I have been waiting for an excuse to use this awesome picture (that PhDork found) again. Via Trois Tetes @ Flickr.
I am the kind of person who despite a generally sardonic demeanour and occasionally… decisive manner of speech actually believes in the best in people. When I meet people, I assume they are not assholes. Perhaps this is a sign of my extreme naiveté. I do tend to prefer the printed word to human interaction (this is why the internet has been such a balm for my wounded soul), and maybe I have just not been meeting the right people. But there are days my faith flags.
Let’s put it this way: dudes* have not been working very hard to disprove what we feminists say about them lately.
Let’s start off with the abortion “debate.” First off, nothing entertains me more than that the two most-listened to, reblogged, endlessly-internet-discussed commentators on abortion right now among center-left bloggers are two DUDES: William Saletan and Ross Douthat. (Oh the jokes I could make with that name if I were not averse to ladyhatin’ words!) And you know, I realize that Saletan, unlike Douthat, is not totally against abortion. He just wants us to admit that we find abortions icky and to not be so bloodily enthusiastic about digging these embryos out of ourselves. And therein lies the rub, because that very appeal shows that Saletan has never bothered to speak to any women about abortion, because he would realize how completely clueless he sounds to anyone for whom the question is other than an abstract one. But hey, why you know, hire a woman to write about abortion when you can make a name for yourself opining on it! When you are a dude, you can self-appoint as Emperor of All Knowledge!
Then, over in the tumblrsphere – which Sady from Tiger Breakdown aptly describes as “Livejournal, but for sexy people” – a bunch of feminists, including awesome Harpy friend Kat O’Leary, got into a fight with a bunch of dudes who felt the need to defend the “jokey misogyny” of a charming site called bonerparty, which you should only read if you’re wanting some cathartic anger to wash over you. See, bonerparty (and yes, I don’t bother capitalizing that shit) wants to be able to call women “crazy” in the name of “humour,” and other people think we should all just get the joke and shut up about it because we’re just reinforcing their bad stereotypes about feminists.
I am trying hard to be generous, ladies. But I’m failing on these guys’ count.
* I like the word dude a lot, and use it a lot, even in my work, as in, “Dude, I don’t care what the Americans say, demeanour has a ‘u’ in it.” I had this friend in college who claimed “dude” was a philosophical term. So it’s been a struggle for me in the feminist blogging realm to drop it when I don’t mean it pejoratively. Of course, I do sort of mean it pejoratively here, so dropping this footnote is kind of unnecessary, but I like it, so I’m keeping it.
I am equally naive about new people, and I wind up disappointed a lot. Well, I did until I started avoiding new people and capitalizing on my natural shyness. Heh.
Didn’t we discuss once, somewhere in feminist blog land, that douche can be a pejorative term because douches are not good for women? Douches can cause vaginitis and PID! They can increase your STD risk! They increase the risk of pregnancy problems and cervical cancer! They don’t effectively help you with a darn thing!
Douthat doesn’t make any positive contributions to my life either, so I’m not sure I can object to calling him DoucheHat. Or DoubtThat, even.
To get on topic: STFU, Douthat, Saletan, and bonerparty. Love, DangerMouse.
Grand pronouncements about morality when it comes to reproductive rights always reeks of asshole-ism when it comes from a dude who will never be told what to do with his own reproductive organs. Douthat is the best example of dudery run amok, and I cannot fathom why the fuck he has the platform he does.
Kind of figured you added in all those “u”s for insulatory purposes in the Great White Nort’. Extra vowels are like verbal long johns.
sarah.of.a.lesser.god – I can not fathom why he has the platform he has because he is barely capable of stringing a sentence together and that’s presumably after the copy editors have worked on it.
I was under the mistaken belief that the New York Times had standards but their continued employment of this man suggests otherwise.
I can honestly say that his pieces would not be allowed to pass as Op Ed in even the worst UK pieces (we save our idots for features in the ‘women’s section’ you know) and I am frankly astonished that the editor of the New York Times believes their pages are in any way enhanced by his continued employment.
Quite frankly it makes them look a little as though they’re desperately seeking controversy.
DM: I think you are right that that convo was had, but here’s the thing – throwing insults that amount to “you are like a lady!” at dudes does strike me as lady-hating.
Also I can think of a gendered word to replace that last syllable.
I recall reading something Dan Savage wrote a while back, about being at a party where two gay men got into a yell-y debate about abortion, while the women in the room just backed away. He remarked that this seems to be how the abortion debate goes — two men who will never themselves need, nor cause anyone else to need, an abortion yelling at one another about it. This anecdote still seems depressingly apropos.
omg PS I just wrote about a personal fist-clenching experience with a Liberal Dude. dude, they’re everywhere!
PS, maybe I just jump ten steps farther than most people by immediately associating it with things that are bad for my vagina. I see your point; it just wouldn’t be my immediate thought. I think you would put it more in line with “tamponhead” being used as an insult and I would put it more in line with “herpes monster”. (Okay, so neither of those are real insults, but I amused myself.)
I usually see his name in my head as DoubtThat anyway, much less gendered. I kind of wish that his name could just be replaced with a giant red X or a circle with a line through it.
I’m glad y’all agree with me. I’ve been watching Ross for some time before this and he’s been totally dead to me since he tried to “intellectually” lecture Ta-Nehisi about why TNC’s family structure was not “ideal.” TNC was classy about it, but I was angered on his behalf.
Getting a shout-out on Harpyness makes the enormous amount of time I wasted arguing with those dimwits totally worth it.
(I should note that the person I was disagreeing with in the linked post is not actually a dimwit. But those BP dudes embody the term.)
I always read it as “AssHat” but that’s just me.
What kills me is the oh-so-sorrowful tone these guys takes, as in ‘Oh, if only everyone else would agree with me. Siiiiigh.’