would sort of be missing the point, wouldn’t it? There are a lot of Bobs out there – dudes who never really think about gender or women’s issues because their privilege ensures that they never really have to – and the odds that they’ll be persuaded to care by a post on a ladyblog such as DoubleX or Broadsheet are, well, slim. No, when you are writing feminism, you are writing counter to Bob’s interests, because: Bob doesn’t care about these things! Bob just wants you to tell him which new records to download! Bob wants to hear that Bob is a good person because Bob voted for Obama! The question that Bob asks, when perusing any given news story, is: what about Bob?

It’s not that Bob is against women, per se. No, Bob – along with his non-fence-sitting, openly misogynist cousin, Steve (you may recognize Steve as the guy who likes to log into the Guardian website and leave long, angry comments on all of my articles) – is perfectly comfortable with women, so long as they fit his comfortable little stereotypes of what women ought to be.

Which is where it gets really sticky. I get what Gould is saying here – that telling certain women they ought not to do what they are doing, because it reinforces stereotypes of women, or whatever, is overly judgmental and hurtful. However, I don’t think that objecting to another woman’s writing, or behavior, is always wrong.

It comes down to the difference between Traister and Hirshman, I suppose. Traister wrote an article which was critical of Gould, and which also argued that certain women (young, pretty, prone to confessional writing) are marketed in a highly sexualized way that focuses on their youth, their prettiness, and their personas, rather than on their writing. She also said that giving women who fit this archetype lots of media exposure, and not giving the same kind of exposure to women with different styles and subjects, promotes a limited view of women and of women’s writing. Hirshman, on the other hand, wrote that piece about how if you don’t report your rape you are a rapist. You could argue that these are two examples of the same thing – women criticizing other women. I would argue that they’re not. The difference lies in where you draw the line: when you say that something is too cruel or too personal. According to every standard of reasonable and compassionate behavior, Hirshman’s piece crossed that line. Traister’s did not. There’s also the fact that Traister’s piece was written in response to a particular, reoccurring phenomenon having to do with gender – something feminism is meant to do. Hirshman’s piece, despite its pretense of relevance, was about throwing a shit fit because someone (Megan Carpentier, to be precise) had criticized her work.

Traister actually made a pretty important point in that piece: that the answer is not silencing certain women, but giving more exposure to more women, so that the full diversity of who we are can be accurately represented. Unfortunately, diversity means disagreement. The question is whether you think that having many women’s voices and many female points of view available to the public is more or less important than not being criticized by another woman.

It’s tough to disagree with another woman in public – especially when you like that woman’s work – not least because you just know it will always get spun into some sort of “catfight.” If there’s one thing Bob and/or Steve love, it’s news that women are raw bitches who tear each other down at every opportunity. Yet men have always had the privilege of disagreeing with each other, and of sorting out questions through debate. (Well – this is particularly true of men who are white and/or straight and/or of a certain class. However.) Insisting that any criticism of a fellow woman and/or feminist is a betrayal of women and/or feminism just takes us to the icky terrain so well-covered by that one Onion story.

Is it feminism’s fault that women write critical pieces about each other? Um, yeah, kind of. It’s feminism’s fault that so many of us are writing, I guess. It’s feminism’s fault that so many women feel confident enough in their own opinions to voice them. So maybe it is feminism’s fault that people will speak up and tell you when they think you’re wrong. It can get loud, and it can get ugly, and I still prefer it to silence – or what happens in a lot of mainstream, non-feminist writing, where no-one is trying to convince men of anything, because they’re all busy telling men what they want to hear. The question of who those pieces are written for has a fairly obvious answer.

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And Now: The Agony of COMMENTS OF THE WEEK!

Posted on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 by Sady

Good evening! Do you remember last week, by chance? Last week, when I was all, “oh, my boyfriend is moving in, with me, so I may not be able to blog much, but I will certainly try to blog, and also next week will do far more blogging?” 


Yes. Well. About that. 

