spotifail

Feminist Rage™

The Big Bad Feminist. It’s a cliché we all know and loathe – ugly, hairy, either too fat (and therefore minging) or too thin (and therefore bitterly bustless), lesbian because she’s been rejected by men (because we all know that’s how sexuality works!) and yet somehow hoping for some nice chap to “turn” her, possessed of a Victorianly hysterical victim complex, possibly vegan, and probably wearing organic hessian dungarees. But above all, angry. Not in a torrid, “feisty one, you are!” fuck-or-fight kind of way, but... well, dear me, pass the smelling salts, in a terribly unseemly, unfeminine way.

And of course, it’s all that ire and bitterness that makes her not only angry, but pathologically enraged almost to the point of statemented disability. To your left, ladies and gentlemen, the lesser-spotted Feminazi! See her (because it is always a “her”, naturally) stalk through free-range lentil markets! Witness her trade communist propaganda leaflets for mung beans! Recoil in horror as she kicks random innocent men in the balls! ...Yawn, verily. Haven’t been there, will never get the T-shirt, because it’s a load of groundless bollocks. Where exactly this stereotype comes from is more of a mystery (oh yeah, apart from the fevered imaginations of tabloids and louts’ mags) and I have yet to meet an avowed anti-feminist who’s ever met a real live feminist, let alone one like that.

... Are you waiting for a “but” yet? Because the problem is, there is one. Passion is integral to any kind of conviction or activism, usually on the angry side; strong belief in anything engenders a will to fight for it. And what a telling phrase that is in its aggression, for ’twas ever thus; when societal evolution goes awry, revolution is always against its status quo, whether that be slave-trading or whaling or serfdom or rule by monarchy.

Or sexism. I was struck reading Kira Cochrane’s interview with the author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism with how struck she was by Walter’s apparent calm; the article even opens, “I'm trying to establish just how often the feminist writer Natasha Walter gets angry”. Of course, Cochrane is no numbNuts, quickly championing the validity of feminist rage, and I am not about to rehash her article – but it got my pretty little head thinking. So much feminist debate and defence centres on dismantling the fictional bully-girl/self-appointed victim who roams the organic markets of our adversaries’ imaginations, and in some ways, rightly so. Certainly none of the feminists I've met conform to this stereotype – if anything, quite the opposite.

Whether it’s contentedness born of having worked out what they believe and want in life, the independence and originality that tend to accompany openness to unpopular ideas, the fact that a well-developed sense humour is so essential to sanely navigating an insane world, or what, I don’t know – but all the female feminists I've known or met are confident, positive, witty, and generally just fun. What’s more, a great many (if not most, in my personal experience) are also – shock and rocky horror – in fulfilling, stable relationships. Mostly with – nurse! the sal volatile and a fan, at once! – heterosexual feminist men. It also bears mentioning that, on the whole, they’re a pretty damn good-looking bunch too (not “just” to their fellow feminists, I might add; a fair few models grace our ranks, donchaknow. I think that says a lot about how society treats even the “lucky” women who conform to its beauty myth). Overall, feminists are generally pretty productive, happy people – quite strikingly so.

And this is all fine and dandy except that, directed to non-, or (more to the point) anti-, feminists, it falls on frantically-plugged ears further deafened by the sand in which their owners’ heads are buried. Deciding whether to engage with these people at all is of course a Hobson’s choice between preaching only to the converted and trying to reason with what is often the intellectual equivalent of a brick wall, but if any debate is to be undertaken, I think we need to change its terms.

There is a tendency (understandable given the PMT-ridden, irrational-not-intellectual popular “bloody women” construct) to shy away from our emotions in feminism, to show how detachedly logical it all is. I think this is a mistake because it can be not only transparently disingenuous, but also a spectacular own-goal. Maintaining the kind of Socratic serenity needed to argue protractedly for feminism is a noble but (for a good 99% of us, anyway) impossible goal, and I would challenge most human beings of any socio-political persuasion to defend something they’re passionate about that dispassionately without an unholy amount of Valium.

Ironically enough, I think we stand a better chance of maintaining calm by acknowledging turmoil; in a debate so popularly (gender-)constructed as women’s emotional overreactions vs. what “everybody knows” the world is “really” like, as passion vs. reason, we’re missing a trick by buying into that binary. It’s a truism that the personal is political; I believe passion and reason are just as intertwined. “Angry” is an adjective not an insult, and even our worse dismissal, “bitterness”, cannot be triggered in a vacuum; we shouldn’t be trying to explain how feminism isn’t angry and bitter, but why it has reason to be. There are few more logical laws than that of cause and effect.

