Shorter Milo Manara

Women aren’t allowed to get upset over misogyny until every other problem in the world is solved. Also, something something Islam.

Look, I don’t really have a dog in this hunt, being as I do not care about comics.* But it seems to me that the fault here really lies with Marvel, who hired an illustrator known for sexualizing women to create the cover for an issue that was supposed to reach out to female readers. That’s pretty fucking tone deaf. Do you just hate female money that much, nerds?

That’s not to say Manara isn’t a giant sexist cliché with just a dash of racism. Also, this is fucking terrible art. It looks ugly and painful and like something he slapped together on a cocktail napkin between tapas courses. If Manara really thinks women are “like that”, he needs some refresher courses. Human spines do not work that way. I’m also confused as to why he seems to think that female superheroes don’t so much wear costumes as paint on a facsimile thereof.

*So it’s entirely possible I’ve misread this whole thing: Does Spider-Woman shoot her webs out of her ass? Because then it would make sense for her to be a) naked, and b) presenting her butt like a baboon.

Shorter Doree Lewak

“I am desperate for male validation.”

Ms. Lewak seems like the kind of woman–sorry, the kind of “gal”–who sobs and cries out for daddy whenever she orgasms.

rape culture: saying “hey, maybe don’t rape people” leads to a flood of rape threats

Feminist confuses Faux News host by suggesting that we teach men not to rape. Of course, that host was Sean Hannity, who probably gets confused when he tries to figure out how the cream gets inside of a Twinkie.

His solution to rape is that women should be armed at all times. If that’s the best defense against rape, why is rape an “accepted job hazard” in the US military? That means that if you’re a woman and you join up, you’re basically told “Oh, bee tee dubs, you’re probably gonna get raped at some point. No suing!” That aside, this is what feminists are talking about when we talk about “rape culture”: that instead of telling women to constantly pack heat, or never drink in bars, or never walk after sunset except in packs of a dozen, or wear a burqa, or basically NEVER LEAVE THEIR HOUSE, we should instead be telling men “It’s not cool to rape women, regardless of the context”. The onus of rape shouldn’t be on what the victim was doing, or wearing, or drinking. It should be on the rapist.

If you are a man and you already know this, then congrats, you are a wonderful and enlightened person and “teach men not to rape” doesn’t apply to you. But you are still part of the problem if you refuse to accept that hundreds of thousands of men in this country alone don’t know those things, because we live in a rape culture that is not invested in teaching them. You are still part of the problem when you scoff at the phrase “rape culture” and pretend it’s a paranoid invention of hairy-legged man-hating feminists, instead of a thing that exists. You are still part of the problem when you pretend “teach men not to rape” translates to “all men are violent animals who would jump out of bushes and assault random female passers-by unless women smacked them with a rolled-up newspaper when they tried to do it”.

What “teach men not to rape” actually means is that we need to repeat, over and over and over again, until EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS WORLD ACTUALLY GETS IT, that skirt length does not determine the level of a woman’s culpability in her own assault. That having sex with a woman too drunk consent is in fact rape. That terms like “date rape” and “grey rape” and “acquaintance rape vs. stranger rape” are meaningless prevarications. That just because you didn’t knock a woman down and hold a knife to her throat, you could still be guilty of rape. It means a hundred different things, and none of those things is “all men would rape if they could get away with it”.

And I think most of the men making this accusation know it, on some level. Believe me, I get privilege. I’ve identified as white my entire life (recent revelations about my ancestry aside), and I’m familiar with the gut lurch that comes with being told that you are benefiting at someone else’s expense. You need to get over it and accept that people who belong to other genders or racial groups probably know what it’s like to be a member of that gender or racial group more than you do. You need to listen to their experiences and not dismiss them because they make you uncomfortable.

And the people scoffing that something so simple could never work: rape in Canada dropped 10% soon after that country began its “Don’t be that guy” ad campaign. Teaching men not to rape–fighting back against rape culture–does work. It’s the ONLY thing that’s been proven to work.

sorry nice guys, but my first reaction is to cock punch you, not fuck you

Amanda Marcotte has an excellent post up about this execrable new meme of “young men writing signs extolling the joys of ‘natural’ beauty and taking photos of themselves with these signs, complete with wounded expressions conveying the pain they feel because the women of the world get dressed in the morning without thinking first of the preferences of these guys’ specific cocks.”