You see, friends, I don’t know how you like to move in with your special someone, but what I like to do is get all of the boxes into the house, unpack a bit, and then contract THE DEADLY SWINE FLU. Which is pretty much exactly what I did. I was like, “yay, moving accomplished, I’m so exciteeeeurgh.” Then I lost consciousness. 

Anyway! I am awake now! And have chosen COMMENTS. Here they are! 

Professional misogyny consultant snobographer demonstrates how one might best consult extra misogyny for screen phenomenon Sex & the City: 

I don’t know, Sady. I don’t remember any rape jokes in Sex and the City. Nothing misogynies-up a joint like some rape jokes. You could also easily throw in a scene where Charlotte and Amanda or whoever have an actual physical fight over a pair of Manalos (sp?) and/or some dude.

True enough! Other professional misogyny consultant Ashley takes it one glorious step further: 

I don’t know… Sex and the City does seem to value human intimacy and female friendship. This is a problem for me, as a misogyny consultant. Love cannot be tolerated! What if we replaced Carrie with a bro, perhaps a bro played by Paul Rudd? He could write about how demanding and unreasonable the other three women are for wanting men to be nice to them. Instead of Carrie’s usual column-starting questions, which are impressively vapid but usually lack the kind of misogynistic “punch” I’m looking for, he could start out the episode pondering questions like, “Are women crazy, or just bitchez?”

If we could throw in some jello wrestling and exploding cars, I think we’ve got ourselves a show.

This show gets progressively better! Actually, I plan to replace all four of the women with Paul Rudd (“Cary”), Jason Segel (“Sam”), Jonah Hill (“Charlotte, But a Dude Version”) and Seth Rogen (“Um, Mirando?”). Chris Noth will play some blonde woman who is in all of those movies but whose name I can never remember (“Elizabeth Banks”). 
Finally, metaphor consultant Jess unpacks everything that is wrong with that one Gawker post about how TV is like your wife getting all raped so that she is now worthless, or something. Some of what is wrong with it will surprise you! 

Wow, so the dad just hopes that she makes it to the end of the aisle and the groom doesn’t reject her? He doesn’t worry about getting her to a hospital to treat the injuries? The dad’s reaction is so inappropriate to the scenario that it should have been clear to Cajun Boy that it’s a forced metaphor. I.e. it really doesn’t represent what he’s talking about, which is making a TV show. And then maybe that should have spurred him to think… “hey, does this metaphor totally trivialize rape?!? Oh my, it does! Maybe I should come up with a different metaphor!!”

Thank you! Congratulations! Etc! I hope that you all leave many more comments. Also, that none of you contract THE DEADLY SWINE FLU. Also, that I maintain consciousness long enough to write blog posts for you to comment on. I know! I’m a dreamer! But I’m not the only zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Comedy! Banter! Graphic Rape Scenes!

Posted on Friday, May 22, 2009 by Sady

Say, who likes dudes who use rape as a metaphor for any given experience? You do, you do! So, you are totally going to love this (extremely graphic and disturbing! If this sort of thing upsets you or gives you flashbacks, you should not read it! I rarely give these warnings, but I am serious about this one!) post on Gawker, from contributor The Cajun Boy, sent to me this morning by J. Mastodon:

[MY EXPERIENCE] is sort of like giving birth to a daughter, [WHO IS A METAPHOR FOR MY EXPERIENCE], a daughter that you raise and nurture with tremendous care, and then one day you bring her, beautiful, statuesque, perfect in your eyes, to the church to walk her down the aisle, where a dashing groom, [METAPHOR], is waiting to embrace her on the other end of the aisle. But just before the organist plays that “Here Comes the Bride” song so she can begin her walk down the aisle, out pops a herd of groomsmen, [METAPHORS], who proceed to throw your daughter down and violently gang-bang her in the back of the church, and by the time they’re done with her she’s bloody, beaten, and battered, almost completely unrecognizable to you, the person who raised her. Both of her eyes are swollen completely shut, one of her legs is broken, she can barely function at all, and then the very groomsmen, [I REMIND YOU: METAPHORS], who just finished violently raping her turn to you and say, “Okay, now make her walk down the aisle,” and you, the person who conceived her, nurtured her and cared for her for all those years, has to walk with her as she hopelessly flounders her way down, and all the while you’re hoping beyond hope that she a) makes it all the way down before completely collapsing and b) that her groom, [METAPHOR], isn’t so freaked out by her when he sees how hideous she now looks that he turns and bolts out of the church.

