resistance is fertile

So I get this trackback comment thingie saying said JWMWIPOGTLS linked to one of my Mad Men posts. His post was the absolute bestest parody of what a JWMWIPOGTLS would have to say about feminism EVER. It made me laugh so loud and long, so I left a comment saying so: good job, my friend! Awesome post! JWMWIPOGTLS emailed me to say “yo bitch, wtf, not a parody.”  (aka “I was genuinely serious in my post. If you think I’m wrong, I’m more than willing to listen to your viewpoints. It’s possible that I didn’t articulate things well and I may be wrong on parts or all of my criticisms. But I don’t see how making a snarky remark is productive from any vantage point.”)

So lez do this.

Dear JWMWIPOGTLS, I believe in affirmative action, therefore my time is worth more than yours, thus here is why you are wrong, super quick, from the vantage point of a Jewishish White Female Who Hates JWMWIPOGTLSs:

If it’s one thing that’s perplexed me over the years, it’s my resistance to feminism. I support all the mainstream liberal items of women’s rights, such as the right to an abortion (to an extent), equal employment, access to education, employment, equal (merit-based) salaries and a belief that women should generally have their decisions respected–the usual.

You’re POSITIVE this first paragraph isn’t a parody?

Seriously, JWMWIPOGTLS, law school?

Also:

• Fuck you. You are not allowed to have an opinion on abortion, seeing as you will never have kids. My body, my choice.
• You that you think women “generally” should have their decisions respected. I get that not everyone will respect everyone’s opinions all the time (see: my opinions re: your opinions). But this is in no way related to feminism.
• The primary problem, which the first paragraph illustrated so succinctly and mind-blowingly, is that you have no concept of what feminism is. So, in typical JWMWIPOGTLS fashion, you are, pardon the phrase, talking out of your asshole. And not like that awesome dude in that John Waters’ movie who sang a beautiful song out of his asshole. This will become more clear as we move on.

But I can’t identify with the mainstream conception of feminism at all.

Me neither! Fuck that Hillary Clinton bullshit! Seriously: I can’t either.

And thus we run into your next huge problem: you lump all feminists together. It’s, like, rilly rilly annoying.

Perhaps my biggest problem with most liberal causes is their vision of some sort of utopian state where, on long enough timeline, societies are able to overcome all their differences and live in a (near) perfect world where bigotry is minimal or nonexistent. Unfortunately, such a belief fails to account for certain structural barriers to human existence such as the ambiguity of language.

Yeah. I have an issue where I seriously think, a lot of the time, “if it’s not going to turn out perfect, I don’t want to do it,” —but that’s a businessy problem I have.

Are you seriously saying that any liberal cause, from wrongful imprisonment to civil rights to environmentalism to worker’s rights to anything else shouldn’t be attempted at all because “structural barriers to human existence such as the ambiguity of language” mean that things will never be perfect? Um. Methinks you have drank too deep [not to mention too superficially] from the Derrida cup, no? Think that one though, my friend. Do you know what the word “amelioration” means?

OK, then you talk about the difference between the signifier and the signified. Ha ha, I love that shit! Lacan, bring it on! So, like, ah, you’re saying that because we can’t agree on what “woman” means we can’t have equality? You’ve got to check out some postmodern feminist theory, my friend. Would blow ya mind.

Explain this sentencey-type thing to me:

You’d hope that feminism would be able to None of this is profound until you get to the point that feminism, or the aspects of it that I’m talking about, are against this “respect for other interpretations,” because…

???

Moving on:

Feminists cannot distinguish between an exercise of agency or a victim of gender identities.

You are so ignorant of feminist theory that you have no idea that feminists have ourselves been debating this forever! Amazing. Some quote unquote sex positive feminists would agree with you. More Kathleen Catherine MacKinnon* radical feminist types would say some quote of hers that I’m paraphrasing about how until equality is achieved, all decisions under patriarchy are suspect. Thus, women don’t have true freedom because we still live in a patriarchy, so all this burlesque bullshit (oops, I was trying not to let my own bias show), or, as you’d say, the desire to be a housewife, has to be seen in that context, a context in which our choices cannot be given full agency.

We (feminists) could debate this forever, but we’d all agree on one thing: you are wrong about everything. Wheeee! I love being a man-hater! (as I sit next to my man in bed, we are both gleefully mocking you, Mr. JWMWIPOGTLS, so please know that I don’t hate the good men. All five of them are my BFFs.)

So blah blah the whole paragraph where you are trying to make your point is flawed because lots o’ feminists agree, so once again you’re just wrong about what feminism is.

And you really really need to reread my Mad Men coverage. Like, the part where I say:

Just as there are people who do not understand that The Simpsons isn’t a lighthearted cartoon but one of the most bitingly satiric shows ever to air on TV, there are people running around whining about how Mad Men is misogynist. Today seems like as good a day as any for a radical feminist to counter that claptrap by heaping praise on this most radical, most feminist show. … …

Also, your insanely random list of links that “prove” how dumb feminists are is just hilarious. Am I the voice and authority on feminism’s viewpoint on Mad Men? Of course not! At its finest, feminism seeks to be a decentralized movement that destabilizes the very idea of voices of authority. So the idea that you could link to a few articles and blog posts and call them out as representing some monolithic value system called “Feminism” again reveals your lack of understanding about feminism itself.

Hilarious sentence alert!!! Wait for it….

If feminism were all about increasing the agency of women, then it’d be hard to have a problem with feminism.

