Of course this approach takes for granted the sexual revolution’s first commandment, which is that any such act ever committed by any woman is by definition beyond reproach.Hm, I don't remember that one. Ladies, when did that go into effect? And when was it repealed?
...Even so, something deeper is at work here than ideological tussling over a word that no halfway-civilized person would use anyway. The promiscuous slinging of “slut” is only the beginning of the obscenity- and profanity-saturated woman-talk these days, from otherwise obscurantist academic feminism on down to popular magazines and blogs.Previously the word was only used by fathers toward their daughters if they didn't like how they were dressed, by accused rapists' lawyers in court, etc. But now ladies (even the obscurantist ones) are using it, and also "the b-word," which is grounds for concern.
The interesting question is why. A cynic might say it’s just smart branding. After all, sex sells; women talking about sex sells; and even women talking about women talking about sex sells, too. Everyone knows that slapping a salacious word into a title will pull more eyeballs to the screen or page. Maybe it’s time the objects of exploitation got some of their own back. Why shouldn’t enterprising modern women perform some commercial jujitsu exploitation, via the promiscuous use of “slut” and other rough talk, to sell their stuff? A play called “The Private-Parts Monologues” would have folded on opening nightSame thing with Slutwalk. You think it's about preventing rapes, but these women are actually just trying to make a fast buck by working blue!
But there's something deeper going on behind this, says Eberstadt:
All of which leads, finally, to a sad and monumental fact. Beneath the swagger and snarl of jailhouse feminism is something pathetic: a search for attention (including, obviously, male attention) on any terms at all.[Blink. Blink.]
If that means being trussed up like a turkey, so be it. If loping about on TV in your birthday suit does the trick, so be that, too. And if getting smacked around from time to time...Whoa, some segue!
...is part of the package — if violence is what it takes to keep an interested fellow in the room — that is a price that some desperate women today will pay.See? Feminism caused Fifty Shades of Grey, twerking, and assault -- or rather, feminism happened to be standing around when a culture cop needed to make a collar on thousands of years of abusive behavior and attitudes toward women, and so why not pick her up? It's not like they haven't pinned lots of men's crimes on feminism before.
There's more -- endlessly more -- but I'll just leave you with some key words and phrases: "ethos of recreational sex," "decline of the family," "draconian speech codes on campuses," "the defunct Pussycat Dolls," "Amanda Marcotte," "Jessica Valenti," etc. (Maybe I should have put these up top -- but then you never would have read past them, and I would have been lonely. Now we suffer together!)
Oh OK, one more pull-quote:
The result is that many, many women have been left vulnerable and frustrated. That’s why a furious, swaggering, foul-mouthed ideology continues to exert its pull. Jailhouse feminism promises women protection.Like butch dykes in those women's-prison movies! See, we told you this would happen if you started wearing pants.
"The promiscuous use of 'slut'." Well, I mean, that word is just asking for it, with its welcoming U.
ReplyDelete"But now ladies (even the obscurantist ones) are using it [slut], and also "the b-word," which is grounds for concern."
ReplyDeleteAnd Eberstadt's just noticing this now? Oh, Mary... women have been calling each other those things forever, just not ironically. It must have been tough for her, typing this while lying flat on the fainting couch.
"Previously the word [slut] was only used by fathers toward their daughters if they didn't like how they were dressed"
ReplyDeleteThem and a certain religious blogger who uses it to describe brides with a tattoo.
Sad sack was sittin' on a block of stone
ReplyDeleteWay over in the corner weepin' all alone
The warden said, "Hey, buddy, don't you be no square
If you can't find a partner, perform some commercial jujitsu exploitation."
Needs work.
Where's Tura Satana when we really need her?
ReplyDeletehttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/02/07/nyregion/07satana/07satana-blog480.jpg
~
...
ReplyDeleteAt least he died with his bowling shoes on.
ReplyDeleteA play called “The Private-Parts Monologues” would have folded on opening night
ReplyDeleteSo the proper anatomical term is rough talk? Biology class gonna be hard.
He forgot the safe word...
ReplyDeleteHow about a sequel to the Untouchables?
ReplyDelete"The Unmentionables"
~
"Jailhouse feminism", eh?