Say, who can guess what this is a metaphor for? What human experience could be so profoundly scarring and terrible as to be morally and emotionally equivalent to this extended, graphic rape scene? Watching a loved one succumb to a drawn-out and painful illness? The effects of ground war, famine, or genocide on various countries? DEVELOPING A TV SHOW??????

Yep, it’s that last one. As J. Mastodon notes, it’s really the last line that sells it: you’ve really got to hope that this groom, who apparently loves your daughter enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her, won’t be so “freaked out by her when he sees how hideous she now looks” that he abandons her. You know, because she’s ugly now. From being raped and beaten.

As usual, Melissa McEwan makes the best point on the subject of rape metaphors. Her latest post on the subject is delight, and features a quote from a celebrity of the silver screen!

“I think the word raped gets thrown around far too casually. You ever listen to a bunch of guys playing video games with each other online? It’s like, ‘Ah man you shot me in the back dude. You raped me dude!’ I’m pretty sure if I talked to a woman who’s been through that horrific situation and I said, ‘What was it like, you know, being raped?’ she’s not gonna look at me and go, ‘Have you ever played Halo?'”—Dane Cook, in his new comedy special “Isolated Incident.”

The other night, I turned on the television and the channel was still tuned to Comedy Central from watching “The Colbert Report” the night before. “Isolated Incident” was airing, and in the maybe 6 seconds it took me to change the channel, Cook said something racist, xenophobic, and sexist.

And even he gets that casually throwing around the word rape is inappropriate.

Which means that anyone who doesn’t is a bigger douche than Dane Cook.

Yep. Gawker contributor The Cajun Boy, you have won this week’s official Worse Than Dane Cook award. Enjoy it! And hey, maybe there’s a reason your TV show didn’t do so well? Anyway, here is what noted public asshole Dane Cook – who is morally superior to you, and also has a better sense of humor – thinks of your blog post:


Good luck, Chuck.

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Tales of the Backlash

Posted on Friday, May 22, 2009 by Sady
Greetings! Are you aware of how sad – so sad! So prone to bleak despair! – all women now are, due perhaps to progress? Well, we are. Sad, that is! I read a study about it! It was full of SCIENCE. I even wrote about the SCIENCE, for The Guardian’s Comment is Free! Observe:

Women: you are all terribly sad now. This, anyway, is the message of “The paradox of declining female happiness,” a new study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolvers of the University of Pennsylvania. The study, which takes into account various happiness surveys – these exist! And people are paid to conduct them! – from the 1970s to the present, comes to some fairly troubling conclusions: although women have better educations, better pay, more sexual and reproductive freedom, and a greater capacity for self-determination than ever before, we’re less happy than ever.

“Women have become less happy, both absolutely and relative to men. Women have traditionally reported higher levels of happiness than men, but are now reporting happiness levels that are similar or even lower than those of men,” quoth the study. It’s a fairly sensational point. (Feminism has betrayed women! Don’t you miss the days when all you had to worry about was birthing babies, cleaning kitchens, and satisfying your man? Well, you should!) However, as you read the study – which I have done, at great risk to my own personal happiness – it becomes clear that it isn’t the whole story.

Yes, friends, upon close examination, this entire study has a rich aroma of backlashy pseudo-scientific bullshit! I have shoveled through it, however. So go read the rest. Please?

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IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: This One, Actually, Is Not About Me

Posted on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 by Sady
I have a question for you, reader. Do you like to read things? More specifically, do you like to read things… ON THE INTERNET? Do I ever have a thing for you!

