Via PBS Hawaii.org
Welcome to Harpy Seminar, a regular feature we plan to have at regular intervals, unless we get too busy to have it at regular intervals, in which case it shall appear whenever we have time and inclination for it. Each Seminar begins with a question, which we discuss amongst ourselves, and we then edit the highlights of our conversation into a post. Please feel free to join in in the comments!
It’s been a busy couple weeks for the Harpies, so today’s Harpy Seminar is a virtual roundtable featuring the wit, wisdom and estrogenated energy of some of our awesome commenters.*
Today, we tackle the question: If there were a Gender Draft tomorrow, a la Dave Chapelle’s infamous (and hilarious) Racial Draft, which woman would you trade to Team Men and which righteous dude would you draft to Team Women?
BeckySharper: I said in the comments on SarahMC’s Maureen Dowd post that I’m totally up for trading Maureen, because she is an underminer-y frenemy of women everywhere. And I suspect she’d be prefer to hang out with the dudes anyway, since she thinks we silly girls are all so beneath her. And I’m taking Jimmy Carter for womanity. Am willing to trade Margaret Thatcher for him–she’s basically just Ronald Reagan in a dress anyway.
Elibard: I’m totally with you on setting Maureen Dowd adrift on a fiery sea with no paddle. As for whom to draft to our side? Again, love the Jimmy Carter suggestion.
bluebears: For the women there are some obvious choices like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin or Sarah Palin.
westvillagegirl: I’ll take Bernie Sanders of Vermont instead of Sarah Failin’ Palin. Here’s another: I’ll take Al Franken in exchange for Phyllis Schlafly.
Mkp-hearts-nyc: I imagine plenty of folks would offer up Sarah Palin, so I’d trade Condoleezza Rice – not only do I despise her war-supporting, torture-authorizing politics from a gender neutral position, she did absolutely /nothing/ with her position as Sec. of State to help women at home or abroad, and she agreed with every word out of W’s mouth on abortion and abstinence-only education, so basically I’d be happy to turn her over to the dudes.
bluebears: If we could draft posthumously I would say Jesus Christ because then maybe Christians would have more respect for women. But if we have to restrict ourselves to the living I’d say Howard Dean. Just because he’s a fighter! I’d love to have him on our side. (not that he’s not on “our side” but you know what I mean)
Mischiefmanager: I’ve got one: John Stuart Mill for Ayn Rand
westvillagegirl: I totally co-sign the J.S. Mill for Ayn Rand swap. HATE HER.
BeckySharper: I suspect all the Harpies would happily co-sign on that. We are NOT Ayn Rand fans around here.
Elibard: And I almost included Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but esp. Jon has been just soooooo testosterone-laden the last couple of years that I’m hesitant. Way too many balls-and-dicks jokes.
BeckySharper: I know Pilgrim Soul would second that.
baraqiel: I’d trade every woman who’s said anything like, “I’m a woman and I don’t find [Tucker Max/Observe and Report/Superbad/etc.] offensive, therefore you (probably ugly) women who do are wrong, and giving women a bad name.” Also, all the moms on “Toddlers and Tiaras.”
ceejeemcbeegee: Can Black women get rid of Tyler Perry and Steve Harvey altogether? Too many Black women think these two “speak” for them.
Mkp-hearts-nyc: Yeah, there should be a category of those so repugnant neither side wants them…Sometimes free agents don’t have their option picked up, to keep with the sports metaphor 
That would allow us to just delete Tucker Max or Carrie Prejean, among others…
BeckySharper: I’d say “get sent back to the farm team” to continue the sports metaphor, but really, it would be better if they could be relocated to desert island like the people on “Lost.”
westvillagegirl: In that category, I have two words: Ann Coulter. Forgive me if that’s already been said.
