Nice quote:

From {Nappy as I want to be}: read the whole post (addressing differences and similarities between the positioning of Black Americans and Native Americans, among other things), and then go down to some of her other posts: lots to chew on. For now i just wanted to highlight this, which jumped out at me: I like:

No-one has a monopoly on virtue. But until people start dealing with that stuff honestly, we will be using a hammer to try and plant a garden. We follow the models set for us by the dominant ideology, often against the lessons of our own experience because we accept that we can and should only be concerned with our own narrow issues.

Okay, if no one else is gonna say it, I am: WEREWOLF?!

Dude, seriously, check this shit out. "Hybrid mutant!"

So. Here we are.

Just repeating a post i made in the comments box over at Ilyka's, where she was talking about the Kubler-Ross stages we may or may not have finished going through since That Day five years ago.

well. and here we are five years later with even yet more a fuck of a lot more to be angry about.

as someone who's been living in NYC, i think, you know, a lot of us may even have more processing to do (didn't lose anyone personally thank God, but: yeah, close to home, you'd say). those days and weeks and months afterward--well, maybe it was the same all over. anthrax! duct tape! spasms of outrage and loopiness and paralyzing numbness and terror and black pits of despondency and then start all over again!

and now, what is the word? disgust? is that a good word? yeah, i'd say.

impotence, howling frustrating hand-clawing-at-empty-air....gahhhhhhh.

existential bleakness.

shame, yes.

tiny little saplings of hope which keep getting crushed, it feels like.

feeling like the ground has been pulled away.

and much much more!

so: fuck this administration with their grandstanding and their posturing and pulling away the football and trampling all over the fucking place for photo opportunities "hey, let's take it out on the completely wrong country 'cause we were gonna do that at some point anyway;"

fuck the "loyal opposition" for acting like a sack of wet pasta in the face of all this and then wondering why o why don't people have faith in them anymore.

fuck the myopic fucks who simply can't understand -why- anyone in the rest of the world might have any sort of general problem with U.S. policy, particularly -now-;

fuck cynical exploitive sociopaths like Bin Laden (who, again?); fuck our own cynical exploitive sociopath Fearless Leaders; fuck zealous brainwashed ideologues who'd rather be right than live, much less let live; fuck puritans, fuck theocrats of all stripes, fuck Rush Limbaugh and his ilk and their endless hard-on for the Clintons, oh my GOD fuck that noise, fuck Oliver Stone and his bombastic crap and Kevin Bacon as well, fuck heartless corporations, fuck oleaginous whited sepulchres, fuck vile mouth-breathing keyboard warriors endlessly wanking to other peoples' misery and suffering and death and caling it "patriotism," fuck so-called lefties who spend more time on bullshit conspiracy theories and filleting each other in a splendid re-enactment of the Peoples' Front of Judea than actually coming up with something helpful, and yes, fuck me too for sitting on my ass in a state of paralyzed numb rage and grief and "ooh, shiny thing" instead of doing anything about it or even beginning to wonder what i -could- do about it, for the vast majority of the time.

"God fuck us, every one."

and happy fucking anniversary to all y'all too, fuckers.

ON EDIT:

I am in the mood for some sweeping generalizations, today.

So:

and, well, you know, i will say this for My People, if that is what we are (i.e. the loosely-defined left or at least liberals): we tend to have, my theory by me, "issues" wrt anger. in general, i mean.

you know: it's destructive. it leads to violence. it's IRRATIONAL, and the thing about the loosely-defined...well, a lot of us, really, not actually sure where the ideology markers break down, in fact...but, we have our ideological roots in the Enlightenment. which, lord knows it's not like any of the dudes back then never got angry--witness Voltaire or any of the Founding Fathers--but, you know. -Rational.- Let's all take a deep breath and really examine this in the calm light of day. At least. and, too: we root for the underdog, and, well, it's hard for a lot of people to completely get behind bombing the crap out of people "back to the Stone Age" when they're ALREADY more or less in the Stone Age.

and yes, sure, you get a LOT of anger at the proper targets, esp. among your more radical factions, but you notice it's always directed (in peoples' minds at least--hey, maybe this is a universal thing, at that, who knows)--upward. Fight The Power. not each other. except when we do, and we just can't understand how this happens, can't we all just get along?

so that's one thing.

and then, not to let the rest of y'all, the loosely-defined right, off the hook here, yes, it is true, there is i would say on the whole an over-reliance on that particular emotion, anger, to the exclusion of more vulnerable-making emotions. grief, "terror," shame. compassion. heartbreak. despair. pity? love, even? yeah, believe it or not.

and hey: anger feels PRODUCTIVE. it feels like you're DOING something. and oh yeah: that feeling, it can also be rather ADDICTIVE. adrenaline rush: duuuuuuude. nice.

but christ forbid we ever break down and see what's BEHIND all that rage.

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord."

yeah. terrific. that's been working out so well.

oh, yes, and: Go shopping. Buy something. That, too. That always helps.

"The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good..."

O all right already, enough about ___, let's talk about MEME

Okay, okay, okay.



How long have you been blogging?

Goin on a year now.


Self-Portrait:



+



=





Why do readers read your blog?

They don't; they are all my sock puppets; all of them. Including you.


What was the last search phrase someone used to get to your site?

The last five were:


"Objectification;" "ontological buttpaste;" "butch dyke sissification;" "most irritating thing in the world;" and "stuff bra with pudding filled water balloons."

That last one, by the way, I got twice. Not counting the three separate searches for

"fill water balloons with pudding and stuff their bra with it."

And I will have you know that I chose the "Thespian" post BEFORE i read this, thankee;

which can only mean that the SYNCRHONICITY PUDDING GODS are smilin' on me once again.

laughing at. smiling. whichever.

Which of your entries unjustly gets too little attention?

"Nobody Knows I'm a Thespian." because there cannot be enough attention paid to the works of Hroswitha Von Gandersheim, or the perils of exploding water-balloon tits.


Your current favorite blog?

Wasn't there some kind of story about this? Something involving some dude who was supposed to choose the most beautiful goddess and he couldn't make up his mind and then he did and there was a war and someone put an apple on his head and shot him? No thank YOU; i'm far too clever.



What blog did you read most recently?

Uh, all of them I think. No: um, well, check the sidebar. Some of those.



Which feeds do you subscribe to?

I dunno how to do that shit.


What blogs are you tagging with this meme and why?

White Bear; Black Amazon; Train Mama; Midwestern Transport. 'cause I've met 'em all and they're all swell and they're in NOO YAWK, and because they will just love me for this.