So really, so what if they call us us angry feminists; what's it to us when we can cogently articulate why our anger makes perfect sense? But wait, what’s that rustling in the bushes? To your right, ladies and gentlemen, the greater-spotted “make me a sandwich” brigade! Watch in amazement as they fail to argue their way out of a Subway bag.

The World's Most Dangerous Place For Women

On BBC3 until 06/04/10.

ebay asbo?

WHY DID MY PREVIOUS LISTING GET REMOVED?

EBAY RESPONSE: Your entire listing is a gratuitous comment about a social group

♥ single and bitter seeks same ♥

Would you write, let alone answer, a dating ad like that? No? Well how about spending most evenings saying exactly that, albeit not in so many words? There's been a bit of a strop thrown recently by some idiot over on Feminazery about the blog's supposedly unforgivable attack on some whingefest about howwid wimmins not giving poor ickle menz sex even when they've worked hard to come across as normal human beings and everything. I can't be bothered to trudge through all the blindingly obvious reasons these sorts of Nice Guys (a breed entirely distinct, as one sage commenter opined, from Good Men) don't get and don't deserve sex with their blow-up dolls let alone real women, but the whole thing's got me thinking about another pissy phenomenon; Love Hate.

I don't mean that Heathcliff/Catherine, Colleen-Rooney-melodramatically-chucking-her-ring-in-a-forest-and-then-trying-to-retrieve-it-when-they'd-made-up, thing. I mean actually hating love because you're a miserable git. I don't know if I attract more of it by mere virtue of being single myself, but I am getting increasingly puzzled sick of it.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am 24, female, straight, and single. I am single for a fairly typical variety of reasons; I'm very independent, I'm very picky, I just haven't met the right man yet, etc. Basically, I don't need a generic rent-a-boyfriend to survive so I'm happy to be single, but I would also very happily take up with a wonderful man and have joyous, riotous sex with him were such a specimen to materialise at a party any time soon. So yes, of course it would be wicked to have a great relationship in my life, as it is to have the great interests and hobbies and work and friends already in it. The only problem is, that includes all my friends - single, married, and everywhere in between - and that's apparently some kind of treason against all my fellow singletons.

It happened again last night. "Pff! Couples", muttered Rob, Anna nodding in agreement, as our flat sat down to dinner. We are a flat of four; two boys, two girls, all single, all leading perfectly normal lives - except, apparently, me. "Urgh, at the train station the other day there was this fucking couple being all lovey-dovey, I wanted to slap them!" "Yeah, it's like, 'No, I don't care that he did that really sweet thing for you, bla bla bla'." "They're so annoying, aren't they?"

And then I committed the schoolgirl error: "But why?"

Why? WHY? Was I out of my mind? Everyone knows couples are annoying, just going around looking so fucking happy all the time, kissing at bus stops and holding hands and eating out sometimes and dancing together on nights out - I mean how do those bastards have the nerve to, when you're single?!

Except, erm, I clearly didn't get that memo from the broken-hearted. I mean yes, exhibitionist chavteens dry-humping across the aisle from you on the bus are irritating, in the same way all smelly or crap-music-blaring fellow passengers are. I'm sure we've all been pissed off with friends who drop off the social radar completely as soon as a new boyfriend or girlfriend appears, and yeah it can twist a recently dumped knife to see a couple getting lovey-dovey at the traffic lights if you've just split up with someone that week. But other than that, I seem to be the only single person in London who thinks "aww" rather than "aargh!" when they pass a clearly loved-up couple with the temerity to be attached when you're not.

But the only way the latter popular attitude can possibly make sense is by genuinely believing that all couples are happy and all singletons are sad, and that all those happy couples are somehow responsible for all singletons' non-coupledom, and therefore sadness. Or, as Mr Webb put it, "There's only so much happiness in the world... and they're hoarding it all." Except, oh wait, that line in the script was a JOKE. Being single (being anything for that matter - tall, short, thin, fat, weak, strong, "foreign", "native") is not a reason to resent people that aren't.

