I almost stopped watching this movie because ‘men are selfish stupid dicks’ is so very tiresome, but the women at the dinner scene (about 20 minutes in) made me keep watching.
Even so, men. I can’t believe how clueless they are. Do they really not know the difference between a vasectomy and castration? Do they really think it’s their orgasm that causes pregnancy and not the presence of even the tiniest bit of seminal fluid? Do they really not know that childbirth causes severe, often permanent, injury? Do they think women’s screams are just … hysterical? Exaggeration? (I swear, every thirteen-year-old should have to watch a film of childbirth. ‘Oh but that’ll ruin sex for me; every time I even think of having sex, I’ll think of that.’ Duh.)
“I wanted to command attention the way he did, learned how to do it too, Clare said I had it down, but not the same, they don’t listen to me the same way, it’s different. They liked listening, looking up to him, elder statesman. They don’t like listening to me.” p22
“Oh, why didn’t I go? Nobody asked me.” p110
Because we’ve been taught from the beginning that we must not ask, we must wait. Wait for a man to ask us to the prom, to ask us out for a drink, dinner, a date, marriage. Along with the convention that those events are supposedly of utmost importance in a woman’s life, it’s no wonder we grow up waiting to be asked for — everything. Jobs, membership on task forces and projects, raises, promotions, clients … all the things that put us on the ladder, and help us ascend, to status and income.
Imagine a world in which boys were reprimanded for asking, we taught they must wait— Well, full stop there.
And imagine, of course, that women seldom ask them for anything of importance because, well, men just aren’t that important, except as escorts in one way or another …
And it’s not just that. The few of us who do ask are told ‘no’ (if our asking is indeed acknowledged, ‘heard’…). (And note, we don’t respond to rejection with a shooting spree.)
So often, we eventually stop.
“Is that all I am to him, a shudder in the loins? Is that all fatherhood is?” p216
“Poor kid, what must that feel like, your own father doesn’t even have the interest to lay eyes on you.” p216
“All I want is some answers. … I don’t care about the money.” p222
…
“You’re asking for something he doesn’t want to give.” p223
No, more likely, something he doesn’t have. I dare say we impute too much self-awareness to men on issues like this.
“He was so powerful things just appeared before him when he wanted them.” p227
Right. Men don’t even have to ask. And women don’t ask. Partly because they’ve been taught all their lives not to; we’re supposed to just wait … See above. And partly because when we do ask, we don’t get what we’re asking for anyway. See This is what happens, Chris Wind.
“… that you and generations of men before you felt that incest was their prerogative, their right—that fathers own the bodies of their daughters as they do those of their wives and slaves. And that they believe they have the right to own other human beings, to control them, that indeed, they define manhood as the ability to control others.” p296 (my emphasis)
“… you [the father who raped her when she was a child, telling her the whole time that he loved her…] destroyed utterly my ability to discriminate love from power, sex from submission. You ruined my emotional life. Forever.” p300
Does that explain the possibly increasing preference for ‘rough’ sex?
“This left me with a sense of helplessness and inferiority—a sense that I have no existence, don’t matter—that I will have to battle as long as I live.” p302
Don’t need to rape your daughters to do that. Just ignore and belittle them from the moment they’re born until they finally get the fuck out of your house.
“Even though I never harmed you—after all, I have no responsibility for my own existence, my ow birth—and never wished you ill, you have condemned me to eternal shadowhood and pain.” p303
Indeed. Men, why do you create something in order to ignore it, abandon it, to hurt it so? Because perverse ‘masculinity’ requires it. And you buy it. Masculinity.
“I don’t have to have another husband. The thought shocked her into utter stillness.” p318
Pity more women don’t realize that at eighteen. In our current society, we don’t need to marry a man. End of story. Take advantage of that!
Watched The Mad Whale yesterday. The description was something like ‘Lunatics at a women’s asylum put on a performance of Moby Dick‘. I was hoping to see an expose of historical treatment of women vis-a-vis madness and was not disappointed. But I was delighted, further, to see a couple other unexpected (shame on me!) exposes and some female heroism. (It’s free on Plex.)
I’ve recently discovered the brilliant and hilarious work of Leigh Anne Jasheway.
Her’s a great starting point: “20 Headlines from an Alternate Universe”
But take a look through (ALL OF) her other posts!
“We wanted proper outback: a place where men were men and sheep were nervous.”
“I don’t know why, but every Olympics these days has a mascot. Moscow had a bear called Mischa. Nagaon had some cute snowflake creatures. Atlanta, I believe, had a person being shot on a street corner.”
Episode 1: The First War Begins. Scene 1: Cyberspace – probably around 2013
Trans activists: So hey, when we said we’d like you to treat us like women that wasn’t right, because actually, we ARE women and we demand that you treat us exactly like women because we are women and that you to stop violently excluding us from all your women things.
Women: Um, we thought you were male people who had to transition to help with your dysphoria?
Trans activists: No, that is out-dated and pathologizing. Women are women because they have a gender identity which makes them women.
Women: Um, we thought we were woman because we’re female?
Trans activists: No, you are women because you have magic womanish essence that makes you women. We have the same magic womanish essence as you, it’s just that ours got stuck in the wrong body.
Feminists: That sounds kind of sexist. Can you tell us what this woman-essence is, and how it gets stuck in the wrong body, because that sounds like a weird metaphys…..
Trans activists: It’s SCIENCE.
Feminists: Science says there’s ‘magic woman essence’??? Are you sure? Because feminism would…
Trans activists: Shut up bigots.
Feminists: Sorry? What?
Trans activists: You are our oppressors, you don’t get to speak. When you speak you oppress us, and it literally kills us.