It is The Second Awakening, by the glorious C.L. Minou, and it is a blog that you will like! Because it is very amazing. This entry, specifically, is one of the better pieces of writing the Interweblogosphere has produced lately. Because, if you are me, and you are maybe a little over the whole “I Have a Vagina: Let Me Tell You About It, Because It Is There, and a Vagina” genre (no offense, ladies with vaginas! It is just a thing that we have various monologues for at this point!), well, C.L. is here to tell you: it is, in fact, possible to produce a REALLY SUPER ENTRY on that topic, in this day and age, mostly by being super honest, and a fantastic writer, which C.L. Minou just so happens to be:

I see my vagina at least three times a day, and usually six, and can look forward to a long future of regularly saying hi to my down there.

My vagina is a bit different than other women’s, as a consequence of my not having been born with one.

One of the things you learn about, if you are transsexual and if you are thinking about having The Surgery (italicization was really unnecessary, wasn’t it? I mean, if I mention surgery I know where your head is going to go) is about the D-Word–dilation. It’s one of the aftercare things they don’t tell you about back when you first realize that you want to be female, not that you’d have told anyone, at least, not if you were me.

The commonplace that nature abhors a vacuum works on my neo-vagina as well: left to its own devices, my body would fill it in gradually, like silt in a canal. (Ick.) So everyday, three times a day right now, I have to–well, dilate it: put something inside to hold the shape and gradually convince my body that it’s supposed to be there.

GO READ THE REST OF IT. READ IT NOW. READ THE REST OF THE BLOG. It is awesome.

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Posted on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Sady

It is time! For COMMENTS OF THE WEEK! Yes, they are late again, I am sorry. And also, have announcements. Which you will read, right after these COMMENTS OF THE WEEK:

s. captures the strange loop that is the World Wide Interblogs, on Sexist Beatdown: How DoubleX is Hurting Basically Everything Ever Edition:

If I comment on a post about how comments have changed the form of blogs and made awful things like DoubleX, does that mean I’m officially in internet hell?

Harriet Jacobs weighs in with a truly epic story (and hilarious one-act play!) which I am obligated to quote in its entirety, on Who Takes Responsibility for the Responsibility-Takers?:

This kind of logic is SO FASCINATING.

I have a story.

Once upon a time, I left my abusive husband. He wasn’t pleased.

At one point, lacking friends who were willing to help me out here because “choosing sides” and “not my problem” and “really awkward”, I had to go give my ex some of his stuff.

He owed me money, and when I dropped off his stuff, I waited an extra second or two to see if he’d give it to me. I could tell he was waiting an extra second or two to see if I’d ask. And since I knew his entire purpose here was to drag things out, I decided, fuck it, I don’t need money bad enough.

Later he discovered an UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNT of things I had unfairly taken when they were not mine, such as spatulas, and crockpots my grandmother gave me for my birthday, and I really ought to return those things or I would be all kinds of mean bitch. I told him I would return his spatula when he paid me what he owed me. He said he wasn’t going to pay me, because I NEVER ASKED, which is what GROWN-UPS DO. I said paying back debts without a pretty please is something grown-ups do. We ended our conversation, and the last words we ever spoke to each other, with, “I’ll give you your money when you can be ENOUGH OF AN ADULT to actually GROW UP AND ASK me. So go ahead. Act like an adult, and ASK ME FOR THE MONEY I OWE YOU.”

Hey there I have been wronged.
YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT *NOT* BEING WRONGED
I, uh, what?
WHY DON’T YOU STOP BEING WRONGED
Gosh, that’d be nice.
MAYBE ONCE YOU STOP BEING WRONGED YOU WILL NOT BE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO IS WRONGED ANYMORE
I guess that’s a superficial sort of sense…
YOU HAVE MY SPATULA

And, finally, a mysterious person or persons known only as Bad Editor weighs in on IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: I WROTE A STAR TREK PIECE GO LOOK AT IT, with this shocking confession:

Now everyone has stopped reading these comments I can cowardly-confess the Josh Weedon misspelling thing was my fault. Sorry Sady.