Stealing this

from pal fastlad, who just put it up himself:

Desires

Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1904)

When seriously fucked up shit happens to awesome people, part #425,341,987,372: Grannyvibe

...has apparently pulled her blog, at least for now, "Granny Gets a Vibrator," because--or at any rate concurrent with--she has apparently developed lymphoma.

And no insurance. Her son (Finnegan's Wake-Up Call, heh) has started a PayPal account: if ever there was a good cause, i truly think this woman is one of them.

Thanks to alphabitch via Twisty Faster and two regulars thereon for the heads-up. That counts for something in my book.

So, you know, people caring, giving a crap, that is somewhat of a consolation;

i am trying not to let this one send me too far into the dark fog, but goddam.

another by all accounts and from what i knew of her online (oh yes: and quite young, mid-forties) woman just recently passed. From fucking cancer. Goddam motherfucking shitsucking cancer. after--no, i won't go into it. not really my story, of course. yeah, my mom had it too. is currently in remission (knock wood). oh yeah: is currently awaiting the results of that same genetic test TF took, btw.

but fuck i'm depressed about that, Liz. of ALL people. and people like motherfucking Dick Cheney just go on and on and on, and get the best of doctor treatment for their non-existent hearts because, well, that's how it is.

and all--or well most of them-- the coolest and most interesting, kindpeople i know are either out of work or otherwise struggling to keep their head above water to one degree or another, and what end in sight? what the fuck? and we are keeping this whole monolithic creaky countrysystem-whatever "number One" so that, what? "Coca-Cola, sometimes war." yepper. corporations are persons, is it? a handful of sociopathic fucks can continue to feed their gaping black hole of a soul with the wrong food (i.e. everyone else) and STILL never even be satisfied?

yeah, maybe revolution doesn't sound so bad at that. sure, put me up against the wall, what the fuck.

sorry, guys. anyway, if you can: go over to FinWake and maybe give some help or at least love. i'll be back to posting about spiritual uplift and kittens and shit shortly.

Statement of faith

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen--I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't open the box eventually it'll just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.

--Neil Gaiman, "American Gods"

Our deepest fear

yeah, that quote. You've probably heard it before.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

--Marianne Williamson

Often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela; in a way it could just have well have been. And sure, substitute any term for "God" you like; I often do.

But you know what? It's really true. All of it.

On the delicate balance between being an asshole and a doormat

as posed by amber in response to a post by antiprincess: i.e. where do you draw the line?


What I said was:

In a way, ime, imho, etc., I think in a way you (general "you") actually -do- know very well where the line is, assuming you are a decent, sensitive, caring person in the first place; it's just, one tends to end up second-guessing oneself a lot precisely because of the doubt instilled by fuckloads of unconscious/nasty people.

and, addendum, if you do fuck up? (which you will, inevitably). You fuck up. It's human. You apologize or at least acknowledge the mistake, do what you can if anything to make reparations, and move on.

Lately I have been humming a Bessie Smith song; the lyrics feel apt:

"I ain't worried, I'm doing very fine
You keep yours and I'll hold onto mine

Take it right back to the place where you got it,
oh you cain't leave a bit of it in here..."

Come and get me, copper

Via petitpoussin: one more reason why, perhaps, siccing Lily Law on prostitutes or even the phenomenon of streetwalking is not perhaps the best way to overturn the Patriarchy or even abuse of women, after all. Or, well, policy, who the fuck knows, but at minimum: well, check this shit out:

Philadelphia Police Officer James Fallon spent many midnight shifts on patrol - not for crime, but for sex.

His partner, Timothy Carre, says he tried to warn their bosses, but nobody paid attention - not until the night Fallon and Carre stopped a stripper getting off her shift, forced her into their patrol car and, she says, took turns raping her in the darkness near I-95.

The officers are now off the force, convicted of sex crimes, but the city is still confronting the consequences of that 2002 attack.
Post a Comment

Investigators found a string of other women who say they were victimized by the pair, and a lawsuit filed by the dancer recently brought to light dozens of other accusations of sexual misconduct involving Philadelphia police from 1992 to 2002. The department dismissed most as groundless, or unprovable.

In another, still-open case obtained by The Inquirer, the department allowed an investigation into a complaint of a forced sexual display in a police lockup to languish for years. No one has been disciplined.

Philadelphia isn't unusual. Hundreds of police officers across the country have turned from protectors to predators, using the power of their badge to extort sex, an Inquirer review shows.

Many of those cases fit a chilling pattern: Once abusers cross the line, they attack again and again before they are caught. Often, departments miss warning signs about the behavior.

Most police departments do little to identify the offenders, and even less to stop them. Unlike other types of police misconduct, the abuse of police power to coerce sex is little addressed in training, and rarely tracked by police disciplinary systems.

This official neglect makes it easier for predators to escape punishment and find new victims.

Lawyers for Philadelphia's 7,000-member department say in court papers that sexual-misconduct complaints are "extremely rare" and that commanders move swiftly to discipline offenders.

Though the number of abusive officers in any one department is usually small, the damage they leave behind is often devastating - to their victims, to taxpayers and to the reputations of their colleagues.

The Inquirer found nearly 400 reports of police sexual misconduct across the country in the last five years, including dozens in the Philadelphia region...

...Many victims, ashamed and intimidated, never report the crimes, The Inquirer review shows. As in the case of Fallon and Carre, victims often don't surface until the offenders are caught and taken off the street.

"The women are terrified," said Penny Harrington, the former police chief of Portland, Ore., and founder of the National Center for Women and Policing. "Who are they going to call? It's the police who are abusing them."

When women do come forward, their complaints are often ignored.

Indeed, experts say, culprits tend to target vulnerable women such as prostitutes, drug addicts or drunks, knowing they likely won't be believed.

"You don't pick the mother of three, the soccer mom. You don't pick the prom queen," a prosecutor said during a 1997 trial of a Norristown police officer convicted of sexual assault.

"You pick the delinquent kid. You pick one of the street crawlers, people out there at 4 in the morning."

Gahhh. I hate deja vu. Did I already say that?

Seriously, I've been getting this all damn day. It's beginning to kind of piss me off.

"So what have you been writing lately?"

Yeah, That Question.

Which I don't get nearly as often these days, as I haven't identified as "playwright" or hung in such circles much (a little more again just lately; it is awkward, somehow), for, oh, the last six or seven years.

What have I been writing?

Well, in terms of actual finished projects, prose or dramatic, as in, with an eye toward i don't know publication and/or production? Pretty much nil. Started a couple here n there. somewhere. i hate when i start something and then not only do i forget where i put it, virtually, but i forget what i was calling it, and thus can't find the file.