ReplyDelete"if violence is what it takes to keep an interested fellow in the room — that is a price that some desperate women today will pay."
ReplyDeleteUnlike in the glorious pre-jailhouse-feminist past, where things like this didn't happen and women didn't stay in abusive relationships because of lack of financial options, fear, and expectations to stand by your man no matter what.
"They bring a French Tickler, you bring a Steely Dan."
ReplyDeleteOr possibly behind.
ReplyDeleteThey literally can't process the idea that feminism is built on the concept of "consent" and as a result, they equate consensual BDSM with the garden variety "sexual assault" and "battered woman syndrome". Not that they believe in those things either because, usually, the bitch had it coming and she should just leave anyway.
ReplyDeleteYeah, where is the guilt? Where is the shame?
ReplyDeleteShorter Eberstadt: Only sluts use the word slut.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that they literally can't process the concept of consent.
ReplyDelete...
For some reason many women being left vulnerable and frustrated is no longer a problem when it's free market capitalism that's responsible.
ReplyDeleteThere are times when you see a comment entirely out of context in your Disqus feed, and you really have to stop to take it in for a moment...
ReplyDeleteIf you read enough of this current stuff--from gamergate to this loon, you get the sense that ever since Betty Friedan basically everything and everyone is feminism if it isn't self describing as a religious housewife/nun. Its like the entire female sex is supposed to have converted, en masse, from the egg and embryo, to this category "feminist" and therefore any and everything that happens to women in the modern world is the result of [spits ritually] feminism.
ReplyDeleteThe act of being female, like the act of being male, turns out to require a lot of shoring up, a lot of training, and lot of work to work out correctly. These people are like the families who are so terrified that their boy babies will become unmasculine and gay that they refuse to allow the color pink in the nursery, or forbid him to touch dolls, for fear that his fragile masculinity will come to an end.
Similarly, with the feminism cooties, if you don't affirmatively act/perform/imitate some kind of idealized 50's housewife and mother-woman a la 19 kids and counting you are solely responsible for all the ills that befall any woman anywhwere.
You'd think they'd be tired of recycling shit from 1793.
ReplyDeleteBut they denied the charge of rape, arguing that Sawyer's plebeian standards of "discretion and prudence"- why had she been out in the streets without an escort? Why had she failed to reject Bedlow's advances at the very outset?-were obviously looser than those observed in respectable society. And because a casual accusation of rape could put "the life of a citizen in the hands of a woman, to be disposed of almost at her will and her pleasure", its disposition was a matter of grave consequence for the (male) political community.*
This isn't about feminism, at least not to them. It's about the sacred ability of white men of means to put their dicks where they want, when they want. Always has been.
*Burroughs and Wallace, Gotham
Another way of looking at it is that they are strugglign towards a notion of structural inequality and social forces in which individual women are actually caught up in social structures and pressures that make "choice" kind of hollow. The woman in 50 shades of gray isn't a feminist icon --they are wrong about that--she's a pathetic, abused, easily dominated failure at life who consents to her own abuse and has no activities or dreams or goals beyond her sexual domination by an uninteresting billionaire. But they are, for once, also talking about social forces that push people, men and women, into suffering and being abused. Baby steps.
ReplyDelete...Dittoed be thy name...
ReplyDeleteSay what you want about recreational sex, at least its an ethos.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that, given these roles are all natural and what women inherently desire, they wouldn't require so much training and policing.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the alternative? Professional sex? Dutiful sex for procreation only?
ReplyDeleteShorter Eberstadt: I hate feminism, therefore it's responsible for everything else I hate.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly. Also there's some weird thing going on that I can't exactly reduce to its basic components--is 50 shades of Gray the result of unfettered free-market choice or the reduction of choice to this imaginary feminist dogma of pleasing men at all costs?
ReplyDeleteNot if you really get into it.
ReplyDeleteBeneath the swagger and snarl of jailhouse feminism...
ReplyDeleteGiven my love of alliteration and hyperbole I can't help but smile when I read the above. No this does not mean that I have a fucking clue as to the point she is failing to make.
...
LGM cross-pollination. Winning!
ReplyDeleteI don't see it that way, honestly, I think it's just their normal blue-nosed moralism pegged to a lame pseudo-kinky pop phenomenon of which they disapprove.