She hits all the salient points, the most obvious of which is that this is just more of the same ugly “ladies, men know what’s best for you” misogynist attitude. Scratch a Nice Guy, find a sexist. One who would run screaming from a woman with bed head, stubbly legs and greasy skin. They want us to have glowing skin, toned muscle and shiny hair–but hair-free bodies!–and be able to pretend that it all happened solely with the power of their love, and not with any help from slut-enablers like Revlon and the neighborhood gym.

Also troubling is the narrative that women only wear make-up–or do anything, really–so we can get a cock stuffed in us. But only if it leads to marriage and a hundred babies! Because women never fuck just for fun, like it goes without saying men do. It seems to be a completely alien thought to Nice Guys that some woman might wear cosmetics because they’re fun.

I know some of my female friends don’t like or use make-up, and I absolutely have no argument with that. Like anything else we do with our bodies, that is 100% a personal choice that is none of mine or anyone else’s business. But just know, eschewing it does not make you a better or more of a feminist than I am.

I’ve had problems with certain kinds of make-up in the past, like nipple blush. The problem with cosmetics is that at some point, society decided that only women got to use them, at which point it became another weapon against them. A better solution to this problem is not to try eliminating cosmetics–which, like pornography, have existed virtually as long as human civilization and are probably not going anywhere–but to once again make it socially acceptable for all genders. Which it has been for most of human history: cosmetics have until recently been a mark of class, not gender. They shouldn’t be a mark of anything now. I look forward to the day when a man can say “I don’t care to wear make-up”.

ETA:

shorter* mark ziegler:

Because I support Sarah Palin, she has to do everything I suggest.

See, this is the creepy dark side of the Cult of Sarah Palin. Because all the people worshiping her are conservative douchenozzles, they still think that, as a woman, she isn’t really allowed to make her own decisions.

Granted, whatever insane thing they come up with probably won’t be any more unhinged than the decisions she makes on her own–such as quitting halfway through her first term as governor. Because publicly not being able to hack governing a sparsely-populated, resources-rich state is always a springboard towards leading the free world! But it’s the principle of the thing.

They say they love and support her, but they wind up acting like every other controlling stalker freak convinced that the object of their obsession is sending them coded messages through their choice of eyeglass frames.

*”Shorter” format stolen from Sadly, No!.
Link found at Pandagon.

shorter* jesse bering: “gimme an R-A-P-E! what’s that spell? RAPE, YAY!”

Raping old people is gross and weird, but it’s okay if they have dementia because they won’t remember it.

If you don’t want to wade through several pages of crazysauce — and more sympathetic I could not be — here’s the relevant quote:

The authors describe the case of a 33-year-old nursing-home assistant who’d been quietly molesting and raping his female charges for several years. Some of this man’s victims were rounding the epochal century mark and were suffering from dementia, thus his defense was that they were “not aware of what was happening.”

The abuse might have continued in silence, had not the shrewd daughter of a 98-year-old woman deduced foul play by noticing that her mom became uncharacteristically frightened whenever the elder-molesting aide came into the room. Ball also reviews forensic data revealing that, in the U.K., somewhere between 2 and 7 percent of all rape victims are over the age of 60.

Elder sexual abuse is reprehensible, of course; but from a bloodless moral philosophical perspective, it does raise intriguing questions about issues related to consent, trauma, and the impact of sex crimes on victims with different psychological and physical stakes. Is the rape of a 98-year-old Alzheimer’s patient—who, whether we like it or not, has only a limited awareness of what is happening, just as the perpetrator says—comparable to, say, the rape of a lucid, vulnerable child who would have to deal with the emotional scars of such sexual violence for the rest of his or her long life, or a teenager who might be impregnated?

Wait wait, I know the answer to this! YES. You’re welcome.

Also, uh, if she wasn’t aware what was happening, why did she cringe whenever her rapist came into her presence?