However, just in terms of sheer quantity, output:

Well, there's this here blog, for going on a year now. There's all my contributions on other blogs, not inconsiderable. and more verbiage in emails, some rather involved and (to my mind) rather eloquent, not just chit-chat. Before this, I was on a virtual community; at one point i -started- to try to extract and download all my posts; i quit after the first, i don't know, 100 pages' worth? it was a lot. hadn't gotten very far in the process, either. Besides that, a 700+ page personal journal, which hived off into a separate dream journal and a few other things. And a couple other things here and there, no doubt. mostly online. bulletin boards. i like the instant gratification of a response, see.

And, you know, i won't flatter myself that every single "yeah, I like pudding too" on a comments thread is the most profound fucking thing in the world, but a lot of it is, yeah okay I won't self-deprecate in this area for once, probably edited and sculpted enough that i -would- submit it for publication somewhere, if i, you know, got my shit together.

So essentially what this boils down to is: I've been doing nothing BUT writing. For the past six or seven years. And oh yeah, what is the phrase, "working on myself." Which has paid off rather enormously, in fact, and in myriad ways; although, once again, not in any way that tends to register as "progress" for people who don't really think in such terms.

And yet, people ask, "So what do you do?"

And I answer: (variously, over the last while): "I teach, online;" or, "I am a slave in the temp mines" or "I used to be in theatre; now I'm in transition; I am looking toward psychology" (depending on how much i feel the need to not feel completely pathetic). Stuff of that sort.

What I do NOT answer:

"I am a writer." "I write."

Because...?

Because I'm not getting paid for it, duh.

See, nothing you do counts unless you're getting paid.

And clearly, I cannot ever get paid for this, this writing, because, well, hasn't happened yet; and, consider all the OTHER amazing writers who aren't getting paid, well, um, oh look, shiny thing.

Yeah.

Oh, and I've had leads, and...yeah. Shiny thing. Shiny someone else's drama. Lint picking. Buffy reruns.

Whatever it is, I don't think "writer's block" is the right term.

"Sadly, humans are not like bugs in that way"

For some reason, this post over at CUSS (Campaign for Unshaved Snatch) regarding a NYT article on insect sex is making me giggle uncontrollably. (reason: I Am A Sick Fuck)

I mean, yes,

as I read extremely graphic descriptions of the female praying mantis eating the male while he was still getting his groove on, I felt a bit ill.

but, c'mon, i bet it's not the most unsavory thing you've considered (or eaten!) this week.

and, too, as noted,

if only humans were a bit more like bugs, this could become an important deterrent for rapists,

Well, i bet we could be if we put an EFFORT into it. Just need to find our inner mandibles, as it were.

But, no. You just don't care, you selfish fucks. Class Woman, nothing; you are letting the whole damn SPECIES down.

It seems that I am a huge prude when it comes to mating and eating one’s partner.

Wimp.

Meanwhile, not very far away, or well okay in the farthest reaches of northern Canada, as noted by the lovely CrackerLilo, they are having a celebration,

Prince Albert pride for Canadian gay teens

No, gutterbrain; that's where they LIVE.

In a can, duh.

("Is that a Prince Albert in your can, or are you just...")

So, I realize

...that a number of you who've been reading all this Byzantine Feminist War crap and have no idea what the fuck this all about but are still here may well have eyes glazier 'n a six-pack of Krispy Kremes by now, and, I just want to say: I Understand. Believe me, I'm bewildered by my own staying power. Hah. One of y'all, bless you, was all like,

I feel like I'm missing a key piece here of information here, not really following, but I'm interested: where did it all begin?

and I'm all,

O, where did it all begin. Well, let's see. In the beginning, the earth was created or formed, and it was very hot. Then the dinosaurs came! Then they all died, and...

Yeah. Sorry, really. And I heart you all who are still with me even though you may have been going, okay, finally, what? Well, um, yeah, whatever...say, this reminds me, I think I need to do the laundry.

Because, among other things, you know what: so do I. Actually, pretty urgent now: I'm out of towels.

It's just that, for whatever reason...

Yeah. More compelling. In a biting on tinfoil sort of way. God knows why. Well, no, I do know why.

Anyway: thank you, I love you all, and I promise to be moving on shortly, or at least branching out. Onward and upward.

So, bear with me as I just address this last ungodly mess one last time, SVP.

"It will only hurt for a moment."

First of all, I hope she doesn't mind, but some words from KH in the comments have really kind of pulled me up short, in a good way, and I wanted to share, a bit, viz: this whole "radical" notion of supposed CR or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be, (yes, old-school feminist consciousness raising is a legit tool; this is not, as Bitch Lab and others have noted, remotely what this was) and why in fact yes "just" words on a screen bloody matter, abuse-wise, too:

There’s a concept, ‘moral luck.’ (Google Bernard Williams.) If I shoot a gun into a crowd & everybody manages to duck, I’m not a murderer. But only by luck. How much should my culpability for the act depend on luck? Some people say a lot, others say not so much. I say, first, it’s a bad thing, &, second, your luck’s gonna run out, paisan. If XXX had slit her wrists? (Stranger things have happened.) I know, it just says something about her, not anybody else. Right? How dead does somebody have to be before the whole enterprise begins to look dubious?

‘ … I’m struggling to articulate … : there are … rules.’

What’s to struggle? Don’t murder. Don’t rape. Don’t treat people like shit. Easy. Everybody raised in a not-profoundly-dysfunctional environment knows the rules. (If you’ve forgotten, it’s in books & shit.) Some people just find capital-R Reasons to ignore them. Reasons that usually, totally adventitiously, serve their venal cock-a-doodle-do interests.

I’ve noticed: the rules that govern this jump-the-bitch-&-string-her-up game are actually the same rules we’ve been playing along with all along. I complain when somebody blandly, no-effort-to-hide-it lies about what I said 2 minutes before, but wait a minute … that’s what they’ve always been doing. Even vis-a-vis authentically evil common enemies. Bush, Limbaugh. Even then, it’s all guilding the lily. The real thing isn’t bad enough, it’s got to be some inane parody. Which, to me, isn’t radical (I’m protective of the word). A radical takes her enemies seriously, does them the courtesy of addressing their real arguments, not some childish caricature. A radical has a personal stake in getting it right, elsewise why bother. Which means: this isn’t radical politics, it’s shadow puppetry, radicalism as niche self-marketing. Which is why it’s so easy, come some future 9/11, to change shoe styles....