ReplyDeleteI went looking for that column the other year. Unless my google-fu is completely inadequate, I think you'll find that "Rod" Dreher has scrubbed it.
ReplyDeleteI know, I was just trying to expand my mind.
ReplyDeleteIs a "jailhouse feminist" anything like a "jailhouse lawyer"? Because jailhouse lawyers, you know, are pretty knowledgeable.
ReplyDeleteObligatory.
ReplyDelete"...if you can't find a partner, grab some media share."
ReplyDelete"Number 47 said to Number 3, you're a lighter shade of Christian Grey than me."
ReplyDeleteCase in point (from We Hunted the Mammoth):
ReplyDeleteMy guess why beauty standards are a little more demanding today than they were 100 years ago is because today women are ugly. They are overweight, they have bad hair, they lack social grace, and they think hideous products are fashionable by sole virtue of their popularity. Women and little girls know this instinctually and over-correct through their fantasies...
Perhaps little girls love Barbie and Ariel so much because they see how frumpy mommy and their teachers at school are.
...
Women just want to be beautiful and have a beautiful life. Barbie gives them the inspiration to achieve their dreams. Then feminism sweeps along and tells them to remain stagnant.
Sounds like someone blundered into watching Orange Is The New Black and felt a feeling they'd never felt before, so they told themselves "nononowrongbadstopit" and wrote something insipid about Miley Cyrus instead.
ReplyDeleteHer husband invented the 49% takers thing that got Romney in hot water last time the clownshow was in town.
ReplyDeleteBarbie sales are cratering. Per the 10Q, for the 1st 9 months of 2014, they were off 18% vs 1st 9 of 2013. ($684 million vs $832).
ReplyDeleteThe Vagina Monologues is tame to the point of being goofy, really.
ReplyDeleteThese people would be terrified of the sexual connotations of bananas.
Sounds like daddy is sick of going to parent/teacher conferences and the damn wife's making him do dishes again during the game, and, and, and,
ReplyDeleteSee, guys' bits don't do monologues, they're all about the two-way dialog, the to-and-fro of conversation.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.radioactive.fm/sites/default/files/CWMP%20FINAL%20web_0.jpg?1423313299
Every man or woman who peels a banana is looking for God.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I picked it.
ReplyDeleteI saw that sentence and wondered how poultry preparations became a shorthand for borderline-bondage risque costume choices. Is it a widespread social-conservative signifier?
ReplyDeleteMumble mumble spatchcocked mumble.
The original stage version still holds up better than the series with Steve Doocy.
ReplyDeleteIts a weird little rant. Actual women, living the lives they want to live (mothers and teachers) have let themselves go and don't spend money and time starving and grooming themselves. They are ugly. But "women and little girls" (some other kind of being than mothers and teachers) "know...instinctually" that this is wrong and"...just want to be beautiful and have a beautiful life." This "beautiful life" can be achieved with Barbie's "inspiration"--she sets a goal that they can achieve through sheer imitation. If it were that easy why do all those "mothers and teachers" refuse it? Or, having refused it, are we so sure they are really unhappy about it?
ReplyDeleteIn addition Barbie's goal is "to be beautiful and have a beautiful life" and no one can control that. I mean: you can spend as much money and time as you want beautifying yourself but if you can't study/work/earn the beautiful life you definitionally have to wait around for some male person to offer it to you. That's 50 Shades of Grey in a nutshell. The lifestyles of the brutal and weird and rich given in exchange for submission to brutality.
Borgnine winning an Oscar in that role is still surprising, sixty years later.
ReplyDelete"Of course this approach takes for granted the sexual revolution’s first commandment, which is that any such act ever committed by any woman is by definition beyond reproach."
ReplyDeleteThis kind of straw man argument just permeates Eberstadt's piece, and is the necessary structural element that holds it together. Without the unifying theme of "Those Awful Feminists And Their Potty Mouths", it's just a random collection of things, from Beyonce, to Rihanna, to Madonna, to Miley Cyrus, to Fifty Shades, for her to harrumph over. Admittedly, I'm a 68 year old guy who sometimes has trouble understanding the appeal of the above mentioned artists and their works, but I'll be damned if I'll blame "Feminism" or "Feminists" for it, because I'm old enough to know what the Feminist message was when it first came to prominence: namely, a need for women to find power and agency in a world which was actively acting to deny it. The irony is that Eberstadt probably benefits from it as much as any woman does today, and doesn't know it because she's bone ignorant, or won't acknowledge it because she's a fraudulent hack.