BeckySharper: I srsly doubt the dudes want her, so yeah, she should just get the fuck out altogether.
baraqiel: Was she not already said? She falls into the Palin category for me — essentially already off the team.
bluebears: I think I’m gonna have to go with Dr. Laura Schlessinger for her relentless anti-women rhetoric. I won’t even say anti-feminist because I think it goes deeper than that.
mischiefmanager: Maybe we could get Rabbi Arthur Waskow in exchange for Laura Schlesinger (that one’s for you, BeckyS)!
BeckySharper: Feminist, queer-lovin’ rabbis FTW! I hate Dr. Laura–she’s living proof that being a woman and being a misogynist aren’t mutually exclusive. I’d trade her in for the late Fred “Mister” Rogers. I want him to come back from heaven and be my neighbor! He was a Presbyterian minister, too, and unlike Dr. Laura, he was all about treating people with kindness and respect.
Ladies, if you were coaching Team Womanity, who would you trade and who would you draft? Continue the action in the comments…
*Don’t feel left out! I couldn’t include everyone in this round and had to stick with commenters whose e-mail addresses I had on hand. If you want to participate in future Commenter Seminars, e-mail me at beckysharper@harpyness.com with your commenter name and e-mail address.
Due to recent news I’d like to submit Debra Winger and Anne Applebaum as well.
FTR, Tyler Perry was a producer for the movie Precious, and was instrumental in getting it actually released widely etc. So all of his antics must be tempered by that Good Deed.
Word to Howard Dean–he’s totally been on my good side lately.
Umm this is rather obscure, but a man wrote a book call Medieval Misogynist and I totally would bring him over to our side. It’s very aware, and in fact he writes in the preface that since he isn’t a woman he feels like it cannot fall within his purview to write about women in a certain way–gender still existing and all, he leaves it up to a coterie of female scholars to write about women’s perspectives. This is less about giving up responsibility and more about consciously not speaking for women, and so he spends the book writing about the dudes who really made misogyny happen in the west, post-jesus. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up, and would bring him over. We could also totally take Chaucer in this round, which may be controversial but I maintain that he is super women-friendly.
You’ve named most of the people I’d kick off the team, but I think I’d draft Al Gore. I love Al.
I love Al Gore too. I’d totally draft him.
The dudes can have Barbara “those Katrina refugees are better off living in shelters” Bush in exchange.
I think we’ve got to draft the Dalai Lama for Team Womanity. His recent support of feminism was charming (though his follow-up on women being more caring because of childbirth/motherhood was a bit eyerolling).
@bme: Absolutely. I edited down all the answers, but there was a request to get him in exchange for trading Mother Teresa, which I thought was dead on (but didn’t want to get into all the reasons Mother Teresa is not a friend to Womanity).
Oooh, oooh, can we get Jay Smooth of illdoctrine?
I’d gladly exchange Michelle Bachmann for Phil Donohue. When can we get this facilitated?
Maybe someone else noted her and I missed it, but can we please get rid of Phyllis Schlafly. I’ll trade her for the likes of Eddie Vedder any day.
@washingmyhair: Yep, westvillagegirl was all over that and Phyllis got traded! We got Al Franken in exchange.
with you on the Mother Teresa trade. Also any saint that died to maintain her virginity
I second Michelle Bachmann, and would like to throw Megan Fox into the ring as well. In return, we could get, say, Andy Samberg and my Literature of Human Rights professor (who assigned “Vindication of the Rights of Women” the first week).
A win for both feminism and the FA movement: Let’s trade MeMe Roth for Paul Campos.
I don’t mean to be a party-pooper, but I don’t think it’s fair to ditch the virginity-preserving saints. They had some serious internalized oppression going on, but they weren’t the ones who made virginity so stinkin’ important in the first place…they just bought into it to their own detriment.
Although on the religion front…anybody who doesn’t study (or, I guess, take part in) the Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy movement ever heard of Elisabeth Elliot? I would trade her for almost anyone.
In light of the Polanski case, I’d like to trade any woman on this list:
Petition For the Release of Roman Polanski
http://www.indiewire.com/article/over_100_in_film_community_sign_polanski_petition/P1/
Good riddance, Bitches!