A lot of these people come from intellectually backward, philistine, middle class backgrounds. Radicalism is a form of symbolic upward mobility, an insecure, ruthless way of distinguishing themselves from the communities from which they spring. From their parents, their great-grandparents, the kind of the people who burned out mine, & tried to keep yours out of the country. To put is crudely & way-too sweepingly. If they lived in Brooklyn, Vice mag. would be their bible. This has something to do with the cargo-cult attitude to ideas, ‘theory.’ I’m not Ms. Class Analysis, but there’s a petty bourgeois stink to it. Middling IQ, less than the scientific & technical intelligentsia, learned professions, but by God they’ve been to college. Sorry, I know, catty, but true. I spend a fair amount of my time around people who don’t spell too good, & they don’t know from book learnin’, but they know bullshit when they see it, & this so-called radicalism is bullshit. That may be my point: straight from my lumpen heart to you. The combination of crudball character, middling intelligence, ambition & pretense isn’t radicalism. It’s reaction.

The name for it isn’t only ‘cult,’ although it's that. Also: paternalism. Also, to repeat, transparent BS to paper over the gaping void between radical values & shitty mean-girl power-trips.

And rationality, facts, etc. isn’t pale-male. Don’t give it over.


So, all of that. And no, I am not Miz Class Analysis, either, and no, I am not one of the proletariat me own self, not at all. That's just one thing, really. The key part: "there are rules," "bullshit," "reactionary," and "stink." Yupper.

O.K. Now the actual case: yes INdeed, rape is VERY SERIOUS. Only one small problem here: the woman in question was pretty fucking clear that SHE WASN'T EXPERIENCING IT AS RAPE. And, strangely enough, I BELIEVE THE WOMAN. You know: that radical concept wherein if the woman says she was raped? Don't start grilling her and questioning her and picking her apart and making her doubt her sanity: this, too, is kind of Feminism 101. Surely.

The funny thing is, I happen to believe that this concept of "believing the woman who had the experience" extends beyond when she says it IS rape. Wacky, I know.

So, but okay, now we are seriously down the rabbit hole because this is being explained away as goddamit, this is an EMERGENCY. This is an INTERVENTION for the woman (who by now is somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, hopefully laughing her ass off), don't you understand? It's like surgery.

Surgery. Righty-o.

Well, yes, it's quite true: sometimes, emergencies happen. And -sometimes- (relatively rarely in the grand scheme of things? nonetheless), it may happen that an apparently conscious and sane person actually is bleeding to death from his severed arm-stump but, for whatever reason, keeps insisting politely that he's just fine, thanks, no need for the hospital really ("It's only a flesh wound!") I, um, guess. I don't know how OFTEN that happens, but whatever;

the POINT being, whichever ass-stain that was that actually made that analogy, that even if it WAS clearly an emergency, hello? YOU ARE NOT A TRAINED SURGEON. You are not even someone who has any actual acquaintance with the case at all. You are, in short, just some assclown running around with a rusty hacksaw and a mallet by way of anaesthetic, who's probably not even in the right room. In fact, this isn't a hospital at all, did you notice; this is the Argument Clinic, just down the street from St. Loony Up The Cream Bun With Jam. oh, yeah, and the "patient" actually left the place hours ago. but do keep earnestly trying to saw away at whatever it is! your foot, is it? At least in that instance no one -else- gets hurt. But, as they say, sometimes, "it's the thought (or lack thereof) that counts."

And since I'm already three for three with the Monty Python: anyone else, after the initial sputtering and...sputtering, have a flash of the Gumby surgeons?

"Doctor!! DOCTOR!!! DOC-TORRRRRR!!!"

"Hello!"

"Oh! My...brain...hurts."

"Ooohhhhh."

(slap, slap, slap on the head).

"It. will. have. to. come. Out!"

"Out?!? Out of. me. 'ead?"

"Yes! On-leee...Bits of it!"

"Ohhhhh."

***

What? What are you laughing at? It's not funny. It's Deadly Fucking Serious. Except when it's not, and no, you are not to be the judge of which is when or anything else: you are delirious. Lie down and HOLD STILL FOR THE OPERATION. It's all in your head, see. Your head is the problem; your head is hurting you. It is stuffed full of Patriarchal Badness. It. will. have. to. come. Out! Yes! On-leee....BITS OF IT!!

"Ohhhhhh."

Why, this is oddly refreshing.

Not to put Butterfly Cauldron for any particular reason, except I think she's swell, you should check out her blog; and, so, she got this Nonny Mouse commenter, who, well, actually there's nothing terrifically remarkable about him, really, sadly, except that it pulled me up short a bit; as it made me realize that I've been so thoroughly immersed in the Talmudic subtleties of the internecine Feminist Wars (or whatever this is) that I had almost forgotten about the existence of the more, shall we say, traditional type of incredibly obnoxious self-righteous "I'm only being a nasty fuck for your own good" evangelist.

Almost.

Y'know, I'm aware that society tells us that it's okay to wallow in moral relativity and engage in a mentality of "do what feels good to you," (that's called "hedonism," by the way), but the fact is that a lie, even when it makes one feel good about oneself, is still a lie although it's affirmed by everyone and the truth remains true even if everyone disagrees with it.
It's really not okay to revel in gluttony because that's "who you are and you're beautiful."
There are people who live with real problems not of their own making and real psychic hardships who would love to have the opportunities you do. Don't cheapen their problems with your pseudo-angst.

Also, you need to check your theology. I realize you may not consider my reaching out to you "gentle and respectful" as Peter commands (1 Peter 3.15), but sometimes the truth that we need to hear is very painful and we don't like it. If you're interested in learning the facts about Christianity (not the emotionalism and fire and brimstone stuff, although that's a necessary part of it eventually) and the outrageous claims of Jesus Christ, I'd love to discuss them with you. As for your beliefs and mine, maybe we can examine the evidence for our worldviews and religions side by side and see which one is based more on historical facts in evidence and which is more reasonable.
Thanks!

Oh, I had a reply to him. Oh, it hasn't gone through the mod queue yet and I forgot to copy it. Oh well. Anyway, let's have a great big warm hand of applause for a blogfriends's Nonny Mouse #431809.765B or something! (and a nice warm round of support for BC for her civilized yet firm reply to the fuckhead, and for just generally being a swell person and interesting blogger), whoever it is, and no, I would have absolutely no problem singling out someone like this for humiliation if I thought, you know, it was even anything more than a drive-by. Yay, Nonny Mouse! A blessed reminder that yes INdeed, there are many many many flavors of assholery in this world, and some that are even a lot more prevalent and obnoxious than the ones I've been all het up about! Not that that remotely lets Those Other types of evangelists off the hook, because it doesn't! (you fuckstains). Just because, well, I needed a reminder that the world is a wide wide many-splendored place! teeming with diversity! including a full 31 entirely different flavors of folks who are utterly and completely full of shit! (which does all smell the same at the end of the day, but nevertheless).