After all, sex sells; women
ReplyDeletetalking about sex sells; and even women talking about women talking
about sex sells, too.However, as Mary Eberstat demonstrates, women talking about women talking about women talking about sex is a total downer.
Just throwing it out there that maybe the mothers aren't living the beautiful life because they're freaking busy with the kid-raising and such?
ReplyDeleteBoth MRAs and Bible-thumpers want the same general concept for women- subjugation- but I'll give credit (along with a middle-finger) for the Bible-thumpers for at least making some sort of societal sense. Women make babies, women be mommies, being a mommy is the best thing ever, halting that is terrible. That worldview sucks, but it at least leads to, like, the continuation of humanity.
The above rant is basically "chicks aren't hot anymore, screw 'em. Had babies, got bellies. Gross. (armpit fart)" It's me-at-13 as a fully formed political worldview.
"Amanda Marcotte," "Jessica Valenti,"Oh, for God's sake. What's next, dredging up Gloria Steinem?
ReplyDeleteThis kind of straw man argument just permeates Eberstadt's piece the entire wingnut welfare oeuvre.
ReplyDeleteFTFY
All of which leads, finally, to a sad and monumental fact. Beneath the
ReplyDeleteswagger and snarl of modern conservatism is something pathetic: a search
for attention ... on any terms at
all.Psst, Mary, I'm a socialist; you can have that one for free.
I'll take Bone Ignorant Fraudulent Hack for $1,000, Alex.
ReplyDeleteA REAL socialist would make her share it with the other wingnuts.
ReplyDeleteI got out of the boat.
ReplyDeleteWHAT HORRIBLE THING AMANDA MARCOTTE DID: Say the Parents Television Council is a reactionary organization and mock it for freaking out about the '13 VMAs.
WHAT HORRIBLE THING JESSICA VALENTI DID: Note that feminists are angry about some issues.
Crazy ladies!
WHAT HORRIBLE THING JESSICA VALENTI DID::Wear a "tight" sweater to a meeting with Bill Clinton.
ReplyDeleteThe MRA/PUA worldview is basically the same: that of the toddler for whom the important thing is that everything in the world around them exists to serve the toddlers need. People who are too old, or too ugly, or too busy, to meet the most infantile of all needs, are horrifying and useless at the same time. At least the christianist world view is that everybody, men and women, should be serving a higher good and that appearances (though they pretty much consistently argue that women are responsible for male sexuality and happiness) are subordinate to function.
ReplyDelete"or"?
ReplyDeleteThis is a truism for nearly all conservative positions. From the notion that a woman can be forced to carry her rapist's baby to the idea that a worker can sign away all rights under a contract to the concept that filling the public commons with toxic chemicals should bear no cost to the polluter and offer no recourse for the public, "consent" is not even considered as an abstract.
ReplyDeleteTo a conservative, "consent" is what happens when the weaker party has been beaten into submission.
Ah, Boobgate, the first time I truly, truly realized that Ann Althouse never blogs sober.
ReplyDeleteOh, but bananas are proof of intelligent design, according to nitwits who have no idea what wild bananas look like.
ReplyDeleteThe Lord said that? Is it one of the Bed Attitudes?
ReplyDeleteEverybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse feminist...
ReplyDeleteCripes! Turns out I was briefly involved with the ex-girlfriend of Eberstadt's husband a few decades ago: I need to wash my willie.
ReplyDeleteYou guys all beat me to it. Great minds...
ReplyDeleteOh, so YOU'RE the one to blame for all this...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/sex-tips-from-an-end-time-pastor-demons-will-torture-married-couples-who-practice-woman-on-top/
ReplyDeleteWe had one of those 'Judgement Screens' in my hometown. The Starlite Drive-In. You had to crawl through half an acre of greenbriar to watch fuck films from a vantage of seventy or eighty yards from the screen
By the time I got to college, I was fully prepared to appreciate silent cinema and films with subtitles.