Men and women falling in lust or love not only have no case to answer for others' failure to, but ironically also embody what most of us are hoping for ourselves somewhere along the line. So why on earth has couple-bashing (not to mention men-bashing and women-bashing) become so vociferously normal? Maybe it's singledom, and not relationships, that needs the most getting over. I mean really, where is the love?!

because civil rights are EXACTLY the same as civil rapes...

"sheryl crow, james blunt, and muthafuckin' ace of base..."

He also does some awesome send-ups of sexist, violent rap, but how could I not post a song that samples "the Celine Dion song from the movie Titanic"?

Nicked from Femin-Ally:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

www.blogger.com hates women

Does that sound melodramatic? Well boo-fucking-hoo, because once again, one of cyberspace's most prominent websites is effectively sanctioning hate speech against one group that, were it directed at any other community, would be smacked down faster than a cock-ring at a Silver Ring convention. Because, y'know, it's not really an -ism to have a go at... women, right?

Actually, wrong. But despite repeated reporting from various groups, the veritable oevre that is I Hate White Women (tagline: "WHY I HATE AMERICAN AND WESTERN WOMEN", in case the anyone was feeling left out) remains online in all its deluded, embittered glory. Of course, any woman of any ethnicity would greet this idiot's "boycott" of their person with relief and revelry, but that does not render his rantings harmless or their continued hosting by Blogger acceptable. Nazism is a joke too, but the Holocaust sure as hell wasn't funny.

So, to abandon reason and broach the moronic inferno for a moment, let's have a closer look at what this angry young man has to say for himself...

I am a white American male (good to know he's far away!) and I hate white women. In a nutshell ("nut" being the operative word), white women are the most likely (any research? Nah, didn't think so) to cheat on you (I smell misogynist heartache!), to divorce you (wouldn't you?), to get fat (again, stats?), to steal half of your money (has he informed the Police? Oh wait, he means getting married - has anyone ever accepted his proposal?), don't know how to cook (my two-year-old niece can feed herself, why can't he?), etc (yeah, ETC, like, that's totally fucking definitive, dude). Therefore, what intelligent man (yes, WHAT intelligent man? Oh wait, he means... aww, bless) would want to get involved with a bitchy white woman?

White women are generally immature (unlike a supposedly grown man who dedicates an entire blog to his peculiar bitterness), selfish, and extremely arrogant and self-centered (whine, whine, whine, WHINE...). The behavior of most white women is utterly disgusting, to say the least (yeah, rejection is, like, so mean).

This blog is my (failed) attempt to explain why I feel white women are inferior to all other groups of women, such as Asians, Middle Easterners, Mexicans, Blacks, etc (because, it's, like, totally not racist or patronising or unsound to lump people -oops, sorry, women- together like that. And, er, you can be any of those ethnicities while also being American and Western).

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN! (Women: they're just like South African grapes, really).

Pfffft, like the lazy, entitled, hellish Western women that I am, I can't be bothered to wade through any more of his inarticulate idiocy. I wonder which is smaller, his penis or his brain? What glory is there supposed to be in whining about a group of people who have already pre-empted any kind of victory by rejecting you to start with?

So yes, he's a joke. But it's not funny. And Blogger should realise that.

for your viewing displeasure...

Soooo, a few months ago I had a traumatic run-in with a flatmate's friend who thinks grabbing someone round the neck and incomprehension of the word "no" are all you need in your seductive arsenal. I haven't got time to elaborate on what a disgusting little inadequate moron I still know this fuckwit is, but yesterday, for the first time, I was almost able to laugh about it - or at least about him.

I watch Bones, you see; it plays a strong second fiddle to my Criminal Minds obsession. And yesterday I was watching the conclusion of the long-running Gormagon saga. And I saw the monster finally revealed. And satisfyingly shot.

And I also saw, for a second, the vile "Carlos" (as I called him earlier on this blog). That may sound weird given Gormagon comes equipped with a set of dentures composed entirely of human canines harvested from victims, but he has a similar face, hair and repellence. And did I mention I got to see him satisfyingly shot.

I don't know why this makes me feel actually, really better, but it does.

Oh wisevid.com, why do you bother asking me if I'm alright to view the "mature content" of middle-of-the-road cop shows while simultaneously bombarding me with pop-ups of naked women? Is it, perchance, because you are a pile of sexist wank?