O and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and kittens are in the air and I'm actually going to go eat dim sum with my fwieeeennnnnds

(if they ever get here. fastlad, where ARE you already?)

I like to sing-a,
About the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a...

Sunday Vicarious Kitten Blogging

I so wish I'd had a camera on hand, but anyway:

Doing errands, on my way home. On the sidewalk, near the gutter, outside one of the small supermarkets, there is a

teeeeeeeeenny tiiiiiiiiiiiiiny

little black kitten

playing with a weed. Stalky stalky! Pouncey grabby! Bat, bat.

So, I am just standing there with my heart full of brimming luuuvvv and a drop of concern for whether this was someone's baby or a street urchin; and, if the latter, could I?.....should I?...oh, I really can't, but, tsk, it's so little, if it belongs to someone, do they know it's playing outside?

I bend down. Friendly sniffage. So, okay, socialized, must belong to someone. Maybe it's the store cat. Hope so. Batty paws, back at the weed. Heart melts.

I hear, in the wake of some woman marching by, very Margaret Hamilton, flung back at me:

"It probably has rabies."

Not a break in the stride, either. Nice. oh well.

other people are stopping to bask in the kyootness. Someone establishes that yes, it's the, or a, store resident cat, the store cat's kitten. Six weeks old. wuzza.

While I'm trying to ask the guy, who's very friendly but whose English is rather broken, whether it's okay for teeny one to be romping around like that outside,

I mean I think probably yes, it's New York, cats can well take care of themselves, but I am a Concerned Jewish Cat Mother and I Must Know For Sure, and also want to ogle some more,

but so while we're talking, kitten has abandoned the weed and is prancing merrily up the sidewalk. Absolutely fearless. I don't think I've ever seen a cat that small and that, well, bold? and yet completely unwary of people? outside before.

So I'm following this kitten up the sidewalk like a baby duck after its mother, giggling like a little girrrrrrrllll.

It scampers into a dry cleaner's. No concern at all for customers who might step on it. There's a full-length mirror on one wall.

and now this is just completely out of hand, with the cute, because the kitten spots its reflection and starts to do this great kitty Marx Brothers routine: who is that...? that is ANOTHER CAT! is it friendly? Sniff. Cold! Hiss! Arch! Crackle! Bounce around like a jumping bean! Swipe! Tumble over! Shake!--oh, look, a curtain, start to climb--what's THAT, over THERE? --wait! say! WHO IS THAT OTHER CAT? Swat! Bat!

I'm not even pretending to be a customer, of course. guy who runs the place is laughing, customer is cracking up. He whips out a digital camera--"You're taking a picture?" "Oh, I had to," he grins.

Kitten has calmed ever so slightly. I get in a pet. Just a little one. Mrrrrrrr.

Eventually, it is communicated that the lady wants to know if the store knows that it's ten o'clock, do they know where their kitten is? A young boy comes in, and, after only a moment's catch-me-chase-me, scoops it up rather unceremoniously and goes back down the street.

Sap that I am, I follow him back, too.

He gets back to the store's entrance and even less ceremoniously dumps the kitten in the entrance to some kind of cat door--what, he couldn't just bring it in? but so it uses the kitten's entrance, and wanders away out of sight behind the counter.

That's all, really.

now I really really need a camera, finally.

and a KITTENNNNNNNN

So, in the calm light of day,

I am going back among the last few posts and comment threads, to reassess if I've been, you know, just a teeny bit over the top.

And so I'm looking at this nugget culled from the Pandagon shitstorm, and, well, by golly, it's...even more amazingly amazing than the first time I read it, which is just, well, amazing.

In the proud spirit to which we seem to have recently become accustomed, I'm just gonna spotlight it here, without further context, and take it apart. Without the name of the criticized person, though, on account of that's been a -bit- overdone already, or of the poster, because frankly i can't make myself go back in there for it. So, without further ado, here 'tis:

*******************

>XXX is a woman. Her rationalizations are inarguably hurting her. Therefore XXX’s coping mechanisms are hurting a woman. This is an ongoing hurt–as long as she continues to think this way, she will continue to allow herself to be abused, and continue thinking that she deserves that abuse. The criticisms being leveled at her—insofar as they are directed at her personally—are meant to break her cycle of abuse and rationalization. She is being “hurt” as a patient is “hurt” during surgery.

The criticisms also serve a larger purpose, which is to attack her rationalization techniques on a larger stage, in order to show how ultimately self-destructive they are, and hopefully allow others to escape or avoid the same mental trap XXX is in. >

**********************

Oh, right, okay, a -little- context, for those of you just tuning in: XXX is an actual person who's been posting in a small, personal, journal-like blog, about her sex life and her thoughts on feminism--the really relevant part here is her sex life, as it turns out--whom some swell person on one of the Big Feminist blogs decided to bring to the attention of one of the Big Feminist Bloggers. It then went to several others, and by this stage, after having been sliced 'n' diced eight thousand ways from Christmas, along with its actual author, who is alive and well and reading all this and doing her best to be a sport about it all. Particularly, how she handles her sex life. Apparently very very badly. Anyway, by this stage, it's reached the attention of the most popular feminist blogger, who has thousands of hits per day; this here is I think the second or third thread on this subject, that is, pretty much this one woman who had the audacity to "not get it"-- you can see an excerpt of her hopelessly self-deluded, self-harming, anti-feminist writing (after the fact) here (it's the second italicized excerpt, after the "fuck you all.")

So, but anyway, enough about XXX--and I do mean, ENOUGH about XXX. My thoughts after reading the above-quoted nugget, which was perhaps the most egregious example of this sort of thing, but far from the only such type of exhortation/rationalization/whatever this is:


first thought: HAHAHAHAHAHA! ...oh, my God. you're really serious, aren't you?

second thought: (silent boggling)

third thought: ewewewewewEW

fourth thought: ...and another thing: next time someone complains about "strawfeminists," I'm gonna have to say or at least think: dude, why on earth would anyone need to make up a "strawfeminist" when people like this are doing such a dazzling job of self-burlesque all on their very own?

fifth thought: fuck, this is really depressing.

sixth thought: okay, so: where is this coming from?

seventh thought: Seriously, is it just me? Has it ("it") always ("always") been like this? Or is this actually even weirder than the usual aggravating intrablog flamewar bullshit? And is this, like, getting to be a pattern? Or is it just me?

eighth thought: and if it -is- a new (for the femblogosphere, at least) and specific pattern, can we maybe track the fucker back to the root, as long as we're, you know, looking for root causes, examining, like that, so we can put a stop to this shit? Because I for one do -not- welcome my little neo-Red Guard Overlords, thank you very much.


