Thanks to Harpy reader Catrina C. for sending me a link to a Slate column by Jack Shafer called “Breaking Up With Hotmail.” Yes, someone apparently alerted Jack to the fact that it’s not 1999 anymore, so he’s opened a Gmail account. Whether the article was meant to be a tech column or a personal essay, the premise is about as exciting as staring at the monitor while your PC boots up, so Jack decided to spice it up with a potpourri of crude, derogatory “sluts, whores and nags” stereotypes. For example:
My promiscuous relationships have also included corporate mail accounts, usually via Microsoft Outlook. But using Outlook is like sleeping with a hooker at a convention and sending the bill to your boss. There’s no real pleasure to be found in Outlook, no intimacy, only relief. Outlook exists to satisfy your corporate manager and the freaks down at IT, not you or me.
What attracted me to Hotmail? Well, she was free, and she wasn’t Outlook. And she liked to go places! Like any whore, Outlook was pretty demanding, stipulating where and when we could connect. When not at the office, I could only see her via VPN and later, when she became obsessed with the danger of catching some virus from me, we could only hook up if I had a valid smartcard plugged into my USB to act as a prophylactic. Hotmail didn’t care about that shit. Anytime from any computer was good enough for her.
There’s more, but you can click the link and read it yourself if you must. Props to some of the commenters—both male and female—who pointed out what a steaming load of creepy bullshit the article was.
For example:
Somewhere around the phrase “I must confess to having once been seduced by Hotmail’s little sister,” the douchiness of the article became overwhelming.
and my personal favorite:
Would it be in bad taste to wonder how far Jack’s office is from Eliot Spitzer’s?
Moral of the story, folks: if you’re not a tech writer by training and you need to bang out a few hundred mostly irrelevant words about a non-trend in technology, you can’t go wrong with throwing out some nasty hooker-and-ho stereotypes that make you sound like a sleazy, bitter loser who hates women. At least it gets people’s attention, right?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pursuit of Harpyness, Vyckie D. Garrison. Vyckie D. Garrison said: @TPoHarpyness: Misogynist Metaphors, and the Lazy-Ass Creepster Who Loves Them: Thanks to Harpy… http://bit.ly/fa5Yit #feminist #women [...]
Oh jeebus. I saw the story, but chose not to read it, which was a smarter decision than I could have possibly imagined.
-1000 points to Shafer for his abuse of the literary conceit. -1 million for being a misogynist doucheweasel.
I have to say that as a youngin’, what I mostly feel about this is pity mixed with revulsion. Not even due to the misogyny, but actually much moreso due to the persistent use of hotmail (I haven’t had a hotmail account since I was a tween and my screen names were based on Pokemon when it still had only the original two colors or whatever) and the excitement over gmail. I’m embarrassed for this guy. Who’s still excited over gmail? And I say this having been a very early adopter. But…I mean…come on. Anyway, I guess my point is that this article is a great demonstration of the principle that misogyny and looking like an out of touch asshat often go together.
O-M-G you guys! Gmail rules, and Hotmail drools!!! Drools like a drunk be-yotch who gives it up for FREE, but it’s shitty cause she’s, like, wasted, dude! I’m so stoked I found Super Whore G(spot)mail which is FREE and doesn’t suck – unless you want her to ; )
This guy has some serious illusions about his own cleverness.
Actually, I agree with baraqiel. The thing is misogynistic without a doubt. But it’s almost as if the author is wearing a misogyny costume in an attempt to look manly and cool, which is pitiful. The combo of the untimely, disproportionate, and bizarre excitement over the switch, and the trying-way-too-hard use of the whore metaphor smacks of someone who is (over) performing male gender stereotypes to try to fit in with the “cool” boys, but who doesn’t realize he just sounds stupid.
Thank you for reading that drivel, so I don’t have to.
And the upshot of this is that, for anyone who already didn’t know, Shafer has outed himself as a woman-hater. It’s only fair to every single woman in his pathetic, inadequate life.
That’s a very good point, mischiefmanager. It’s also helpful because now I’ve just started skipping right over anything else with him in the by-line.
And I also agree with baraqiel and Tall-in-Heels: this feels like posturing from someone who is obsessed with his “man card” and the possibility of it getting taken away.
The aspiring journalist/writer in me wants to stand outside Shafer’s house with a bullhorn, yelling, “THERE ARE BETTER METAPHORS THAN SEX. TECHNOLOGY AS SEX HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE. CLICHES: UR DOIN THEM AWESOME.”
@ididthatonce
I was feeling inspired to stand outside his house with a torch to toss, actually.
But then someone might draw a line to burning my bra and then where would we be? “Oh – this again?”
[...] Vinay Menon, courtesy of the Toronto Star. It’s less overtly douche-y than last week’s super-creepy misogynist musings from Slate, but it’s still a groaner. Meghan described it thusly: The author has kindly [...]