Feminists: WHAT?
Trans activists: You are cis women, cis people are our oppressors.
Feminists: We’re what?
Trans activists: It’s your new name, it comes from Latin, and means you have a magic gender essence that matches your body, and because your magic gender essence matches your body you are privileged…
Feminists: Hang on a minute, women are oppressed because they are women, we’re not really sure that’s a privilege…
Trans activists: YOU ARE PRIVILEGED BECAUSE YOUR GENDER IDENTITY MATCHES YOUR BODY. Nobody knows the pain of being trapped in the wrong body. It is the greatest pain of all the pains that has ever happened to all of human kind, and everyone who does not know this pain is privileged and is therefore our oppressor.
Feminists: Um, were not really sure we’re oppressing you, we don’t have much social power to oppress you, we’d just like to ask you some questions about this gender identity thing….
Trans activists: ARE YOU DEBATING OUR RIGHT TO EXIST???
Feminists: What? No, we just wanted to ask you…
Trans activists: YOU ARE DEBATING OUR RIGHT TO EXIST. THIS IS LITERAL VIOLENCE.
Feminists: No no no hold on, we’re just trying to ask you a question…
Trans activists: WE WILL NOT DEBATE OUR RIGHT TO EXIST. YOU ARE TRYING TO EXTERMINATE US. YOU ARE JUST LIKE GENOCIDAL RACISTS
Feminists: What??? We’re like genocidal what??? This is fucking crazy. Can we just try and calm down and talk about this?
Trans activists: NO. There is NO DEBATE. Debating is literal violence and makes us unsafe. Repeat after us – Trans women are women. Trans women are women because they have woman essence, just like cis women. You’re not women because of your bodies. Bodies have nothing to do with being a woman.
Feminists: Okay, this is sounding nuts now, because we really think our bodies have quite a lot to do with our being woman.
Trans activists: Bio-essentialism!
Feminists: What? Essentialism is bad we agree, but that means thinking people with certain kinds of bodies have to…
Trans activists: No, essentialism is thinking male and female people exist.
Feminists: But male and female people DO exist.
Trans activist: FUCK YOU TERF. DIE IN A FIRE.
Feminists: Woah.
Trans activists: How many fucking times do we need to tell you this cis-scum? Your body has nothing to do with your being a woman. There is no such thing as female biology.
Feminists: WHAT THE FUCK????
Trans activists: The gender binary was created by white heteropatriarchal colonialism.
Feminists: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK???? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?? WHICH ‘COLONIALISM’????
American trans activists who don’t know the rest of the world exists: Colonialism colonialism duh.
Feminists: How the hell is the colonization of North America responsible for the creation of male and female people? And while we’re here that sounds kinda racist…
Trans activists: Two-spirit people burble burble sex is a spectrum burble clown fish burble burble intersex people burble burble some women don’t have ovaries burble social construct burble Judith Butler
(Academics with cool-girl syndrome and assorted edgelords and wokebros: JUDITH BUTLER!!!!)
Trans activists: ….burble burble, there is no such thing as female biology and women are women because they have magic gender essence and therefore some women have penises!
Feminists: Okay, this is batshit. We REALLY need to talk about this.
Trans activists: WE WILL NOT DEBATE OUR RIGHT TO EXIST.
An excellent review of an excellent book here.
And because a link isn’t anywhere near sufficient …
“On the Meaning of Sex reads like a forensic dissection, its forty concise chapters taking apart the corpus of transgender ideology piece by piece. No fallacy-wrapped riddle of a paradox is spared the nick of Ekman’s scalpel as she slits open all the standard trans talking points to point out the lethal flaws ulcerating their logic. The supposedly “progressive” return to retrograde Barbie-vs.-G.I. Joe sex-role stereotypes. “Overcoming” the gender binary through the reinforcement of a binary, dualistic gender system, the entrenchment of masculinity and femininity as the mainstays of human selfhood. The redefinition of biological reality (sex) as a “social construct” and of a social construct (gender) as a naturally occurring “reality.” Expunging essentialism by establishing gender as an “essence” emergent from one’s pink or blue brain. “Believing the science” of the scientifically unsubstantiated pink/blue brain theory. Individuality through conformity, corralling the “incongruent” individual into alignment with social norms. Being your True Self by changing yourself, by imitating others, trying to become something you are not. Self-acceptance through the rejection of your own body. Self-care through the infliction of self-harm through breast-binding or chronic-pain-inducing elective surgeries. Authenticity through artifice. Diversity through manufactured sameness. Transforming an oppressive culture by preserving that culture’s most foundational structures. Rebellion through compliance. Inclusivity through exclusion. Tolerance through violent threats against dissenters. Smashing patriarchy by re-centering men and demonizing women, courtesy of a “feminism” that prioritizes male feelings and desires. The lionization of men who pretend to be women by presenting themselves as caricatures of pornified, infantilized femininity, while white people who pretend to be black are condemned—and the slightest equivalency between the two practices is furiously denied. The “cis privilege” of women and girls to endure systematic birth-to-death, sex-based disenfranchisement, exploitation, and abuse. And then there is the refrain that echoes through our aching skulls: “Trans women” are women! Yes, “trans women” are exactly like other women in every single way, but also they must be acknowledged specifically, because to lump them in with other women would be to ignore their unique “marginality.” Men who say they are women are like other women in every single way, except more deserving of attention. They are also more womanly than “cis” women could ever dream of being, and more oppressed under patriarchy. But even these claims will be upended by the time we lurch, heads spinning, to the final analysis, when it is concluded that women do not, in any meaningful way, actually exist.”
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (full-length drama and short drama)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…