**on edit** And I'll just add this: you know, I did do kind of a dramatic hit -n- run in that particular Pandagon thread, and, it's uh, possible I may have missed something in my rush to just express my exasperation at what had been a long long long buildup of, well, stuff at least somewhat like this. I -think.- And also, you know, I am a sensitive little flower at heart and seriously couldn't and can't bear to really look at all that any more closely than I did. Which perhaps may have resulted in some unfairness. So could someone with a stronger stomach and/or better sense of humor than I who was in there just tell me: did I miss the part right after where everyone went, "my God, that's completely over-the-top! how ludicrous this all suddenly appears! so sorry for all this group mania or whatever it is, XXX! c'mon, let's go get a beer" or even just plain, "okay, critique is one thing, but my God, that's completely over-the-top! Are you high?" or, "HAHAHAHA, APRIL FOOL!!"

...because, if so, allow me to Emily Litella "Never Mind" in advance.

If not, though, and y'all are still reading this, and -still- haven't said anything remotely along these lines and aren't even seeing what the problem here is even now...well, see my previous few posts for my feelings on the subject, because they stand as is.

***

******EDIT THE SECOND, ADDENDUM***

So, yeah, some of y'all are already having suspicions as to my own suspicions as to what the root cause -might- be, or one of them, and seeing as how I'm just the subtlest fucker on the planet, y'all are right, I cry uncle.

Well, let's just say both that y'all are right in your guessing, and also that I am willing to be persuaded that it is something else entirely.

Just that, primarily? whatever it is? I want it to -stop.-

Not because I want to shut down oh-so-valuable-, you know, -discussion.-

Not because I want to knock head Heather out of her place so that I can grab the red scrunchie for myself.

Although I freely cop to being as competitive and bossy and sure-of-my-own-certitude about the pettier shit as anyone else.

Because I genuinely think that kind of thing is nasty bullshit, and destructive, and oh my GOD I am so motherfucking tired of hearing about y'all's BLOWJOBS, and I don't just mean the literal ones either.

But mostly: how did the phrase go again? Oh, yeah.

"You're hurting women."

Fuck that, actually.

"You're hurting people."

Maybe not this one so much; she seemed pretty resilient and so forth. But other people aren't, and no, it isn't okay. It isn't just an amusing game. Or if it is, howazbout make up your frigging minds whether it's a harmlessly amusing game or serious talk about Very Important Shit in preparation for the Revolution, because I honestly don't think it can be both at once, even assuming I believe it's either one alone, which I don't know as I do, really.

As in, actual people, right now.

You may now commence the shrieks and howling about the beam in my own eye and how clearly it's just my own endless grudge about the Eternal Motherfucking Subject and who do I think I'm kidding and my every fucking flaw.

but I'm sick of this shit, and no, I'm not gonna just shut up about what's bothering me any more than you are.

So either let's figure out a way to really talk about this, or you know, just deal with it.


***ADDENDUM THE HOPEFULLY LAST****

Okay. I'll throw out a hint as to the direction I think this could go in without turning it into yet more "bad [Someone!] Bad [Someone!] I Blame [Someone]!"

...which I have been doing myself here, I recognize the irony, YES already.

It's like this.

There -is- such a thing as "safe space."

But it is not determined by who, demographically, is in it, or even what the subject matter is.

There are rules for how to create such spaces. Virtually and otherwise.

I don't count myself as an expert on how to manifest such spaces; that's a fuckload of responsibility, frankly, and I'm not sure I'm up for it. I've been in them. I can give a rough outline as to how I think they work. I could -talk- about that. I think it takes more than just a list of guidelines to really pull it off as I've seen/experienced in the best of them: I think it (probably) takes lots and lots of experience. Which I do not have.

But I do see the need for it, yeah, even online.

IF we're going to take on such sensitive, volatile, emotionally loaded shit as sexuality, and desire, and abuse. Personal histories thereof, feelings thereof, even yeah ideas about how the world works sociopolitically as derived from thereof, -as long as we're talking about thereof at all-.

-Personal- shit, that is, of the people actually speaking here. Personal SENSITIVE shit, like abuse, really maybe not even s-e-x-x per se, although inevitably in feminist discussions at least it always seems to come back to abuse, and (I think) ther are good reasons for this. But so, yeah: "This is what happened to me." "This is my experience." There are ways of doing this that are relatively "safe," and ways that are potentially incredibly damaging. So far, here in Blog O'Sphere, I've only been seeing the latter. Well, particularly in the Big Taffick-y Conferences.

I'm not even gonna get into going out and finding some not particularly consensual person and dragging all her personal baggage out in front of the entire world to poke and maul and drool over. Yet. I'll get there in a minute, but that is getting into a whole other territory, and is a very big part of what has got my frilly girlie panties in a wad right now.

Now: there is also a way in which to talk about S-E-X-X (and/or even abuse), and the sociopolitical Meanings and causes and so on thereof, which does not get all up in everyone's personal tender bits, just like anything else. So, yeah, there -is- such a thing as political debate, even passionate, heated political debate. There are also rules for this. Generally they tend to fall more under what's been termed, fairly or not, "pale and male" thinking. Formal logic, academic theory, peer-reviewed scientific studies, statistics, governmental policy, yadda. You all know that drill.

And within such debates there are also rules for what's been called "civil" behavior. You know: avoid ad hominem; for many people, avoid strong nasty "flaming" language, (i.e. "my God, you're dumber than a truck full of chickens going to town, that's the stupidest fucking argument I've ever heard"). Personally--strictly personally--that's actually not my concern here. I don't really give a crap about "nice," myself, or "polite." Sure, call your opponent an ignorant pissant whose mother was a hamster and whose father smelt of elderberries, as far as I'm concerned. One can argue about how terribly useful this is to actually shedding light on the purported subject--honestly, probably not very--but, again, strictly personally, mileage varies on this, I realize, some people are really bothered by any sort of direct insult or cursing, and that's certainly their prerogative if they're hosting the discussion--this doesn't bother me. Hell, it can even be kind of fun, in a sparring-sort of way. Yeah, people might get hurt, but it's more or less understood what makes it a fair fight, no hitting below the belt. All part of the game; and in -that- instance, it really is pretty much a game. As long as we're just keeping it pretty much to the intellectual, public-sphere level.

But when you -combine- all that with the sensitive, volatile, personal, group-therapy-esque discussion which already is not really being handled very well, well, that's kind of a recipe for fucking disaster.

And, I realize that there are in fact other really volatile subjects that make up quite a bit of what's being talked about in this our leftie blogosphere: racism. Classism. All kinds of isms. Religion. And yeah: I'm not, to be perfectly honest, sure how useful it would ultimately be to try to police every such discussion to make sure nothing personal gets talked about, even assuming such a thing were feasible; then you get into the awkward territory of "speaking for," of intellectualization and over-abstraction of perfectly real and important shit, and so forth. And yes, yes, yes: the Personal Is Political. Sure.