Ha ha, that’s OK, Bad Editor! I don’t think too many people are into this Jodge Whebron person! Anyway, your secret is safe with me. Which brings us to

THESE VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1. As some of you may know, Jauze Weevil’s important teledrama, The Doll’s House, is returning to TV! Do you know what this means? It means, my friends, that I am going to try to provide weekly recaps of it. Not that I expect them to be well-read: this Jose Weezer guy is not very popular among feminists, or people who read the Internet.

2. I am moving this week! Well, sort of. Someone is moving into the apartment I have now. Which necessitates moving things around, and putting furniture together, and doing all sorts of non-blog related things! So if I don’t reply to your e-mail, or post many things, I hope you will forgive me. I must focus on attaining perfect Feng Shui! Or, like, furniture that is put together! That last one is more likely.

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Lars von Trier: Director, Genital Mutilator, Accidental Life Coach

Posted on Monday, May 18, 2009 by Sady
You know, people, if there is one beat that I, as a blogger, aspire to provide comprehensive and informative coverage of, it is this: graphic genital mutilation in film.
OH! WAIT! NO! That is totally not something I want to cover! It’s icky.

Nevertheless, Lars “Sunshine” Von Trier has, apparently, created yet another film in which something terrible happens to a lady. Or, to be more precise, to her genitals. Also, to her husband’s genitals! Also, to their child! (He falls out a window while Mommy and Daddy are making the beast with two soon-to-be-damaged sets of genitals; compared to them, he gets off easy.)

Now, this has been extensively covered elsewhere in the blogoworld, so I will not really go into it here: suffice it to say, Charlotte Gainsbourg apparently separates her husband’s meat from his vegetables, and he ejaculates gore (“He Ejaculates Gore,” BTW, is also the title for my forthcoming album of feminist death-metal fuckjams) shortly before she, um, excises… or, er, removes… um, she… oh, okay. SHE CUTS OFF HER CLITORIS WITH SCISSORS. There really is no useful euphemism for that! Gruesome as this injury is to contemplate, it is also worth noting that it is exactly what I contemplate whenever anyone brings up the topic of Brazilian waxing, which is why the whole process fills me with terror. I’m pretty sure we should not be ripping things off of that area! One ill-judged yank, and the whole thing can go awry! AWRY, I tell you.

Anyway: remember when I said I would not be getting into that scene? And then I did? Good times! My point, back then, was this: all of the focus on this scene is taking away from the most wonderful thing about the movie. The most wonderful thing about the movie is:

LARS VON TRIER
HIRED
A “MISOGYNY CONSULTANT”
FOR THE FILM

I know, right? A misogyny consultant! I did not know people did this! I was, until today, entirely unaware that “misogyny consultant” was a valid career path, which one might profitably pursue. “Mom, I want to be a misogyny consultant when I grow up; also, I hate you,” is a conversation that young people all across this great nation (and also in Denmark, where Lars Von Trier is from) are apparently having, before embarking on successful careers as Hollywood misogyny consultants – and I did not know.

Now: here is the thing. You know I am looking for a second job, right? Sure you did! I think I mentioned it once! But did you also know that I have a blog, where I talk about misogyny, pretty much all the time? Now, a person of entrepreneurial mind, when considering these facts in tandem, can only come to one conclusion: if Lars von Trier, who manages to portray a woman being hanged/raped/mutilated/fed to wild ravening bears every single time he picks up a camera, and is widely regarded as somewhat of a knowledgeable source on misogyny himself, looked at the script for his latest movie and was like, “hmmm, I’m not sure this is misogynist enough: better hire a consultant,” then there should be – nay, must be! – other directors who could benefit even more from this service!

In other words: I HAVE FOUND MY NEW CAREER.

As a sample of my talents, I shall now consider several hit movies, and give you my carefully considered, professional advice as to how they might be imbued with more misogyny.