Yes. Yes, that's probably it.

tissues and issues

Alright, alright, sorry for the Charlotte Church quote, but it did seem suitably juvenile for the topic. I try not to bleat on about my family too much, on the internet as in life, particularly as there is no longer comparatively much to bleat about - but every so often something sticks in my inner child's craw and I want to shout it from the rooftops. Maybe I'm being irrational, maybe everything really is worse when it happens to me(mo), or maybe I'm just taking things too seriously, but I'm still considerably irked following a conversation I had yesterday.

The topic of discussion was Elizabeth, a mutual friend, who has just leapt from one relationship into another with barely a fortnight's breathing space. The popular explanation for this (apparently repeated) behaviour is that her parents divorced when she was twelve. Now, allow me to issue a disclaimer before I continue; I don't doubt for one moment that even relatively straightforward divorce can be traumatic for any children concerned, and I don't think the existence of some people's horrific experiences negates the legitimate effects of other people's only rubbish ones. But, I do think we should all have a sense of proportion.

So, when Jan trotted out the "but her parents got divorced" line again last night, I said so. I said that I thought that 26 was a bit old to still be clinging so resolutely to the trauma of your parents' split, because at some point (I think personally by the age of 21 or at the latest 25) you have to take a long hard look at your life and decide whether you want to live it as a testament or defiance to your parents, or in the most constructive way possible for yourself. I said that it's never particularly fun or easy to do, but it is possible, and I think it's a process most of us have to undertake in some form or another.

Cue utter horror - But her parents divorced when she was twelve! Her dad ran off with her mum's best friend!

And yes, that's a horrible thing to happen - but one that happens to around a third of children in the UK. The fact is, a lot worse things happen too; including myself, I can think of one person who grew up with an addict and alcoholic, several more who grew up with "mere" drinkers and/or domestic violence, and another whose father left her aged 15 in charge of her two little brothers to go and live with another woman, after her mother had already died. Terrible things happen, and terrible things go on happening because of them - but in the end, you have to build some kind of modus vivendi with them in order to have any kind of life of your own.

Jan's response? But if something traumatises you when you're twelve, it can last for a long time.

And that, dear reader, is what really pissed me off. I don't think it's panhandling sympathy to say that if I and a considerable portion of my friends managed to get through situations far worse than a normal divorce (Christ, most of us would love to have had two functioning parents whose marriage fell apart and who went to court and were done with it in a year) then a very well-adjusted, pragmatic, mature, bright (because that is what Elizabeth is) woman of 26 must be able to come to terms with something that happens - not to put too expletive a point on it - all the fucking time. But no, of course (and this is what she was arguing - believe me, I checked) it's far worse to be "really traumatised" by your parents getting divorced when you're twelve than to have parents who are -somehow laughably untraumatically!- addicted, alcoholic, violent or dead.

And what further pisses me off, is that it's so rarely people who've been through comparable things who come out with this stuff, but people exactly like Jan from very solid, conventional, "boring" (but frankly, that's all you want from parents when yours are so "interesting" they're already passed out by the time you get home from primary school) families; it seems always to be the least experienced who assume themselves the greatest authority on these matters. I genuinely cannot fathom what leaden logic leads to such conclusions; is it because divorce is the only thing they can imagine - because other (worse) things are so totally beyond their ken that they don't seem real and thus can't inspire sympathy?

I don't know. I only do know how much I hate the catch-22 in which they leave me; not wanting to be one of those whiny people who choose to blame their entire lives on their childhood, yet also wanting so much to rub in people like Jan's faces how horrific mine was, to make the point how utterly moronic they're being. I doubt there ever has been, nor ever will be, anything so frustrating and divisive in human relationships as such gaps in experiential empathy. Or is that what the internet's for?

love music, hate sexism

I like bands; proper bands. The actual Misfits rather than them three off X-Factor. But I also like being a girl.

I remember quite vividly the first time it occurred to me that these two things could be incompatible. I was fourteen, we'd just got the internet, and a whole new world of fandom was opening before me. And then there it was; a scan of Kerrang magazine, Davey Havok and Dexter Holland sharing the cover with the headline, "ROCK IN THE DOCK: is rock music sexist?" I never did track down the article, but I even neverer forgot its title.

Those words have come back to me a lot over the years, most times I've read about Courtney Love or Brody Dalle, and every time I've flicked past yet another male-targeted advert in a music magazine. (Yes, I sometimes read the NME; no, that does not mean I aspire to style my manly hair into so improbable a quiff that women will dance on tables in its honour thus allowing me to look up their skirts, Shockwaves haircare). But this week really took the balls-up biscuit. Shipped out to Marylebone because Euston thought it might perhaps possibly be on fire and with a four-hour train journey ahead of me, I trudged into WHSmiths for something to read. Oh look, a new Q! But oh wait, it's shrink-wrapped to FHM.