I have one of those late 50s/early 60s cookbooks put out by the Chiqita company. It has a picture of a grocer holding an enormous bunch of bananas, concave up, with a housewife looking on in admiration.
ReplyDeleteIf feminism created the social space that allowed twerking, slutwalking and watching movies like Fifty Shades to happen, then I say "good."
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of those things myself, but I do appreciate that women should have the right to participate in stuff like that without feeling ashamed. That kind of shame is used to oppress people, so I'm against it.
Let women be free!
तत् त्वम् असि
ReplyDeleteIt IS kinda nightmarish...
ReplyDeleteBy their lights, the woman in 50 Shades is most definitely a feminist icon.
ReplyDeleteI doubt they even think that much. I suspect the thought process is:
1. Pick up thing no one will admit to liking (even if they like it)
2. Say this is what basic decency leads to
3. See crowd nod in approval
Clearly you lack those ol' timey morals. If you had them, you would know that getting beaten is good, as is being forced to have sex against your will, being forced to bear children when you don't want them, and having no say at all in politics.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a bowling ball he's reaching for.
ReplyDeleteEvery feminist in the cell block was waging war on straight white cock.
ReplyDeleteRelated:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/F43j_Fbcfb0?list=PLAi1KTNPmouS6jt318KGRc6iim7D9Kd1A
Kinda makes you wonder about 30 days in the hole.
ReplyDeleteIf you are in the hole for more than four hours, consult a physician.
ReplyDeleteAnd not a lawyer?
ReplyDeleteI thought blessed are the meek? Isn't being on the bottom a good workout of the old meek bones?
ReplyDeleteWait, what if she's on top because I ordered her there? Then am I exercising headship?
Third base! /costello
you really have to stop to take it in for a moment
ReplyDeleteThat's what she said.
Why do I have to keep posting this:
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to vaginas, these people don't take no labia!
ReplyDeleteNumber forty-seven said to number three:
ReplyDelete"You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with your company,
come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me."
The original is kind gay to begin with unless it was a co-ed jail.
Oh, you just know she was the type to throw that around in high school.
ReplyDeletethe whole rhythm section was women studies gang.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just tame, it's passe. OTOH, they're still getting upset about Sex in the City.
ReplyDeleteWell, only sluts use the word slut to refer to themselves.
ReplyDeletePlenty of good Christian women use the term to describe other women.
http://abovethelaw.com/_old/sexy%20prosecutor%20public%20defender%20costumes.jpg
ReplyDeleteProbably because so many normal people have told social conservatives of both sexes to get stuffed.
ReplyDeleteI read a think piece on 50 Shades that interviewed a Domme about it. While she wasn't too keen on the ultimate message or the portrayal of her kink, she noted that it was one of the few books aimed to the mass market where the couple actually had conversations about sex and consent and limits. So maybe the transgressive thrill doesn't come from the kink so much as the portrayal of owning one's sexuality and talking about and negotiating limits. Which is probably something most of the book's fans don't really do in their own lives.
ReplyDeleteIs the writer unfamiliar with the whalebone corset that was in vogue 100 years ago and worn to achieve the beauty standard of an exaggeratedly feminine figure?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised J-Nords didn't suggest a better punchline might be for Hillary to shout, "So THAT'S how I got the crabs!"
ReplyDeleteYa know, I remember that, and I remember looking at the pictures of Valenti and thinking "Huh?!?! Althouse must be like a 13-year-old boy looking at the Victoria's Secret catalog in a vain search for public hair."
ReplyDeleteNo: Although she and I had been college chums some years earlier, her partner preceded me in the fluid exchange department. She was *way* above me in terms of class, and once she realized this she tactfully cast me off.
ReplyDeleteThrust and parry
ReplyDeleteElvis swiped it from the shipboard dance sequence in Moby Dick:
ReplyDelete"Colonel Tom told me,"Son, we've achieved a partial synthesis of race music and the general sexual creepiness of sister humping hill country throwbacks already. The future of popular music is in three chord progressions and androgyny." He threw that bigass book on my coffee table and said "Read it. And the next time we go into the studio, you and the Jordinaires gonna be wearin' dresses."
"I did what he told me. I couldn't never understand that damn book. The dresses I thought was to get me out of the army."