By this “logic”, it’s also okay to rape babies, coma patients, people you’ve drugged into unconsciousness, and people with that short-term memory disease like the guy in Memento. Let’s get rapin’!

*”Shorter” format stolen from Sadly, No!. Link via Pandagon, image via Natalie Dee.

the walking dead: my viewing timeline

Read "Backlash" or I'll chew your face off!

Pilot: Okay, there were 2 women in this thing — live ones, anway — they had exactly one scene, and only one of them displayed any kind of personality. And that personality was “Make half-hearted attempt to stand up for something you believe is right; capitulate immediately to the alpha male and go make out with him in the forest”. But okay, it’s the pilot, you really shouldn’t judge shows by them.

Episode One: Why are they making the woman whose idea it was to look for escape via the sewer wait on the roof while two dudes who know nothing on the subject crawl around in the tunnels? (The cartoonishly racist character played by Michael Rooker was also offensive; not because he was racist but because it suggested that all racist people are really oafish and obvious in their racism. We all know that nowadays, the more subtle forms of dogwhistle racism are much more corrosive.)

Episode 2: Okay, WOW. Apparently women’s job in the zombie apocalypse will be laundry. And cowering in the bushes whenever a zombie shambles into camp.

Episode 3: Oh look, women got to do something besides laundry: fish! You know what, too little too late. Peace out, show.

Look, my problem with this show is not that some of the characters are sexist. It’s that the show itself is sexist. It assumes that when civilization collapses, everyone will just blindly fall back into these rigid, archaic gender roles. And except for some token grumbling by them uppity kollij-edumacated wimminz, this will be accepted as just and meet. It treats the notion that women are human beings as some kind of silly indulgence of effete civilizations that will just naturally fall by the wayside when the shit hits the fan.

One of the things I’ve always liked about end-of-the-world scenarios is the theme of people rising above, of finding strength they didn’t know they had. World War Z is a great example of this, as is the classic doomsday comet novel from the 1970s Lucifer’s Hammer (and let’s just ignore, for our purposes here, the parts of that book that are horribly racist). People that can contribute to the camp are going to be treated well for it, and what they’re packing between their legs is secondary. Sitting on your ass all day, like that wife-beater; or freaking out and maniacally digging graves until you get sunstroke and have to be tied to a tree? Hit the road, you wastes of skin.

Not to succumb to internet tough guy-ism here, but I really don’t see myself finding a man to take care of the scary monsters for me when the dead rise from their graves. I’ve read The Zombie Survival Guide. I’m going looting at Academy Sports in Lafayette (picture a super Wal-Mart with nothing but guns and other weapons and sporting goods) and TCOB myself. Plus, I know how to pickle (and theoretically, preserve meat). Dude, I would totally make it.

I’ve heard from people who read the graphic novels that the television show made some improvements, and hooray for them, I guess. But there’s always gonne be something that’s more sexist. It doesn’t mean I have to accept things that are a little less sexist.

shorter* ny daily news

LOL, bitches be shopping.

Last week, The NY Daily News ran one of those finger-wagging pieces about how all women are flighty ninnies who spend an average of three years of their lives shopping. Even though women are expected to be flawlessly put-together in our society, lest they be taken for scruffy, unkempt lesbians**, we still get to mock them for making the effort!

However, those three years are not spent desperately searching for the perfect pair of Manolos, although this is conveniently buried in the very last paragraph:

It isn’t just hunting for accessories or clothing that sucks so much time – each year, women spend nearly 95 hours shopping for groceries, the study showed.

WOW. So not only do you get to make fun of women for engaging in a behavior in which they are subtly and not-so-subtly encouraged/forced by societal expectations to engage in, you get to pad your numbers by including something as basic as shopping for food to put on the table. A chore which, in 99 cases out of a 100***, defaults onto the female half of the couple even when both parties are working full-time jobs.

They even include window shopping, which is copious amounts of bullshit. I deserve to be made fun of for looking in the window of a store at a dress while I’m walking into the bookstore next door? Where I went to buy a book that will help me decide if a certain religion is right for me, an entirely respectable notion in our society. God, FUCK YOU, NY Daily News. (I need a religion where I can still invite news organizations to copulate with themselves.) Although I suppose even buying that book would be worthy of derision, since all shopping is equally frivolous — so long as it’s being done by women.