Er, what the fuck? I stared at it for a moment, processed the fact that one of my favourite magazines had just turned to shit before my very eyes, and walked out of the shop.

I don't care how much it comes down to publishers' alliances, I don't care what snivelling little marketing strategy is behind it, I don't care if some girl whose face has started popping up in the London Lite has taken her "hippy chic" clothes off, but I am fucking livid that a magazine I really respected precisely because it was so much more interesting, well-written, and generally grown-up than its peers has done that for which every successful band risks crucifixion in the music media; sold out.

Well, I'm not buying it. I'm not sure what I'll buy instead (the NME's too flimsy, no-one at Artrocker can spell... maybe Clash will fill the gap) but Q can stick it; I'm sure FHM can tell them where.

montavit: mineral water for morons

Boris Keep Your Promise

Fingers crossed.

"Every morning, I wake up and it's the same. I get up, and I buy the paper, and I circle them all, and I phone them - only to discover they've been taken by a bunch of fucking psychic house hunters!"

Ah, Spaced. It's a bit like the Bible really; constantly quotable to its devotees, a bit of a mystery to the uninitiated. But if there's one scene we should all recognise, it's the one four minutes into the first episode where Daisy breaks down in tears over the horrors of househunting.

I have a motley back catalogue of housemates; Ivy who moved out to the country and spent our water bill money on a horse, Helena who copied (and then stole) my clothes while calling me her sister, Dan who sulked in his room for a month before moving out to a completely fictional house in Highbury... I sure can pick 'em. So it was with trepidation that I began the hunt once more last week to find a place by September.

It started badly, as it always does on gumtree. I realised years ago that most advertisers are incapable of writing anything remotely meaningful about themselves ("I like cooking and music" - well what bloody kind?) but this was the first time I found adverts that didn't even include helpful details like room size and rent rates. It was also the first time I received messages from people wanting to live with me bereft of such basics. Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought that if you replied to someone's advert, you were meant to, y'know, tell them stuff. More stuff than, say, "I have a flat/apartment to share with you and I would be very happy to give you the details if you could reply back". How do these people conduct the rest of their lives, I wonder? How do they pay bills - write back and ask them to write to again instead of paying?

Then came the unhinged, "Hi Flatmate" emails, signed with "Your Flatmate" for good measure - though I suppose at least that person hadn't created an email address of both our names. Another man was apparently more in need of a psychic than a tenant, uncomfortable with actually asking me things he needed to know when he could say, "There are some questions that I need answers to, but didn't get in your email".

And then, because I'm female and thus obviously rentable by the hour, I got this message from an "easymoneyhunny" email address:

Hi, I know you are looking for a room but i thought you maybe interested in some cash in hand work,
it pays £80 an hour and its not for sex, it helps pay the rent, well thats what i use it for.

Lord knows what kind of "hand" work she meant that was "not for sex".

I could go on. Except now I've finally found somewhere I do want to live, with people I want to like with, I'm just breathing a huge sigh of relief that it's over... for another year, at least.

peter pan 4eva

This is a pretty creepy Peter Pan, isn't it? Yet never has an unwittingly sinister Creative Commons picture been more apt for what I am about to write about; the refusal - or, perhaps more charitably, the inability - to grow up.

I'm 24. They have been, to put it mildly, a colourful couple of decades, and (to quote Sandra Bullock in 28 Days) "I have enough stories; I would like a life". I feel I know as much about myself as I'm ever going to, though I also acknowledge that I'm still only comparatively young, and that I could look back on all this in ten years' time and wonder, much as I do now about my teenage penchant for hair mascara, "what were you thinking?"

So why are so many people old enough to know better (and certainly better than my own years allow) so incapable of this? It's a truism that teenagers are difficult; indeed their hormonal and neurological attributes have been compared to a kind of inherent, inevitable madness. But there comes a point, as an uncle once put it, when potty-training stops and you just have to get on with it. Charmed lives ain't what they used to be, and I imagine most of us have experienced the bases for more than a few chips on each shoulder. Most of us probably still carry them, albeit perhaps in more manageable microchip form as time goes on, and we know it. That is not, shamelessly mixing metaphors, to say we never listen to the devil on our shoulder, leading measured lives of self-aware virute, but we know deep down what we might never back down to admit to someone else, and that's fair enough.

