Tiger Beatdown

… Ugh. That’ll learn me not to Make Statements while I’m drunk. Seriously: the “calling in gay and/or Bjork” thing? I had meant to post something in support of it, and I also thought it was funny that when I told someone I missed work he said, “oh, you called in gay!” And then I hadn’t posted yet, and it was 11:45 p.m., and I was watching this PJ Harvey cover of “Satisfaction” on the YouTube, and somehow my need to steal that dude’s joke became identical with my need to
share the PJ Harvey video with the world became identical with my thoughts on “Satisfaction” as feminist statement (like, yeah, the Rolling Stones are totally sexist dudes, but in a female voice it means differently, and anyway, as Emma Goldman said, “a revolution without arguments after which I get to cry to ‘Angie’ in a crappy bar is not a revolution worth having”) became identical with “withdrawing a marginalized group’s labor and capital from the market in order to demonstrate that group’s crucial role in society is a pretty great statement, at least on a symbolic level” and all of this, combined with a not insubstantial amount of whiskey, melded into a post that was… well, not offensive, I don’t think, but definitely dumb, and also not really about any of the above-listed things at all. So, yeah, for the record: I would say that drinking and feminist politics definitely have a relationship, of the “they totally do not get along and should not be invited to the same party” sort.

Which is not at all the point of this article! The point of this article, actually, is probably to whip the lady blogs into a furor and thereby increase the author’s name recognition – oh, and hey! it worked – but Alex Morris, on the way to her (his?) five minutes as a succes de scandale, manages to make some random point about how feminists are all big lousy drinky drunks who ruined feminism, as in:

For better or worse, drinking has become entwined with progressive feminism. “I don’t think that the drinking in and of itself is feminist, but I do think that it comes from a feminist place, that it can bolster one’s sense of herself as liberated,” says Jezebel editor Jessica Grose. “You know, the whole point of Third Wave feminism is that individual choice should not be judged. If you choose to opt out and be a stay-at-home mom, then that’s your choice.” And if you choose to drink yourself unconscious in some random guy’s bed, that’s also your prerogative. To say that you shouldn’t would be paternalistic hand-wringing, implying that a woman needs to be protected from herself.

Yes, ladies: thanks to feminism, you can be a selfless stay-at-home mother or a drunk slut who gets date raped! I mean, I guess it kind of sucks that there are no other options, but hey! At least you have a choice!

This article is so dumb in so many ways (for example, it contains about 5,900 iterations of the word “alcopops,” which I think means Zima and sparkletinis, and I don’t think the young, Third Wave-influenced, New York-based feminists to whom Morris refers would ever even drink these apparently feminism-killing beverages; I mean, fuck, he or she is talking about me here, indirectly, and I’d get drunk off my own fermented urine rather than put a Captain Morgan’s Bottled Raspberry Mojito Drink to my lips; girls drink them, sure, but the girls who do that and the girls Morris writes about are culturally and alcoholically distinct groups) that it is tempting to focus entirely on its mistakes and to ignore the real news: all of these responses, which are fun. You’ll note that none of these writers really denies drinking! In fact, some of them use the piece as a way to squeeze in irrelevant back-handed boasts about what big drunks they are. Check out this irresponsible twat, who, within the space of one essay, manages to reflect poorly on women, feminists, bloggers and alcoholics alike.

The thing is, it’s not as if I’ve never yelled at another lady, or accused her of killing feminism. I do that a lot, actually! It is this super fun circular dialogue that goes as follows:

GIRL #1: You’re killing feminism! Stop it!
GIRL #2: Stop saying that I’ve killed feminism! It kills feminism when you accuse me of killing feminism!
GIRL #1: You’re the feminism-killer, as evidenced by your efforts to censor all criticism of or dialogue about your feminism-killing, which by the way have killed feminism again!

It just goes on from there. I mean, I hated the “Thinking and Drinking” thing – hated it – because I generally believe that jokes about date rape are never ever ever funny. I could probably find lots of folks to back me up on that. Then again, those same folks would probably be disgusted by my frequent and casual use of the word “retard,” and I would make fun of them for being vegetarians, and the whole thing would just go South really fast, so maybe we should all just aim for a little more nuance and a little less righteous scorn.

This may come as a shock, but a lot of feminists are, um, girls – and the narrative of morality, for girls, is pretty retarded. We’re all brought up on the same fairy tales, which tell us that women are either pure, virtuous maidens or evil witches – stay-at-home mothers or drunk sluts. There’s Cinderella, and there’s her Wicked Stepsisters, but the character of the Stepsister Who’s Pretty Nice and Tries Really Hard but Has Some Failings does not exist. We require perfection of ourselves, and we require perfection of others, and in the process of demanding universal moral purity, we all too often make hypocrites of ourselves.