- In over my damn fool head: The secret biography of Elvis.
"Women just want to be beautiful and have a beautiful life. Barbie
ReplyDeletegives them the inspiration to achieve their dreams. Then feminism sweeps
along and tells them to remain stagnant."
Yeah, that must be it. Meanwhile, I once interviewed Mr. Rogers, who deplored Barbie dolls, because girls played with them as though Barbie were their friend, as opposed to practicing mothering skills--which you'd think "conservatives" would demand. Can't anybody here play this game right?
This isn't about feminism, at least not to them. It's about the sacred
ReplyDeleteability of white men of means to put their dicks where they want, when
they want.
and here I am an atheist, sans any sacred ability
What's the opposite of a Freudian slip? Platonic slip?
ReplyDeleteAre those Halloween costumes or a career day poster from Regents U?
ReplyDeleteWhen a woman says 'no' she means yes! /s
ReplyDeleteOr foot binding.
ReplyDeleteI can't see how the 19th century practice of filling a house with bairns helped women achieve any dreams either.
Our former neighbors used to boast about an ancestor who buried three wives with contraception-free rut, and was trying for a fourth in his eighties. He filled a whole North Carolina county with dumbasses, and there's even more on the way.
Married couples who masturbates and who perform immorality on their beds.
ReplyDeleteIs performing on other furnishings OK then? AFAF.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD9xK9smth4
ReplyDeleteYou want strong hinges on that Hepplewhite breakfront.
ReplyDeleteJ-Nords knew that couldn't happen, given the crabs were on Bill after he drowned. But I will ask him and the others if the following addendum doesn't make it a NR knee slapper:
ReplyDeleteHillary looked in shock at the FBI agent for a long moment, then suddenly guffawed, clapped her hands together and joyously exclaimed, "Well, it's not the first time Bill's given me crabs!"
Thanks for the suggestion. I really need for this joke to work as I feel my position here might be a little tenuous, especially since I forgot my place once and referred to Nancy Pelosi as a "lady." I had to pee in a cup for a week after they took away my bathroom key as punishment, and it turns out Jonah is the only one here at the office with a medical dispensation allowing him to wear an adult sanitary product.
Wish me luck.
"Like butch dykes in those prison movies!"
ReplyDeleteI went to high school with a guy named Butch Dykes.
I'm firing in a heavenly direction, nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteYou will note that the banana is formed to perfectly fit the human hand.
ReplyDeleteCouples who practice the woman on top
ReplyDeleteWe can't stop until we learn to do it *properly*.
I've heard that talking with Fred could be a humbling experience. I want to believe he was all people say he was.
ReplyDeleteWe really need to have a talk around here about getting "phrasing" into the mix ;)
ReplyDeleteMy name's not Art.
ReplyDelete"She was *way* above me in terms of class, and once she realized this she tactfully cast me off."
ReplyDeleteBitch!
Of course this approach takes for granted the sexual revolution’s first commandment
ReplyDeleteSurely with the awesome power of the liberal-fascist propaganda machine, we can get the sexual revolution's ten commandments posted in courthouses across the land.
"Romance tips from and end-time pastor." Hehehehehe. "End-time." Hehehehehehehe.
ReplyDeleteThen am I exercising headship?Oh, yeah.
ReplyDeleteTo the contrary, Aimai: I think the KLo contingent at the National Review are upset that nuns these days are getting way too uppity (e.g. in support of the ACA).
ReplyDeleteNot at all. We're still chums, but we remain socio-economically at different strata. I'm pretty sure that, unlike Eberstadt, she's a registered Democrat.
ReplyDeleteYou don't understand how the free market works, but that's okay, you're not expected to, you're a woman. The free market is the place where manly men go out to compete for the bacon to bring home for their wife-mothers to prepare for the kids. Women are not agents in the market, families are, and it's the man's job as the head of the family to pick out suitable reading material for everyone, while the woman has her choice of domestic appliances.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah, my witness is rising.
ReplyDeleteA play called “The Private-Parts Monologues” would have folded on opening night
ReplyDeleteI still don't get why Howard Stern has to be dragged into this.
Say what?
ReplyDeleteSo those men who enjoy their wife coming on top of them in the matrimonial bed, the lord says they are not coming to heaven at all...
