The convention that one marry a man a few years older than oneself allows both partners to pretend that her subordination to him is due to her relative age, not her sex.
Mar 25
“Fixed” – recommended for men
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.)
So. Recommended viewing for men. (Free on Plex.)
Mar 23
reading Our Father, by Marilyn French
“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!
Mar 21
“The Mad Whale” – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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.)
Mar 20
Leigh Anne Jasheway – brilliant!
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!
Mar 15
John Varley’s Dark Lightning
It’s just space opera, but I love that the girls kick ass and the prettyboy hunk is pretty much useless.
Mar 09
To permit ignorance
“To permit ignorance is to empower it.” Edmond Kirsch in Origins, Dan Brown
Mar 06
Just discovering Bill Bryson
“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.”
both from In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson
Mar 05
Jane Clare Jones on Transactivism: brilliantly funny
reposted from https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/
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.
fiction
