A Good Patriarchy September 13, 2009

I know that the common perception of feminists is that they’re histrionic, hysterical, humorless women who enjoy “playing victim politics” because viewing themselves as martyrs is the only way to bring meaning to their empty, loveless, joyless lives.We eagerly hunt down or completely fabricate instances of psuedo-discrimination, (because nothing gets you more power than saying you don’t have any), and by “playing the gender card” and getting people to feel sorry for us, we hope to take over the world (and kill all the men lolz).

Shockingly, I don’t agree with this viewpoint (spoiler!). Obviously, I don’t agree with any of it, but one point in particular that I want to discuss is the “enjoying” bit. The whole idea that we “look” for things to get pissed about is excellently debunked by Liss at Shakesville here, and I heartily concur. I do not spend my days combing through websites and books, eavesdropping on people’s conversations, watching films frame by frame, in order to catch any minute instance of someone not being “P.C.” so that I may pounce and say “ah-ha!”. And if/when I find something, it doesn’t make me happy.

On Credibility

Okay, so here’s the thing: I am a huge nerd.

No really, I am totally that person who, at the slightest provocation, will start to go about social insects or childbirth in America or the history of syphilis, because I think it’s just that cool. Thanks to a rabid curiosity about the world, a fairly good memory, and nearly constant Internet access, I have become a veritable well of quasi-useless factoids. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and in elementary school a good portion of my interactions with classmates were them asking me for homework help.

I’ve met a lot of people, in a lot of different contexts: different jobs, different schools, different social events, and as would any person, I’ve made a variety of impressions. It would be grossly misleading to imply that everyone I’ve ever met has liked me; I’m obviously not an impartial judge but can imagine that some of my negative traits include a grating sense of self-righteousness, over-prurient sense of humor and a not insubstantial amount of social awkwardness. However, there’ve been very few interactions with people where I felt that the other person saw me as too stupid. Yes – obnoxious, annoying, boring, lazy, inconsiderate – but not slow-witted or unintelligent. Whatever people’s other feelings about me have been, I’ve managed to go through my life having my intelligence relatively unassailed by would-be doubters (or if I haven’t, I’ve obviously been too dense to notice a lot of it).

I can assert that yellow jackets are wasps rather than bees, that tetanus doesn’t actually come from rust, or that rabies is the only disease that can be prevented after its transmission without people batting an eye (except perhaps in disgust). There is, however, one thing I can do that can completely change the way a person is interacting and speaking with me, so that in a moment I go from “pleasant, acceptably well-informed person talking to me about ______” to “OMG HOW DID I EVER LISTEN TO THIS PERSON AS SHE’S CLEARLY NUTS.” That thing, of course, is to say something feminist.

To say “I’m Sorry” would be a lie… June 1, 2009

So, I’ve been puttering around the Interwebs, as is my wont, and getting inspiration for all sorts of TRN-worthy blog posts, but this afternoon I got distracted and started wandering around Askmen.com. I’m not linking, both because you can find it if you want to and because honestly, I think the world has enough people who read it already. For those not in the know, AskMen is a site for men, by men, and about men’s problems (namely, dealing with women). And I do mean dealing with them  – there are advice columns in which “Doc Love” tells you how to properly manipulate a woman into staying with you, complete with Important Capitalized Terms and percentages and frequent references to “Psych majors” using language and terms that I, a Psych major, have never heard in an academic setting. There are mentions of “Womanese” and “the fact that women do 90% of the dumping” and “every woman has power over every man, ever, and you just don’t know it” and “if these tips don’t work for your woman, she’s clinically insane. Get out and head for the hills!” and “would you let your woman have an abortion?” and before I get all ranty, let me just cut myself off and say that several blogs could be written with the sole purpose of describing the shittiness of this website. But I’m a glutton for punishment, so I read some articles, alternately cackling and sighing, and then decided to really grab the bull by the balls and search for the money word.

Trolly Fun May 14, 2009

Well, it’s finals season, and I don’t have the time or energy to make any posts for the next week or so. But! I am always thinking of my loyal readers, so I thought I’d share with you the latest trolly comments I’ve received. Apparently, my troll makes a habit of going onto liberal blogs and acting like a douchenozzle, as s/he crashed a thread about homophobic slurs here in March. I don’t exactly know how s/he found my humble little corner of the Internet, but I’m honored and proud to host hir. Unfortunately, as can be read in my commenting policy, I have a low tolerance for misogyny, illogical arguments, and just plain asshattishness, so I am forced to not approve “KillCommies” ‘ comments. Sadface. However, I would love to share them with you, in case people didn’t believe that female bloggers are harassed more frequently and angrily online.