ReplyDeleteJeez. All this talk about coming.
Oh my heavens. Mary Woronov! I love her so much.
ReplyDeleteIt's David Lynch-esque.
ReplyDeleteMy thought exactly when I read "jailhouse feminism." Watched ten minutes of it and discovered her panties were in a wad.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I know this is egregious nutpicking, but the comment from AlFromBayShore to Eberstadt's post defies Poe's law because it's simply too quintessentially authentic to ever be mistaken for parody:
ReplyDeleteAnd it all becomes clear to me. Feminism affected women in the same way that the Civil Rights movement affected Black people. In the wake of both movements, sluts and "n-words" went mainstream, irresponsible behaviors became the norm and the consequences of such were blamed on sexism and racism. Feminism devolved into women trying to be like men and Civil Rights, through its hallmark strategy of integration, was an attempt by a self loathing Black middle class to be white.
Feminism and Civil Rights have had disastrous effects on Black people and women. The Black community is in a shambles because of the drainage of Black talent and capital via integration, and bitter old feminists are dying lonely in filthy and disheveled homes full of cats (this is merely a microcosm of the ghetto). Somewhere in time these two movements converged and produced the violent scourge of young Black males from single parent homes. Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown immediately come to mind.
That's, um, an extraordinary example of... uh, shit, intellectual aberration, I guess.
ReplyDeleteDid George R.R. Martin meet this guy?
ReplyDeleteHe was exactly the same in person as on the screen, although he spoke to me as if I were an adult and not a child. But yes, totally authentic.
ReplyDeleteJailhouse feminism.
ReplyDeleteYeah, when I imagine a hardened, constantly angry woman on the verge of violence, Miley Cyrus is exactly who comes to mind.
The fact that there’s no cottage industry related to “stud-shaming,” or even such a word, says it all.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly says something, but rather different from what you've been pounding on the keys about.
Admittedly, I'm a 68 year old guy who sometimes has trouble understanding the appeal of the above mentioned artists and their works,
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, you're also probably self-reflective enough to realize that the fact that you don't like many of these artists isn't proof that they have anything else in common.
A LOT of the pieces on the National Review that attempt to criticise pop culture just end up feeling like miscellaneous lists of things the author doesn't particularly like.
Maybe, maybe it would've made some sense to posit the existence of an angry, confrontational "jailhouse feminsim" 20 years ago, when Alanis Morissette's "You oughta know" and Merideth Brooks' "Bitch" were big hits, but that was twenty fucking years ago.
I'm trying to think of a pop star who would write something as angry and genuinely off-putting a "You Oughta Know" and it sure as fuck isn't Miley Cyrus. Even women who write popular but weird angry songs, Nicki Minaj say, are doing something pretty different than the alt rock women of the mid 90s were.
If her point is just that female artists often dress sexy and/or use swear words, well, all I can say is welcome to the last half-century.
Eberhardt's column is pretty much wall to wall Miley at the VMAs, Lena Dunham, 50 Shades, plus a little on blogger pushback for or against, and some pro forma stuff on speech codes. It's a little hard to take her opinions on feminism seriously when feminists seem to be only something she sees on TV.
ReplyDeletethrows the word "slut" around like he's shilling for a cut-rate sex holiday travel agency doubling as an MRA front line command post.
ReplyDeleteIf it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a smug blowhard from Missouri, you can guess what it is.
Biology class gonna be hard.
ReplyDeleteSo very hard. Just please don't call me up to the blackboard.
Why does her shadow have a goiter?
ReplyDeleteWoronov was Calamity Jane in Death Race 2000. That's gotta count as a point in her favor.
ReplyDeleteWomen are not agents in the market, families are, and it's the man's job as the head of the family to pick out suitable reading material for everyone, while the woman has her choice of domestic appliances.
ReplyDeleteGiven these circumstances, I think many will favor an appliance that vibrates.
Being a man and preferring to have a few rights here and there, I theoretically should support the men's rights movement. Then comes something like this We Hunted the Mammoth bullshit and I just can't. "No fat chicks" and "You're ugly" aren't fundamental male rights. They're not rights at all. They're opinions, and obnoxious opinions at that.
ReplyDelete"He made the ladies beg... for the sweet release of death."