@Rodriguez: If they were trying to preserve their virginity by not being raped or forced into marriage, I’ll give the saints a pass.
@ceejee: I wholeheartedly second that motion! Rape apologists should get their asses kicked out of the womanity entirely.
I can’t get on board with the Dalai Lama. For a dude to get into my gender, he’d need to unequivocally support, without reservations, abortion.
Also, why would we want to exclude Mother Theresa for her virginity but keep the DL despite his views on anything but penis-in-vagina sex as bad? I think it’s far less innocuous to come out decidedly against homosexual or masturbatory sex than it is to refrain from fulfilling your duty as a member of the female class to provide sex and teh pretty to any man who demands it. Remaining a virgin, in this patriarchy, is indeed an act of rebellion against the culture that equates women with either walking uteri or convenient receptacles.
Not that I’m pro-virginity, but I’m at a loss as to why hers would be bad, but a dude-virgin would be good? A dude virgin who thinks abortion is murder and who thinks that homosexual sex is bad?
Because it seems to me that this trade-off is based on either super-secret* male privilege/female disprivilege that we’ve all internalized, therefore making a woman who is equal to a man in every way but genitals less than that man because of said genitals even when genitals are in no way part of the conversation–we’ve just gotten it into our heads that as a rule, women < men. And so, both in thinking that a man doing X for womanity and therefore deserves a cookie, or for finding male faults less bad than female ones and male goodnesses better than female ones, we've gone and done some of our own oppression accidentally.
Or it's a weird othering racist thing, in which "cultural relativism" is getting mixed up with a weird fetishization of Asian religion. Or a weird apologist western thing, in which the sins of a man who is not-western are somewhat mitigated because any reasonable westerner sees how badly the west has raped everywhere else these past 500 years or so and feels guilty about that, and so lets some of his badness go so as to not pile on. I think this tendency is more prevalent in women, because women tend to apologize more than men, because women are taught to apologize for everything they do whilst men are taught that everyone has to deal with everything they do.
*By which I mean wrapped in years and decades of sexist socialization, from the moment of infancy to this afternoon, in which we are bombarded at all moments and from all sides (including our own brains) messages about the inferiority of women.
… I wrote a response to the posts about the Dalai Lama, but it has sadly disappeared itself. And I have no more energy to continue. I am approaching my limit with humanity and will soon be forced to move to a mountaintop with no internet and no other living beings but my dog and two cats.
B’bye, Leslie Unruh.
Helllloooo, Barney Frank!
Definitely want Al Gore and Barney Frank. Can we get Jonathan “The Girl Stands Up To Me Now” Richman and ditch, say, Vanna White?
Re: the Dalai Lama – it’s not clear how he feels about us gays. There are a lot of conflicting quotes around, but he doesn’t appear to be on Team Unequivocal-Non-Gay-Hate. So maybe let’s not claim him for womanity just yet.
@eleanargh: O RLY? That would be disappointing indeed.
I’m also drafting Tim Gunn. The dudes can either take Anna Wintour in exchange or we can just exile her.
This was so fun!
I’ll give Camille Paglia (in a heartbeat) and take Howard Zinn.
I’ll give any anti-choice loony, especially the ones who yell at women “I’ll take your baby!” (This seems to be a female behavor exclusively, at least in my experience.) Yeah, like we’d even trust you with an ant farm. And I’ll take George Tiller and every male doc who does abortions.
Found your comment in the spam queue, Cimorene. Weird. But I’m glad I did because I agree with you about the Dali Lama, and it briefly answers eleanargh’s question.
@mischiefmanager
Dr. Warren Hern for our team. The Esquire profile about him made me sob.
Kicked out: Virginia Foxx. Blanche Lincoln. Leslee Unruh! Ugh, it took me like five minutes to remember her name and now I’m angry.
And Sally Kern has got to go.
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