Not to mention, with the invention of/widespread access to the internet, I’m guessing EVERYONE, of any gender, in a developed nation spends at least an hour a day idly looking at and researching things they might like to one day own. Or even daydreaming about things they probably never have a chance of owning. Hell, sometimes I like to “shop” for private islands and castles. No, really!

I would be willing to bet the rest of my unemployment claim that TNYDW also included shopping for new couches, cleaning products, clothes for the children, vacation plans, and basically everything that involves money being exchanged for goods and services. Except for cars, BBQ grills, and electronics, which are the only things society allows men to shop for without making them feel in danger of their penises withering away.

*”Shorter” format stolen from Sadly, No!.

**Please don’t leave me angry comments about how I’m an OMGHOMOPHOBE. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian, or that all lesbians look like lumberjacks. I’m saying that the patriarchy we live in tends to group women into categories of nice-looking girls (marry), heavily made-up sluts (fuck), and yucky dykes (kill).

***I don’t want to hear any NotMyNigeling, please. I’m glad you are able to ignore societal expectations and maintain a perfectly equal relationship. Most people aren’t.

as might be expected of a make-believe science, “manthropology” does not rely on sissy facts

Dr. Temperance Brennan does not approve of your poor grasp of anthropolgy.

First it was evolutionary psychology, with its claims that women are genetically programmed to love pink and subversience to jerks. Since that’s been punched full of holes, the next wave of Science For Douchebags looks to be “Manthropology”.

So does it scientifically prove beyond a doubt that women are inferior, thus soothing the tiny, permanently bruised egos of Nice Guys™ everywhere? Sadly, no. In fact, I’m pretty sure Peter McAllister got his anthropology degree by sending $100 to an address he found scrawled on a truck stop urinal.

Our ancestors were apparently also better at beatdowns. Neanderthal women, says McAllister, had 10% more muscle mass than modern European men, and a Neanderthal woman could have beaten Arnold Schwarzenegger at arm wrestling (though her shorter forearm length sort of sounds like cheating).

My sole education in anthrolopolgy is from reading The Golden Bough while high, but even I can spot the glaring error here: Neanderthal is not modern Homo Sapiens’ ancestor. In other words, we did not evolve from them. They were a parallel branch that withered away because evolution selected brains (that would be us) over brawn.

Manthropology claims it’s (sort of) a joke; but as with jokes like “What’s the smartest thing to ever come out of a woman’s mouth? Einstein’s dick!”, there is a not very concealed bedrock of ugly misogyny holding it up.

days that end in y: elizabeth wurtzel opens mouth, stupidity falls out

Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums Elizabeth Wurtzel was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.

Waxing is a deeply personal grooming decision, with extremes of opinion on both sides: It infantilizes women and makes them pay with money and pain for the privilege of adhering to an arbitrary standard of beauty! Umm… sorry, I guess I really got nothing on the “pro” side. So you can probably tell where I stand on the issue. I mean, I keep it neat, but I’m not going to rip it out by the roots. But I don’t argue with women who are pro-waxing, because arguing over pubic hair trends seems kind of silly. Besides, we all know the biggest obstacle to a matriarchal utopia is nipple tint.

So how can we dumb up the issue even more? I know, let’s ask Elizabeth Wurtzel her opinion! To sum up: Hair is “icky” (Why? Just cuz!); you’re not a “real” woman unless you fritter away precious time and money on the admittedly grim drudgery of pointless beauty routines and waste your sanity attempting to reach an unreachable ideal of beauty; men have always* and will always** like bald beavers, and we should always do whatever men want, apparently!

Why are still caring what Elizabeth Wurtzel has to say about anything? It’s been 15 years since Prozac Nation and the only thing of note she’s done since is fail the bar exam like a dozen times. Although that hasn’t stopped her from calling herself a lawyer. She’s even worse at passing it than she is at committing suicide!

*You sure about that, Lizzie?

**If Elizabeth Wurtzel has access to a time machine, why hasn’t she killed Hitler yet??