1. CHICAGO: Well, all of the ladies are criminals. That’s a start! I also appreciate the way that they are all portrayed as shallow, two-timing, and dim, using men only to satisfy their insatiable need for fame and adulation. HOWEVER! I note that there is a man lawyer, Richard Gere, who is also a big old liar. Make him a helpless victim of their ploys, say I! Also: there’s lots of singing and dancing. TOTAL CHICK STUFF. You’re going to want to replace all of that with exploding cars.

2. TITANIC: Here’s your problem: Kate Winslet, two-timing hussy, lives. Leonardo DiCaprio, the helpless guy whom she lures into sin with her wiles, does not. Kill them both! Or, just write Leo out of the picture. Let’s focus on that Billy Zane guy: he’s really the character with whom you want your audience to identify. Also, could we make it so that Kate Winslet sinks the ship? On purpose? Maybe you could make some jokes about her weight, or something. Those are funny and misogynist.

3. TERMINATOR 2: Okay, so you’ve got this robot, right? And he can kill anything, right? And yet he chooses to hang out with this chick Sarah Connor and her whiny little kid? And – this, I cannot believe – he fights another killer robot? Dudes! Lame! The other robot is his bro, man: you don’t violate that bond. Write a scene where they have a beer and talk about how Sarah Connor and the kid are totally weighing the first robot down. Then, they can kill her and the kid. Together. That’s what bros are for.

4. SEX & THE CITY: Women who define themselves entirely through their relationships to men, you say? Whose professional accomplishments are ceaselessly backgrounded in favor of obsessive man talk? Frivolous, shallow women, whose interests are limited to shopping, gossip, and the performance of a restrictive and frankly insulting variety of traditional femininity? Women who – and this is the important portion – I myself cannot help but hate? As a professional misogyny consultant, I must tell you: there is nothing I could possibly do to make this movie more offensive to women. My work here is done.

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Highly Judgmental (Yet Positive!) Movie Reviews PRESENTS: Kicking and Screaming

Posted on Sunday, May 17, 2009 by Sady
This weekend, a strange and wonderful thing happened. I saw a movie! Okay, that is not the strange and wonderful thing. The strange and wonderful thing was that this movie, which I saw, was about a group of close male friends, all of whom treat girls like crap, are under-employed and lazy, and refuse to engage in anything which might even vaguely resemble grown adult male behavior.

Okay, not even that was the strange and wonderful thing! I lied! There are 500,000 movies which fit this description! The strange, wonderful, nearly unimaginable thing which happened was: I saw this movie, and I liked it.

I KNOW! It was so crazy! I may never get over it! WHO AM I.

The movie that I saw was called Kicking and Screaming. It was written and directed by one Noah Baumbach. It is, I tell you, a fantastic movie, simply because it is one of the meanest and most honest movies I have seen. (I like mean! And honest!) It is a tremendous takedown, this movie, of (a) undergraduate intellectual pretension, (b) that tired Generation X “slacker” mythos, which was lame and embarrassing even in its time, and (c) the whole Apatovian man-child dynamic. Which, considering the fact that it was made in 1995, before there even was an Apatovian man-child dynamic, is quite an accomplishment.

Anyway! On to the movie! It begins with five dudes, most of whom have just graduated college, and are having that “WHOA, dudes, WHAT WILL COME NEXT FOR US, this is so heavy” conversation that everyone throughout the history of colleges and/or graduations has had. Like most people, these five dudes are convinced that their conversation is unique and fascinating; also, deep.

Actually, these five dudes are convinced that everything they have to say is unique and fascinating and deep, or (worse still) deep precisely because of its careful avoidance of depth or meaning. These men: Jesus God, they are so terrible. Never have I seen a group of characters work so hard to establish themselves as urbane and witty and intelligent. Like most people who try this hard – and, specifically, like most people in their early twenties – they fail spectacularly, coming across instead as pretentious and affected and annoying on levels heretofore unknown to man. I cannot get this across with prose alone (especially not MY prose, ha); therefore, I am going to show you the scene that nearly killed me.