All I'm struggling to articulate here is: there are, I think, somewhere in here, rules. Boundaries. Distinctions for what -type- of discussion this is going to be, and then respective rules/guidelines for those. Or, at least, I think there should be.

And personally I tend to think this goes double or triple for anything that involves personal abuse, and particularly sexual abuse.

Not sex per se, either; sure, there are yet other rules for the kind of discussion that goes, "Say, I really like reverse cowgirl style." "Oh, I don't like that at all; here's why." That shit's just fine, too, provided everyone knows that that's the level of discussion going on here. That's not what I'm talking about. Actually, to be perfectly honest, and here is where my own personal bias starts creeping in: if anything, I think the loosely-defined leftie blogosphere could use a healthy dose -more- of that. Bitch PhD. set a really good example of how to do this, I think, sometime back. Yeah, believe it or not: I think -part- of all this obsessiveness over blowjobs is that for way too many people? yeah, even worldly-type with-it enlightened leftie-type people, even in this our Porn-O-Riffic Decadent S-E-X-X-Y modern woild ? Talking about OMG S-E-X-X without embarassment is still a really big fucking deal. Not for everyone, clearly; but, way more than one would tend to think. So yeah, that's a whole -'nother- issue.

But not really my biggest concern right now, believe it or not.

Now. I'm still not even sure if this all sort of muddling alone accounts for the atmosphere which leads to shit being said like the example quoted at the beginning of this post; to the practice of hauling an off-guard non-combatant into the limelight and mercilessly grilled and dissected for the delectation of the vasty crowd. Honestly? I don't know -what- that shit is. Like I asked: where the hell is this coming from??

And you know, we could talk and have talked, not very successfully I think, about how and whether any particular given theory/ideology is more prone than others to lead to the creation of this sort of atmosphere. I have my own thoughts on this; but I am more than willing to leave that for a separate, hopefully careful, discussion.

All I know is this: the results. REALLY frigging skeevy.

Here's why:

When you start getting into "we know better than you what's 'hurtful' or not. We know what's good for you. We can tell you how to improve yourself, purge yourself of all the impurities" territory?

There are names for that sort of transaction. Atmosphere. Behavior. Whatever.

"Cultlike" is the first one that leaps to my mind.

Maybe it's just me thinking this; honestly, I hope not.

"Abuse of power," at best.

Oh yes: did I mention that -everyone- has power? And that we're -all- capable of abusing it? Well, we do, and we are. It may not be huge mountain-moving fate-of-nation-changing power; it may "only" be the power to make Mary Sue feel ashamed and chastised, and you, satisfied at having Shown Her The True Way.

-But that is enough all by itself.-

Why: see above re: "you're hurting women/people."

Even one is too damn many.

And -that,- in a nutshell, is what's really bothering me right now.

And the subject matter literally could have been anything: hairstyles, yoga practice...religious belief. Maybe even, as KH suggested somewhere back in the comments, arithmetic.

But sex works especially well for this sort of thing; because, frankly, it is an area where people feel very, very vulnerable.

But, but: it's not about the sex, really. It's not about the sex. IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SEX.

It's about power.

And abuse.

Which, by the way? Abuse? Is not limited to the sphere of sexuality or even physicality. Not. At. All.

And it's not just the "patriarchy" who's doing it.

Okay, I really am done here. Fire at will.

"Inferno"

The madman's wandering blue eyes found me. He said, "I was a psychiatrist."

"I didn't ask." In fact, I'd already learned more of Hell than I really wanted to know. I only wanted out. -Don't tell me any more!- I closed my eyes.

"They trusted me," the mad voice said happily. "They thought we knew what we were doing. For fifty bucks an hour I listened to their life stories. Wouldn't you?"

He subsided. The woman said, "He's crazy."

"Thanks. I really wondered about that," I told her without opening my eyes...

The mad psychiatrist noticed me again. "We were just playing," he said dreamily. "Tinkering with something we didn't understand. I knew. Oh, I knew. Let me tell you..."

"Don't tell me." They kept hurting at me, all of them!

"He was a catatonic. He was like a rubber doll. You could put him in any position, and he'd stay there for hours. We tried all sorts of things in those days. Shock therapy, inslin shock, lobotomy. Punish the patient for not noticing the outside world."

"Or for not noticing you."

I meant it to hurt, but he nodded happily. "So we put him in a hotbox and started raising the temperature. We watched him through a window. First he just sweated. Then he started to move around. At a hundred and thirty he said his first words in sixteen years. 'Get me the fuck out of here!'"

The mad eyes found me, and his face seemed to cave in. The cherubic smile vanished. Urgently he said, "Get me the fuck out of here!"

"I can't. I'll be lucky to get out myself." I tried moving again. There was pain, but not enough to keep me in that place. I stood gingerly and started up the slope.

The girl cried, "You can't do that! Come back here! Come back!"

I kept going.


--Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, "Inferno"

So, here's a modest proposal, finally:

You want examination? Deep Inside My (or a friend's: we are having a Two-For-One Special this week) Psyche? Really proooooobe into those deep socially caused but personally heartfelt Patriarchal wounds, for the betterment of myself and the Movement? Okay. I'll do it. Whatever you want me to examine, I'll examine it. But first, I get to examine -you.- 'K?

Oh, please say yes. Because, you know, I'm -really- good at it, and I do enjoy it so, and it's been -so hard- restraining myself even to the degree I've been doing it. Go on. Let me look deeeeeeep inside you. Or at least let me tell YOU the PROPER way to do a self-examination. (as long as I get to hold onto the speculum). It'd do you good and make you a better feminist and build your body twelve different ways. Well, no. But it'd get me hot. And that's what really matters.

This is what intellectual honesty looks like.

Listen up and pay attention, you smug obdurate fuckstains. (Hey, we all like this kind of self-righteous ordering about, am I right or am I right? It's good for ye!) Antiprincess has something to say:

For about six and a half years, between 1996 and 2002, I was a coffee-cup feminist. And a good one. Everything I did, said, typed, read, cooked, ate, shit, flushed, purchased, sold, wore, stripped, sucked, fucked, choked on, accepted, rejected, inspected or selected was controlled utterly and totally by my husband at the time.

I've spoken about him before, Mr. AbEx. He's the reason why I know it sucks to have to clean up your own bloody vomit after oral sex. He's the reason why I know that it's sometimes just as dangerous to be a housewife as a prostitute. He's the reason why I lived, and why I almost died.