I have never imagined humans to be particularly rational beings, much less particularly liable to change (I'd challenge anyone who has worked in Social Services to clutch at such a rose-tinted view) but lately I have been truly astounded by quite how blindly and determinedly ridiculous some of us are. This is thanks in part to two individuals, one of my own age and one in her mid-30s, both (to use the scientific term) totally batshit crazy.

The first (I'll call her Maureen - it suits her somehow, as insulting as that is to any genuine article) is a friend of a friend. Well, I say "friend" - excise the "r" and you're nearly there, with considerably less sympathy for the devil than Mick or Keef could muster. Perfect friends are few and far between, but there is usually a trade-off of some kind - passive but loyal, disorganised but interesting, bitchy but entertaining... This girl, however, genuinely possesses no redeeming features. She is neither nice, nor fun, nor loyal; outspoken but passionless, blunt but disingenuous, and most of all, nasty. She is rude, cutting, critical, throws strops and tantrums to rival a toddler, and even punched our mutual friend the last time we went out, for no other reason than Janet trying to include her in conversation. I understand why Jan puts up with it, from a clinical if not subjective perspective, but what baffles me the most is why Maureen thinks it possible to get away with.

Apparently Maureen likes me. We have, on paper, a fair bit in common, particularly where politics and music are concerned. She has never been anything but nice to me (even when being vile to other people) and the same goes for another mutual friend, Jo, who has known her about the same amount of time. I do put this partly down to the radar all bullies have of who will or will not give as good as they get if provoked, but something else is at work too; a mindbogglingly low EQ. Both Jo and I sense a strong desire not only to avoid crossing us, but also for us to like her; and therein lies the rub - she doesn't seem to realise that how you see someone behave is what informs your opinion of them. Nobody in their right mind (and certainly nobody worth being friends with) could see the way she treats mates and think, "Oh well, if she's nice to me it doesn't matter that she's consistently horrible to close friends of mine" - yet that is exactly how she expects it to work.

And then this week, there has been Emily. Or rather, Emilia, as the world is mysteriously expected to intuit, even on first meeting and from a class list on which "Emily" is printed. Roll up ladies and gents for Exhibit B, Petra Pan at 35, attacking a university course (on Psychology, no less) with all the reflexivity of a turnip. Having known the woman only two-and-a-half-days, one might expect to know where to start - but I don't.

Oh alright then, with the class list:
Lecturer: And is Emily here?
Emily, cantankerously: It's Emilia!
Lecturer, reaching for a biro to correct the list: Oh, sorry, it's down on my list as Emily.
Emily, in the voice of teenage DUH, rolling her eyes: That's because it's on my birth certificate.

Well, perish the thought that anyone call you by your own name, which you personally supplied, clearly without bothering to specify your pretentiousness in the "Preferred name" box on every application form. Within the next gruelling half-hour, she also proceeded to demand to change classrooms ("There's another room with nicer chairs, why can't we go there?") and set our lunch break ("I've been here before, and the food in the canteen is really crap, and it gets soggier and crustier the longer it's left out"). She hijacked every discussion with arrogant stupidity (slamming your bottle of water down on the desk and squawking, "THERE, THAT's a bottle of water, OF COURSE I know that" doth not an ontological or epistemological argument make) and bizarre unwanted insights into her personal life ("I run a rhythmic dance class on top of teaching").

This wouldn't be so bad (well, maybe it would, but this makes it considerably worse) if she didn't think the light of Research Methods shone out of her arse every rare second that she's not speaking out of it; in mere hours, she corrected not only her fellow students, but also the lecturer and the entirety of Renaissance philosophy, with some haughty insight into inter- and intra-personal skills thrown in for good measure.

Of course both these women objectively cut quite pathetic figures, in the truest sense of the word; they are clearly deeply unhappy and angry, and it's a shame. But what troubles me is how they are still so unhappy and angry, and so aggressively so, in integrated adult life. How, but how, do you reach your twenties (let alone your thirties) with such infantile conduct so imperviously intact? I have encountered no shortage of Difficult People - bloody hell, I'm one myself - but how the hell do you make it through both school and university into competitive paid employment (which both this veritable Tweedledum and Tweedledee have) behaving like that?