It was Emma Goldman who said that “a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having,” and I don’t know about you, but I don’t dance until I’ve had a few. She also said that “it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think,” which, if true, means that Alex Morris’s article about drunk feminists must have been an absolute breeze to write. She did not, on the other hand, say “I yell because I care.” The person who said that – often! to me! – was my mom. We all care, and we’re all yelling, and just because we don’t always agree doesn’t mean that we can’t respect each other. These conversations about who’s killing feminism – whether they take the form of shouting matches, passive-aggressive blog posts, or articles in New York magazine – are, in fact, the proof that feminism is alive and well, if a bit hung over.

So, I looked up “smoking withdrawal” symptoms (no patch today, check me out) and then I got this:

Feelings of being an infant: temper tantrums, intense needs, feelings of dependency, a state of near paralysis.

No, really. Also, crazy dreams! Like: one of my favorite writers opened a bookstore, and it had a special section marked “Pathetic Books,” and I went to that section, and found all of my diaries there.

I do appreciate the fact that, when my subconscious is mocking me, it manages to be kind of funny.

Women! They sure do like it when you buy them things. Am I right, fellas? Unfortunately, this holiday season, you may find yourself sleeping with one of them – or maybe even married to one! As a male, you are of course totally incapable of buying someone a thoughtful gift which is tailored to her personal tastes. Fortunately, all women fall into one of two categories – the kind that’s good for marrying, and the kind that’s good for fucking. That is why Esquire has compiled (thank you, ma’am) these two extremely useful gift lists: one for your wife, and one for your mistress. Um, LOVER! For your LOVER. Ha ha ha, woo, boy, that was a close one.

SO MUCH SNOW HERE! I’M DRUNK CAUSE MY MOM WON’T QUIT CALLING ME A WHORE.

– Text message received at 6:45 p.m., 11/27/08

I think I texted her back about the box of wine I had hidden under my bed.

Consider how this PJ Harvey song stands in response to this poem by D.H. Lawrence. Look, here’s a YouTube clip so that you can listen to it from this page:

(I tried to find a live performance, but no luck. There is a clip of a woman singing it to her baby! EMBARRASSING.)

Anyway, here’s DH, in part:

When Eve once knew in her mind that she was naked
She quickly sewed fig-leaves, and sewed the same for the man.
She’d been naked all her days before,
But till then, till that apple of knowledge, she hadn’t had the fact on her mind.

She got the fact on her mind, and quickly sewed fig leaves.
And women have been sewing ever since.
But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it.
They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind,
And they won’t let us forget it.

Now, the secret
Becomes an affirmation through moist, scarlet lips
That laugh at the Lord’s indignation.

What then, good Lord! cry the women.
We have kept our secret long enough.
We are a ripe fig.
Let us burst into affirmation.

They forget, ripe figs won’t keep.
Ripe figs won’t keep.
Honey-white figs of the north, black figs with scarlet inside, of the south.
Ripe figs won’t keep, won’t keep in any clime.
What then, when women the world over have all bursten into self-assurance?
And bursten figs won’t keep?

One thing to love about PJ is how well-read she is, and how little she flaunts that. I’ve heard bands called “literate” simply because they have wordy lyrics, or cite authors by name; PJ, on the other hand, is literate – smart enough to base a song around this poem, for example, or to quote David Mamet and Flannery O’Connor in her lyrics – but in an unassuming, unpretentious sort of way. She puts in the references (high or low, trendy or not) and lets her listeners do the work. She knows what a Sheela Na Gig is, but she’s also seen South Pacific and Carrie, and can touch on all three in the space of one song. So, the songs themselves tend to expand and take on new meanings over time, as you become familiar with her reference points.

Another thing to love about her is how she plays with gender. She tends to write songs around extreme, archetypal characters – the macho, violent gender-fuckers in songs like 50 ft. Queenie (“you bend over, Casanova”) are balanced out by the whimperingly passive, victimized women in songs like Hook (“my love made me gag, call him Daddy”). This song is trickier. DH has a pretty basic point: women need to stop their yapping if they know what’s good for them. PJ’s take on it, though, is nearly impossible to get a bead on. She’s dancing back and forth, agreeing and contradicting, subverting and supporting. It’s a song about ambivalence: opening herself up is going to make her happy, but it’s also going to cause some bloodshed. There’s no clear resolution.

Oh, hey! Did I mention that she also wrote a song about dumping a dude because he won’t put out? Well, she did! Here it is:

Bursten into self-assurance, indeed.