“Prague is a cliche now?” Self-congratulatory Kafka references? “Selfish girl abandons helpless boy?” AUGH, WHY DOES SHE HAVE A NOTEBOOK. WHY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT “MATERIAL.” Did someone accidentally film a community college production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE. I HATE THEM.

And it just continues along these lines: the movie’s lead characters are the sort of guys who build entire conversations around statements like, “if Plato is like a good red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini” (NO. FALSE. BAD), or trivia games in which they challenge each other to name five empiricist philosophers and/or movies with monkeys in lead roles, or an interest in the plots of detergent commercials. Not that they are actually interested in the plots of detergent commercials; that would be stupid. No, it’s more like they are pretending to be interested in the plots of detergent commercials, which would be stupid, in order to show that they are not interested in the commercials, because they are not stupid, so they need to talk about the commercials, in order to… oh, whatever. I give up. SHUT UP, MALE LEADS OF KICKING AND SCREAMING.

The thing is: you know dudes like this. At least, I have known dudes like this; shit, I might have even been a dude like this at one point (except, you know: a lady version). This kind of pretension, and arrogance, and aristocratic disdain for the world at large is, to any objective observer, very clearly the result of raging insecurity and perhaps one too many wedgies in high school; nevertheless, every kid who’s ever considered himself “smart” has fallen into it. SAY, who wants to see a movie about how much you sucked?

The four leads of Kicking and Screaming (their names are Skippy, Max, Grover, and Otis; they are all youngish, tallish, thinnish white men with dark hair and identical-sounding dialogue, and they are, for this reason, difficult to tell apart – which I think is part of the point) are not only far too sure of their own talents, they have each other, and are willing to spend countless hours giving each other verbal hand-jobs of congratulation re: how special they are. They are a terrible four-headed hydra-beast of pretension, stilted dialogue (at first, you think the actors are terrible: then you realize that they are geniuses, because twenty-one-year-olds who try to talk like this sound just this awkward), and privileged white male ennui, and as long as they have each other, there will be no reason for them to ever change.

The boys move into an apartment near campus together, where they watch TV and pretend to have read books. They venture out only to go to the bar, where they are confronted by the grim spectre of their future, Chet. Chet is played by Eric Stoltz, and he is hilarious: a dude who has been in college for ten years, “working on his dissertation,” hitting on undergraduates, and tending bar. He’s the one who says the thing about Aristotle and Plato; Stoltz gets a ton of mileage out of his airy, lah-di-da inflections when referring to the latest “tome” of the eternal dissertation, or describing Cormac MacCarthy as “arousing.”

None of the members of the Skippy/Otis/Grover/Max collective like Chet, which is unfortunate, given the fact that they’re about to become him: Otis turns down grad school to work in a video store, Skippy re-enrolls in college so that he can take all the courses he missed, Max is reduced to getting his daily fix of intellectual superiority from crosswords, most of the boys appear to be entirely unemployed, and all of them are busy targeting and fucking undergraduate girls – or, in Max’s case, a cafeteria worker, who is sixteen years old. Yeah. Sit with that one for a while.

At this point, the superficial similarities to the bromosocial world of Apatow should be apparent. (Although, to be fair, Apatow’s man-boys are gleefully, self-approvingly dim and childish, not men who pretend to be intelligent in order to forget how childish they are.) You’ve got your arrested development; your tightly knit band of bros; your contempt for and exclusion of the lady-folk. It’s all there. So, it’s time to talk about the differences.

In any other movie, we would be meant to like Max, and Grover, and Skippy, and Otis unequivocally. Their hermetically sealed little world of boy-on-boy bonding would be idealized. Fortunately – nay, gloriously! – Baumbach never forces us to love these guys: he makes it clear, throughout the picture, that they are windbags, douches, and losers, who nevertheless get off a few good lines. Their aimlessness isn’t freedom; it’s failure. Their privilege isn’t ignored. (There is a specific class of people who get to complain about how “overrated” Prague is, and that is the class that gets to tool around Europe directly after receiving a pricey liberal arts college education. Fuckers.) Their grand artistic ambitions – which Grover, at least, has and talks about – are never realized. And their misogyny: well.