And yet they have, and since we already so rarely fix it if it's broke - let alone if it seems "ain't" enough to provide an apparently viable MO in ostensibly successful young professional life - it seems unlikely that the Maureens and Emilies of this world will ever change.

It's at times like this I long to swap stats for crack.

the inimitable, irrefutable "sandwich" theory

You get a lot of shit for being a feminist, but the oddest kind is definitely sandwhich shit. For those of you unacquainted with this fantastic phenomenon, this is roughly how it works:

Feminist: *Rational argument*
Idiot: Yeah, well, make me a sandwich, bitch!

Sandwich strikeback has long formed an important part of the misogynist's armoury, but it came to notable attention today as the impotent death knell of what had otherwise been an actual dialogue. As is so often the case (I suppose even (tw)its advocates realise it would sound silly out loud) the exchange took place over the internet, on Facebook to be precise. To be even more precise, it took place in Facebook's 10, 000, 000 AGAINST DISGUSTING JAPANESE RAPELAY RAPE SIMULATION GAME! GLOBAL group, on the moronically-titled thread, "I don't see the problem".

As in any such "shock" thread, metaphorical fists flew from the first, but one exchange embodied the Sandwich Theory most hilariously (subversive font colours blogger's own):


Every girl I have ever met, has a rape story. It seems there's a lot of it about :-O
That, or some women like to rewrite history to make them less responsible for their own sluttiness. Who knows? It could be either.

"That, or some women like to rewrite history to make them less responsible for their own sluttiness. Who knows? It could be either." really, and what fantastic incentives exactly do you think there are for women to "rewrite history"? the sympathy and empathy they'd get? the way people would believe them instead of the man? the fantastic conviction rates? oh wait, none of those apply.

"really, and what fantastic incentives exactly do you think there are for women to "rewrite history"? the sympathy and empathy they'd get? the way people would believe them instead of the man? the fantastic conviction rates? oh wait, none of those apply." Erm, we werent talking about court cases, it was about anecdotal cases, in which case: Sympathy and empathy they'd get? Yes. I dfind that they do, from women and from men. The way people would believe them instead of the man? Yes- Of course you're going to believe your female friend, over a Bad Man, that you've never met. The fantastic conviction rates? Well, who's to say that the 6% conviction rates(since you brought them up), arent a result of women making things up to make themselves look more virtuous? They mightn't be, but we werent there at every case, so who is to say? I'm not blaming women entirely, it's our fault as a whole, for making the double statdard of "Man sleeps with many women= stud, woman sleeps with many men= slag". And for making women ashamed to be sexually agressive/promiscuous. But a lie is a lie. And a man accused of rape has his name dragged through the courts and the newspspers, and his life ruined. The woman accusing him, gets to be known as Miss X. I like the way my uberfeminist pals tend to gloss over that last fact.

"Sympathy and empathy they'd get? Yes. I dfind that they do, from women and from men." & Of course you're going to believe your female friend, over a Bad Man, that you've never met.
people may like to think they are sympathetic to rape victims, but it is often very different in real life. if you get jumped by a stranger in an alley with a knife, then people will indeed be sympathetic. but most rapes are acquaintance rapes - how much sympathy do you think women get when they're not talking about a stereotypical bogeyman, but a popular, friendly guy that their friends know socially and can't believe anything bad of? then it turns straight into, "he must have been really drunk, i can't believe he would have done that on purpose, are you SURE you didn't really say yes", etc etc. the fact is, most rapes are not perpetrated by "a Bad Man, that you've never met" that you cite, and that's a huge problem for any woman disclosing such an attack, either formally or informally.
as for, "who's to say that the 6% conviction rates(since you brought them up), arent a result of women making things up to make themselves look more virtuous?" i can't even be bothered to reply to such a load of vomitworthy shite. if you knew anything at all about this issue from anything more than an uninformed, defensive angle you wouldn't be able to come out with a sentence like that.

I think you should shut your whore mouth, and decamp to the Kitchen Area, where you'll find sandwich making material. Chop chop.

i think that's a poor stab at insult and/or sarcasm, and an even poorer substitute for a rational response. you poor, limited individual.

I'm hearing words, I am not tasting sandwich. Didnt they teach you how to sammich at university?

no, they didn't; i, unlike you, didn't need to learn.


I mean, really, what the fuck? How is this regarded as a normal way to react to a woman arguing with you in the 21st century? Equality ain't fucking nigh...

rumours of my death... etc

I fail at updating.

Therefore, further lolpols.