But that was my life. I was okay with it, for a while. Over time I became less okay with it. Over time I had to do ever more exotic mental gymnastics to bend around and through and over and under the crazy situation I put myself in.

The important thing to know here is that immediately prior to meeting him, I was one out-n-proud queer-ass radical-feminist womyn-with-a-y. Seriously - one day I was pasting up flyers for the Pope Protest (yes, I threw condoms at Pope John Paul II - gives you an idea of just how ancient I really am), the next day I was packing my heels and pearls and teetering off to go be Mrs. America.

But he's the reason I know, deep in my fractured bones and in my damaged brain and in what remains of my shattered heart, that your philosophy will not protect you.

What - you think you can hide under a book? a pamphlet? a manifesto? an idea? You think raising some magic umbrella of consciousness will protect you from a rain of humiliation or a hailstorm of fists?

Feminism did not shield me, because The Patriarchy wasn't beating me. A human being was beating me. He was, his fists were, both true and real. He was not a figment of the collective imagination. He was not a concept, a generalized sort of shorthand to symbolize centuries of suffering. He was a fellow human being.

Do you blame Communism for some mindboggling number of Ukrainians slaughtered in the thirties? No - you blame Stalin, the man himself.

Do you blame Agrarian Utopianism for the slaughter of millions of Cambodians? No - you blame Pol Pot, the man himself.

Nobody blames Nazism-the-ideology, Nazism-the-philosophy, Nazism-the-shorthand for inexpressible evil, Nazism-the-word for the horrors of the Third Reich. We blame Hitler, his lieutenants, his adherents, those willing to take his philosophy and make it real in human terms.

As for me, what's left of me, I blame the Patrick-archy. I hold him personally accountable for everything he's ever done to me. I don't care where he learned it or who he learned it from - other men live perfectly well without learning to be monsters, and women learn to be monsters equally adeptly. I don't care about his illusory privilege or his brother's privilege or his assumed life of plush entitlement that amounted to ring-around-the-collar wage slavery.

...The strange thing is, I felt the same way about my female partner. That's important in this discussion too.

Let me ask you something, all-a-y'all - did you feel it when he hit me? Did somehow his fist hit your face? wrap around your swanlike neck? break your fragile bones? Did his words assault your ears with the force of all the sticks and stones of all the schoolyards of your life? Did my behavior, my striving, my working to please him, PUT A SINGLE BRUISE ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY?

I can't claim the title Radical Feminist anymore, if even I ever could. Ultimately feminism in all its flavors asks more questions than it answers, at least for me.

But now I'm a woman with a "why". I'm okay with that.

And that brings me to my personal vendetta.

As my husband, Antiprince The Gentle*, often says - "blog comments are often edited to give the appearance of hegemony." (or words to that effect - correct me if I'm wrong, darlin'.)

Often, editing is not even needed, if enough people (six or eight, that few) whomp up enough affirmations in the comments section, it looks like the whole world agrees with the blogger, and only a drooling halfwit or truly reckless vandal would disagree.

I got news.

I disagree. Strongly.

And I know there are others out there who disagree too. So what looks like a personal vendetta is not only a personal vendetta (brought about by allowing myself to get insulted about stupid shit - meh, I am as god made me) but an attempt to make sure all parties are represented. ALL parties.

Feminism, radical or otherwise, is not hegemonic. It just ain't. Too many different people have had too many different experiences to make it so.


***

What an utterly wacky notion, I know.

And what an utterly strange notion for the woman to talk about her very own shit instead of putting it onto someone else and pretending it was for the other person's own good.

Which, y'know, gosh, I personally wouldn't have blamed her if she were gun-shy of doing it at this point for any number of reason; as we have seen, people who do talk about their very own shit instead of hiding behind a bullshit smokescreen of "you" and "she" and "we" and "Class Woman" and "blahblahTHEORYquackquackEDIFICE" tend to get yet more shit thrown at them.

For, you know, their own good.

Maybe they just shouldn't be so SENSITIVE. After all, it's only a debate, right? Important theological uh I mean ideological shit is being forged here in the fire of rational fucking discouse, right? The fate of the fucking nation depends on your wankery I mean critique going on uninterrupted, right? Even if it's at the expense of someone who didn't ask for your help, right?

Did I mention the part about "fuck you all?"

On edit: Oh, yes, and. The person you've been having the circle-jerk over? If you'd bothered to go back for an update? Says, among other things:

I’ve had 17 sexual partners, only one of which has treated me, what I would call “disrespectfully,” and I hear that’s not because of anything I did specifically; he’s a first-rate fuckjob to everyone.

...It’s funny: Until Rachel and I started discussing the sports corset issue on Saturday night, I never questioned that I was a “feminist.” Until January of this year, I was a card-carrying NOW member and dutifully went to various feminist rallies around the DC area. I’ve always been staunchly pro-choice and I’ve never once worn makeup. I’m not a high-heel wearing woman, either and their sole purpose in my life has been to prevent my pants from dragging on the ground since I’m 5′2″ and pants are, indeed, made for a woman much taller than me.

...I should make it clear: I don’t seen feminism as the enemy of anything except, of course, the patriarchy, the existence of which I note duly. “Feminism” is also too much of a blanket term, encompassing a wide spectrum of ideologies; it would thus be difficult and counterproductive to call “Feminism” an enemy of sexuality.

...’m two days away from the one-year anniversary of the day I decided to leave my husband, move to Key West, and become a writer at a point at which few people even realized I was unhappy with my life. I think it can be extended to the conundrum in which I find myself today, with respect to being Not a Feminist in the minds of so many when I’ve proudly called myself a feminist for so long: That it’s okay to think things and to do things that aren’t popular. This seems like an obvious point. It is an obvious point, but it’s easier intellectualize than it is to assimilate into practice. It feel like the basketball player who wants to sing show tunes.


Okay? Are we quite finished here? I mean, I know it's really exciting to go running to the rescue and/or enlightenment and/or slapping sense into this poor sad deluded consciousness-lowered young bimbo I mean sexbot I mean -we're just trying to help, you're making us all look bad,- but from where I sit she looks healthier and better-adjusted than all y'all (and you know who you are) other-peoples'-navel-gazing wet sacks of neuroses put together.

So maybe, you know, you could consider backing the fuck off and considering whether you might want to turn that harsh white spotlight back on your own sweet selves a bit longer, if you're SO determined to EXAMINE and scrutinize and pickpickpick apart till it's sore and bleeding.

I mean to say:

Speak for your damn selves.

I mean, I'm only suggesting this because I CARE.

Actually, that part is true.

Just not so much about you.

Because all I know about you is that you are acting like GIANT ASSHOLES.