The undergraduate girls are a given, right? The undergraduates, the freshmen, the teenaged cafeteria workers: these guys are busy convincing themselves that they are the smartest dudes on the planet, and the one thing that dudes like this can never do is date women who are as smart or smarter than they are. (This is – sorry to be rude, guys – a very specifically male thing; smart and/or pretentious women, from what I can see, tend to go for smart guys, maybe just because they’re sick of the dumb ones feeling all emasculated by their giant, man-like brains.) So they seek out girls to whom they can easily feel superior; if they get past the first fuck and into an actual relationship, they make a point of belittling their girlfriends, frequently and publicly, to remind them that they will never be quite as important or central as the bro-bond, and definitely not serious competitors in the Who Is Today’s Smartest Person game.

And, I know this is running long, but I have to go into detail here, because this movie is really unparalleled in depicting the little atrocities that dudes like this tend to inflict on ladykind: When the movie opens, one of the girlfriends (Parker Posey, hurrah) is trying to participate in the trivia game. Her boyfriend, Skippy, berates her for not saying “ding” before she answers, and tells her, to her face, in front of everyone, that this game is “not for her.” When the cafeteria worker, Kate, tries to take part in the game later, Skippy once again displays his sparkling personality by telling her to “excuse herself” so that the men can talk. Grover stays on the phone during the early portion of a hookup, and signs off with, “got to go sleep with this freshman,” and Max greets his about-to-be girlfriend, whom he has actually met before (back when Grover was trying to fuck her) with, “oh, right: you’re the girl.”

Um, yes! I am a girl! Glad to see you noticed that! And not, you know, my name. Or ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT ME.

Yet these girls – Parker Posey, and Kate, and Jane, who kicks off the movie by “abandoning” Grover, and returns in many flashbacks, which are unfortunate, for I cannot stand her – aren’t cheated by the narrative. They’re not hollow sluts, or supernaturally competent saviors, or one-dimensional bitches (though Posey, for the record, pulls off a spectacular Bitch Move that effectively annihilates the group dynamic – which would seem to be her intention; go to 5:42 of this clip for her beautiful and “ding”-centric revenge). They are, for the most part, precisely as fucked-up and adolescent as the boys are. (For example: in a neat little twist, it’s revealed that Grover has stolen most of his affectations, and his lifestyle, from Jane. I knew there was a reason not to like that girl!) (Oh, OK. I’m sorry, Jane. I only hate you because I HATE MYSELF. PUT DOWN YOUR NOTEBOOK, YOU IDIOT.) However, the women are also the only characters in the movie who seem to get how irritating and regressive the M/S/G/O Dude Collective is. They’re the ones who point out – and all three of them, at some point, point this out – that the guys all speak alike. Also, that what they have to say is meaningless.

So, by the time the boys get around to hating themselves and each other, and lamenting their “affectations that harden into habits,” they’ve really only arrived at the place where the women have been all along. The question of whether you see redemption in the end of this movie, or on the horizon of these characters, is a tricky one: the person who recommended the movie to me thinks that they do grow up, whereas I’m of the opinion that, if they do, it’s a boring, dishonest Apatovian (proto-Apatovian?) ending. Oh, look! They’ve learned the error of their ways! All is forgiven! Etc. Fortunately, they don’t so much grow up as burn out: by the time the film ends, they know that they need new lives, but only because the lives they currently lead have become unbearable. None of them really seems to know what to do next. If they ever find out, we don’t see that. It’s better that way.

Because then, there is the final scene: the scene in which Grover decides to change his life! And go to Prague! To find Jane! He rushes straight to the airport terminal, and gives a speech. You’ve heard this speech before. It’s in every movie: he must take a chance, he must go with his heart, he must – must – learn from his mistakes and become a better man, the sort of man who would go to Prague. FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE, he must DO SOMETHING SPONTANEOUS. The woman at the counter is moved nearly to tears, and miraculously finds him a seat on the (full) airplane. Then she asks for his passport.

Whoops.

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