feminist blogs

Laura Bush is no more a feminist than are Phyllis Schlafly or the shills of the IWF.

For the second time that I know of--how many other young women have been duped?--someone has marvelled on their blog about Laura Bush.

You've been had. Forget what comes out of the mouth; watch the hands.

Who is Laura Bush married to? I'm not going to cite the reasons I think George Bush is despicable. If you think he isn't, you might as well click away right now.

Could *you* look yourself in the eye if you were married to him? Don't say what a man does for a living has nothing to do with his personal life. By staying married to someone like that, you're condoning his actions. Lie down with dogs...

There are lots of reasons why women stay with contemptible shits like George Bush:

• She's afraid he'll come after her.
• She doesn't know where to go.
• She's afraid of losing her kids.
• She's afraid he'll hurt the kids.
• Her pastor tells her it's her Christian duty.
• She has no money.
• Her "friends" tell her she'd be crazy to give up her nice house and social position.
• She thinks his behavior is all her fault.
• She's been beaten down so long she can't even imagine the possibility of leaving.

Tell me which of those reasons apply to Laura Bush. I've looked at her and read about her, and the only one I can even imagine being correct is that she'd lose her social position. Her social position. She wouldn't be out on the street. She wouldn't have to beg anyone to help her pay off her divorce.

Feminist my ass.

No, I haven't started or joined a feminist blog elsewhere.

I haven't blogged because it takes so long for me to write something comprehensible, and other projects have been taking up my time.

It's hard to keep up the fury, too, even though it simmers underneath all the time.

Then there's this horrible "Am I the only one who sees the problem here?" feeling. I do not understand the glee of calling oneself a slut or a whore or a pimp, of joking about porn.

It's kind of hard to have a discussion with someone who pops in for a few minutes and then takes off for weeks at a time, isn't it? No tone of levity is intended; read frustration and embarrassment instead.

(But I am reducing my backlog of newspapers. I've got to June 28 already.)

I could abandon this blog and go over to Feminist Rage and rant when my wrath overflows, but my territory is *here*. (If I were a cat, I'd be rubbing my head all over this page.) And in my own spot I don't have to try to adjust my thinking to fit in with the norm, assuming it were possible.

Sort of related story: I used to work at a federal equipment repair installation. Every fiscal year we'd have a work slowdown; we'd have widgets to repair, but we couldn't work on them till the funding came through. The old-timers were used to it, and they'd milk whatever work orders were open, sitting around a table in the clean room talking pretty much all day. Fool me, I was new there, bored to death with nothing to do but read a tech manual over and over, and I asked the supervisor when we were going to get some work in. He found some; he had us scraping and sanding the shipping barrels for the equipment.

Looks like I haven't learned my lesson yet.

And media girl too...

"If BBA weren't started by Shakespeare's Sister, I'd agree with you."

NO ONE gets a free pass. That special privileges shit is an earmark of bullies and people who think they're better than anyone else.

Doesn't every living person deserve the right to be considered as a rational creature and not a body part?

What the hell is someone who professes feminism doing equating fortitude with testicles? At my most charitable I might call it short-sighted and foolhardy. I like the words traitorous and cowardly better.

To follow along with this "balls" mindset, we women will bargain away all our rights to control pregnancy, too, because we have to do whatever it takes to get the chimp out of the White House. And if it means giving up hope, well... It's not like we were ever considered more than walking pleasure boxes.

Perhaps I was unclear in my earlier post. Certainly Teresa didn't seem to understand my meaning, that the hostile language in the blogs of people supposedly on the side of truth and justice drove me away from reading blogs for several months.

"First, I was pissed off at the time."

So being angry excuses certain language. It's okay--if I'm pissed off--to call people names, even people who aren't the object of my anger, and even though using that name continues a vicious stereotype.

"Second, I'm a blonde"

Lack of self-respect isn't permission to slander others.

"Third, if you think that's 'ugliness,' and that it's aimed at you ... sheesh."