ReplyDeleteDoesn't really seem like a point of pride to me.
Dear God I hope AlFromBayShore is a speechwriter for one of the '16 Republican hopefuls!
ReplyDeletea word that no halfway-civilized person would use anyway.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Romans never used words like slut. Sure, cunt, fuck, mouth-fuck, cock-suck, cock, circumcised cock, dickhead, [lesbian-]clit, ass, bugger, shit, and faggot, but not slut.
Yet somehow Penis Military became a well-remunerated champion of the Tea Party.
ReplyDeleteFuck me days, stay off the brown acid, AlFromBayShore
ReplyDeleteI would call this comment Ishmael
ReplyDeletethere’s no cottage industry related to “stud-shaming,”
ReplyDeleteHasn't she ever watched a TV sitcom?
It's just misplaced lust.
ReplyDeleteIt's important to note that Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were both victims of violent.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the drainage of Black talent and capital, integration was not the cause.
Isn't it about time for the NR to drag Andrea Dworkin's poor mistreated corpse back into the sunlight in order to lend an academic gloss to their trenchant criticism of Feminism Today?
ReplyDeletePS, that's not academic gloss, it's putrescent liquefaction.
from the egg and embryo
ReplyDeleteAhem. "from the preborn"
Surely you don't think that washer/dryer manufacturers couldn't have made their products vibration free years ago had they wanted to?
ReplyDeleteThe men may pay, but the marketers know who really makes the buying decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OKtuaWkmA0
ReplyDeleteI'll be darned--it doesn't feel anything like a bag of sand.
ReplyDeleteJust you wait--one of these days Mary Eberstadt will come up with a companion pieces arguing that men aren't real men anymore, evidence being mostly wall to wall sitcoms--that she hasn't viewed, but that she read about somewhere in NR or heard about on Fox News. Remember, you don't need to have actually seen a TV show or movie to criticize it if you're a conservative.
ReplyDelete... bitter old feminists are dying lonely in filthy and disheveled homes full of cats...
ReplyDeleteWishful thinking at its finest.
A man talking to a woman about what she wants? That's some prime material for arousal, even with the crappy writing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this?
ReplyDeleteCan't anyone recognize Hitchcock's cameos anymore?
ReplyDeleteUpvoted for "spatchcocked".
ReplyDeleteOK, I think I see the problem here. After all these decades, we still don't have ENOUGH feminism.
ReplyDeleteI knew the King was proto-glitter. All that eyeshade, all the pink outfits? Sheee-it, bubba.
ReplyDeleteRock and Roll High School, y'all.
ReplyDeleteNo one commented on the NRO design? Or am I just coming really late to that particular party? I'm quite amused by the pre-rolled tweet function, for people who can't put together their own <160-character take on the posts.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to buy this comment a vodka martini ;)
ReplyDeletea word that no halfway-civilized person would use anyway.
ReplyDeleteHi, Rusty!
The promiscuous slinging of “slut” is only the beginning of the
ReplyDeleteobscenity- and profanity-saturated woman-talk these days, from otherwise
obscurantist academic feminism on down to popular magazines and blogs.
And talk-radio gasbags, too. Hi, Rusty!
It's what happens when you tear the shrinkwrap, which is what happens just before she says "Dear, I think my water just broke".
ReplyDeleteAlso, Saran-Wrapped?
ReplyDeleteStills from Well-Hung Jury, perhaps? Not that I ever saw it...
ReplyDeleteThat is fucking hilarious. Maybe I really should get out of the boat once in a while......nah.
ReplyDelete"Fumble-minded Inarticulacy". Howzat?
ReplyDeleteButter face!
ReplyDeleteTruly, Miley Cyrus and Lena Dunham are the face of The Left. Well, maybe not the face exactly...
ReplyDeleteProbably this has been said already, but just in case... this animadversion of ladies talking rough is remarkably subculturo-centric. Has Ms. Eberstadt never seen any movies dealing with, say, urban Ireland, where the sexes enjoy total obscenities/profanities parity with never a hair turned by anyone? Going offshore isn't required; a friend of mine who was brought up 3rd generation New York Italian in suburban Long Island told me she was in high school before she realized that everybody's grandmother didn't say "fuck" every third sentence.
ReplyDelete