Well, hooray hooray. Because, you know, we all want to please you, JWMWIPOGTLS.

But as the above illustrates, feminism goes one step further by seeking to police men and women to do X rather than Y.

“The above,” the link dump I just discussed, didn’t illustrate shit, but yeah, feminism wants to police men to do things like, oh, I don’t know, not be found innocent of rape when their defense was that the woman was wearing tight jeans (true story! Many times over! Find your own references, JWMWIPOGTLS!). Guilty as charged.

But feminists tend to be incapable of letting, tolerating, or respecting a women making a free-willed decision to do something that is not in line with the progressive Democrats agenda–and even then there’s still plenty of infighting.

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK FEMINISTS ARE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS? I mean, for fuck’s sake! I wouldn’t piss in a Democrat’s mouth if she were dying of thirst.* [see comments. sigh. I SO would.] Your ignorance and your love of lumping all feminists together is just…astonishing.

You’re right about the infighting though. But please show me a movement where there isn’t any?

The next paragraph in your essay is titled “Feminism Essentializes Gender.”

(hand-rubbing together motion)

Let’s do this.

There are many topics of feminist discussion that can probably be explained better than analyzing.

Have I ever told you that I love the way you write?

Take the macho/slut double-standard. The gist of the feminist argument is that the macho/slut double-standard is that it is misogynistic to praise male sexual promiscuity while shunning female promiscuity. But if you look at the problem from the perspective of ‘rank,’ it’s a different much better picture.

I’m not going to get into your “argument,” or “point” here. It involves sentences like “Men, for better or worse, are typically the gender that has to offer themselves to females who either accept or reject the male advances. Whether this practice is good or bad is irrelevant to current conversation, it simply is.” and is fucking HILARE, as usual. And also as usual, some feminists would agree with you, and some would not.

So…what’s your point, exactly?

Exactly.

The next line I’m going to quote literally blows my mind. Literally in the sense that my mind—my brain + my soul—is actually, as I type this, floating among the trees, blowing away, blinking and open-mouthed. Luckily, my fingers know more about feminism than your entire universe ever will, so we may continue. Not only is the following sentencey thing wonderfully well-written, it also makes an amazing point.

When I read a feminist article the theme of the article will cover something, usually a particular male, masculinity or legal/socioeconomic that is harmful to women.

!!!

!!!

!!!

So, JWMWIPOGTLS, you have read feminist articles!!!

Where, pray tell? Ms. Magazine? I’d really like to know. Because even if you were reading the most baby-blog feminist websites ever, you would know more about feminism than you do now. The bust.com blog would be a better source than what you’re reading now. Even Jezebel.com would be! You don’t need to go even as deep as feministing.com (though, if you really want to get your thinking cap on, the best place I could point you would be Patriarchy-Blaming the Twisty Way, and, of course, Twisty’s whole blog.) to get some basic knowledge—the internet is overflowing with gently feminist websites that would teach you one basic fact, a fact that you will never, ever grasp, and thus we will forever stand on this gulf, shouting at each other across the divide.

FEMINISM IS NOT ABOUT MEN.

Really. It’s just not.

If you take one point from this cold-hearted missive, my internet pal, Mr. JWMWIPOGTLS, please take that. For reals.

My lovely man is gently reminding me that I am allotted roughly six hours for pleasurable activities every goddamn fucking week and I have now used way way more than 15 minutes of this precious time on this and that I had mumbled something about wanting to actually go into the out-of-doors this week and maybe go hiking or something, anything that doesn’t involve a chef’s knife or tempering machine or computer—so I better move this along.

There are of course many other criticisms of feminism (the lack of focus on the draft, propping up identity politics only encourages fighting among identities, feminism encourages hypersensitivity towards sexuality)

The draft!!!! Ha! Your sentence structure!!! Ha!!

No need to focus on ending war or seeing our desire to create war through the lens of patriarchy—nope. Let’s just open the draft to women and everything will be fine. Can I mention again: I hate Hillary Clinton-esque feminism, as well as dudes who think that that branch is the entirety of feminism?

What, pray tell, is JWMWIPOGTLS’s solution to the myriad problems of American-style feministy shouting?

Instead feminism would better be served by looking across the pond and seeing where their grievances intersect beyond the typical race and sexual orientation bonding.

Duly noted.

For your hilarification, I present to you, without comment (OK, I couldn’t resist a few bracketed eyebrow raises though), the last paragraph of this beautiful missive, this gorgeous message-in-a-bottle to the fairer sex:

But above all else, feminism needs to find a way to shift their [?] rhetoric from trying to shift the social coordinates on which we police gender identities to encouraging individuals to think and act differently while respecting informed decisions to balk at feminists [?] concerns [?]. The latter is indeed the hardest part, but isn’t it the most necessary? If feminism is concerned with removing structural barriers that prevent women achieving self-actualization [!!!] then what happens when (parts of) feminism becomes a barrier itself [?]. Perhaps the biggest move for feminists would be [wtf] to stop trying to push their image of a free and liberated women [?!?!!11?1] on those who don’t want it [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] and focus on displaying their own identity and allowing those who want to join them to do so.

The music swells.

*Freudian slip: I have to be the only feminist in the world who loves Kathleen Hanna and Catherine MacKinnon in equal measure. I know, it’s weird.

**And in one fell swoop, Lagusta destroyed her nascent political career in her town of 13,000 people, 1,000 of which read her blog only to find things with which to slander her.