Fucking believe it's aimed at me, large and multitudinous.

Teresa must know she's in the wrong--I just don't buy that she's not perceptive enough to see how insulting her "blonde" remark was--but she refuses to admit it. Down goes another icon.

That others take time not only to read this blog but also to respond amazes me. I prefer listening to talking; and too much attention makes me feel uncomfortable. And *obligated*. <grin>

It's painfully clear that many women who profess to be feminist haven't been able to free themselves from the sexism embedded in our culture; they don't really know themselves to be the equal of men; they haven't taken feminism into their heart.

Blog talk earlier about engagement rings and Valentine's Day flowers is an example. Is the ring a token of affection or a mark of ownership? If it's a token of affection, then surely the gift should be mutual--rings or some other item for both. How can it be right for only one person in the relationship to be *expected* to gift the other? Same thing with that trumped-up holiday, Valentine's Day.

Another example is some women's acceptance and adoption of sexist language. What I see is women posturing about being equal to or better than any man, and then being validated by being accepted as one of the guys. Pfft.

It don't work like that. At the end of the day, you're still a woman, and you're still second class, and you're leaving this mess for your daughters and sons.

No soft cushy penis hats for the so-called progressives, uh-uh. With their shiny rock-hard brass balls, these progressives one-up the Republicans and show them how a real man stacks up.

Amazing how women will promote this sexist language and call themselves progressive, and other women will accede so readily.

On the positive side, all those BBA logos sure made trimming my blogroll easy.

Newspapers have also lost their interest for me. For the last 25 years I've read my local paper, even the back issues when I return from vacation.

Ha! I'm on vacation all the time now. For weeks the papers stack up until I can bring myself to skim them. The largest stack held seven weeks of papers.

Jeanne captured the feeling I used to have:

"The article took me hours to read, because I couldn't take more than a short bit at I time, but felt obligated to know what was in it, and to let each horror sink in. It was the only news I managed to read yesterday, not only because it was hard to take, but because after reading that, there didn't seem to be anything else in the world worth knowing about."

I guess I'm more cynical, or too selfish, or better numbed, than Jeanne. I can't even stir myself to be interested in much besides the comics.

For months I've been thinking about updating this blog. I'll get to it as soon as I finish this, and then this, and then this other thing. But...

The blogs that used to irritate me so much--I can't stand to read them any more. Ignorant little twerps, pompous blowhards, shills. Lost causes, and their cause isn't mine. They--and of course I'm speaking in general--want to be the ones on top, and we women get to remain on the bottom.

Here's this comment from the charming Orcinus:

"Well, that didn't take long. I figured it was only a matter of time before the conservative facade of civility crumbled, but this time it came off faster than the pancake on a ten-dollar hooker."

Teresa Nielsen Hayden wrote a beautiful summary of postelection reaction:

"You know what's really happening? They're seeing our reactions, and they're scared. It's like that moment where someone tells you what they've done, and it's disastrously wrong, a complete catastrophe; only they haven't understood that until now, when they see you stagger and turn pale at the news. And as you're standing there steadying yourself, feeling your heart pounding and a terrible weight descending on your shoulders ... you realize that the other person is preemptively yelling at you. They still don't quite know what's happened, but they can tell they've screwed up big time, so they're screaming that they certainly hope you aren't going to pretend that this could somehow have been their fault, because ..."

But then in the comments she said,

"To have voted for Nader in 2000 required only error. To have done so in 2004 required that one vote for someone one knew was a shamelessly manipulative and irresponsible liar. I respect democracy, and I respect the voting process. I just don't respect that choice. I'll also defend to the death your or anyone else's continuing right to make stupid choices -- which, as Groucho Marx once said to a blonde, is more than you've been doing lately."

A blonde. Now what is "blonde" shorthand for, I wonder?

If this ugliness directed at me is the best I can hope for from the supposedly liberal side, I don't want anything to do with it. I can be insulted without having to go out and look for it.