Unfortunately, as I do not have the time to write an actual post, I really don’t have time to feed the troll and get my jollies on – not that it would make any difference, as this one is clearly not playing with a full deck of cards, and is just super-super pissed at all the wimminz and their voting and their pants-wearing and their sheer audacity of writing a blog. But! That doesn’t mean I can’t post the comments myself :).

Mommy’s Day May 10, 2009

Well, today is Mother’s Day (Huzzah!). And I could write about a lot of things, including:

• The idealization yet disdain of motherhood in our society
• The fact that “women’s work” is chronically undervalued and thus, one Mother’s Day is not enough
• How Father’s Day is also worthwhile, as male parenting is usually not afforded as much respect
• All of the women who wanted to be mothers and now are not, and all of the women who didn’t want to be mothers, and now are, and what this has to with individual and reproductive rights
• You get my point

Derailing For Dummies April 5, 2009

Just updated the “Commenting Policy” page to include this new link: “Derailing For Dummies” (via).

From the website:

You know how it is.  You’re enjoying yourself, kicking back and relaxing at the pub or maybe at the library; or maybe you’re in class or just casually surfing the internet, indulging in a little conversation. The topic of the conversation is about a pertinent contemporary issue, probably something to do with a group of people who fall outside your realm of experience and identity. They’re also probably fairly heavily discriminated against – or so they claim.
The thing is, you’re having a good time, sharing your knowledge about these people and their issues. This knowledge is incontrovertible – it’s been backed up in media representation, books, research and lots and lots of historical events, also your own unassailable sense of being right.

Yet all of a sudden something happens to put a dampener on your sharing of your enviable intellect and incomparable capacity to fully perceive and understand All Things. It’s someone who belongs to the group of people you’re discussing and they’re Not Very Happy with you. Apparently, they claim, you’ve got it all wrong and they’re offended about that.  They might be a person of colour, or a queer person. Maybe they’re a woman, or a person with disability. They could even be a trans person or a sex worker. The point is they’re trying to tell you they know better than you about their issues and you know that’s just plain wrong. How could you be wrong?

Grin January 12, 2009

Why am I giddy right now? It’s probably because of one of my Firefox add-ons: in particular, the President Bush Countdown 1.1.2. As you can see in my previous post that used a screenshot of my browser, the P.B. 1.1.2. resides in the bottom left corner of my browser. I added it a year or two ago, so when I started it the number was in the 5 or 600’s; over time, the number has steadily decreased (as would be expected), and a couple days ago:

Deep in the bowels of The Radical Notion

Can we get a close-up on that, please?

Attention: Blogroll Updated January 7, 2009

I have just updated the blogroll at the ride sight side of the page – not only did I add lots of links to blogs that I’ve discovered since originally creating the list, but I reshuffled some of the preexisting links. Originally, one of the caategories was “Feminism” and another was “Miscellaneous Awesomeness”; thus, lots of blogs on other aspects of working for social equality/resisting discrimination for example, on LGBT rights or anti-racism) didn’t really fit in. I had just put them in “M.A.” but it seemed inappropriate and a tad disrespectful to put such illustrious and respected (with good reason) blogs such as Racialicious and Pam’s House Blend in the same category as, say, Cake Wrecks (which is equally wonderful, but in a different way). So now the former category is “Feminism/Social Justice”, which is more inclusive and more accurately reflects my personal reading habits, which focus on feminism but touch a lot on other aspects of anti-bigotry (if not intersecting with them directly). So…yay for linkage!

The song “Hot Shot City” is particularly good January 6, 2009

Apparently, there is an Internet subculture that revolves around writing parodic reviews on Amazon.com. I was alerted to this phenomenon by the comments section of this Jezebel post on a nipple extractor (actually a plumbing tool). I don’t know what forum or website people go to to hear about the particular products to mock, or if there are other ones around, but here’s a list of ones I found, with excerpts of the type of review you can find (possibly NSFW):

The Seedy Underbelly of Search Engines January 1, 2009

A lot of the blogs I read have been doing summary or retrospective posts – “best posts of the year” or something else in that vein, but since I’ve only been around for a couple months (and actively blogging for an even shorter amount of time), it doesn’t seem like a useful thing to think about. However, I’ve decided to take this opportunity to showcase some of the most ridiculous search terms by which people arrived here. I really don’t know how some of these turned up my blog in their search results, but here they are – the most ridiculous search terms of 2008 (each with one hit):