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If you wear this bathing suit, no one will know you have a vagina.
Created by Lydia of Purple, Christian seamstress and raving lunatic.
No, I’m not sure what the significance of the big blue oval is either. Maybe this is a planning shot for the sniper who’s going to kneecap her.
Posted by Violet under Godbags on June 29, 2006, 5:48 am EST
Kyso Kisaen over at punkassblog has joined in with a look back at one her favorite articles from the Modest and Submissive Christian Lady® genre: What did you talk about at the tea party, dear? Nothing, just gardening.
Those of you who are medievalists, or even those of you who aren’t, know that the walled garden and the thorn-guarded rose have long been metaphors for a woman’s vagina. As Kyso says:
OMGWTF! I was the secret garden the whole time! I get it now! By GARDEN, Jennie meant VAGINA! Oooooohhhhhhh! That was pretty clever, I think. Now, I can “prune the trees to perfection” and “sweep the walks” if you know what I mean (and I know you do!) but I’m not sure I can fit a bubbling brook and climbing roses into my vagina, and it doesn’t really have a wall around it. So how can I tease men passing by if they can’t hear the brook or see a wall?
Silly Kyso! We aren’t supposed to tease men! We’re supposed to keep our special secret gardens hidden at all times. That’s why when we go swimming we have to wear voluminous head-to-toe bathing costumes made out of gingham. Jennie says that to wear immodest clothing is practically an invitation for strange men to “punch holes” in our garden wall. And we don’t want that! No, we must wait for that one special Gardener who will insert his great big hard key and…ah….ahh…ahhh…. I’m sorry, I think I need to go take a little break.
Posted by Violet under Godbags on June 28, 2006, 9:25 pm EST
Especially if they can be anonymous on the internets.
In the wake of the Blowjob Shitstorm, Bitch Ph.D. decided to create an explicitly non-judgmental space for people to talk about their sexual preferences. Unlike Twisty, Dr. B. is not asking people to blame the patriarchy, and the better-feminist-than-thou nonsense of the late shitstorm is expressly discouraged. The idea is just to let people talk honestly about what they like and dislike. There’s a thread for straight women (which also serves as an introduction to the whole discussion), a thread for lesbians, and a thread for straight men. (Gay men are SOL.) No men are allowed to post in the women’s threads and vice versa.
It’s fascinating stuff. I read the guys’ thread all the way through — naturally, since I’m a straight woman and I’m always curious about how men really feel. I’ve skimmed most of the comments in the straight woman thread and will check in on the lesbians next.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 28, 2006, 3:00 am EST
Echidne is continuing her dumpster-dive through the Christian lady blogs, and her latest gem is a thread where some nice Christian ladies are happily agreeing that women’s suffrage should be revoked. Here’s a sample:
If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “pool.” I’d like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.
About woman’s suffrage…I think it’s a matter of covenantal thinking and headship. If women are biblically to be under the headship of husbands and fathers, then those men are to represent the household when it comes to voting.
I completely agree with both removing women’s suffrage and coupling voting rights with property ownership. I am always hesitant to admit my views on the suffrage movement, but I strongly feel that our nation made a grievous error when we allowed women many of the same “rights” as men. First off, I think that voting should be a family affair with the wife putting in her input, but the man ultimately deciding on which candidate he votes for. I think women are too emotional and often vote for the “bleeding heart liberal” cause because it feels right to them.
…I don’t believe women under the headship of a father/husband have any business voting. (I do because my husband commands me too.)
Yowza.
Okay, aside from all the issues of religious upbringing, cultural reinforcement, and so forth, does anybody else get the feeling that there’s some kind of weirdo repressed fetishization going on here of dominance/submission? I mean, these ladies just looooove to talk about obeying and submitting and “headship” (which term is so fucking squidgy I can hardly stand it). Maybe they just need to find a BDSM club and get it out of their systems, you know what I’m saying? Then they could deal with their desires honestly, instead of, say, trying to take over the entire goddamn country just so they can be bottoms.
Update: Whoops! Better add this sober clarification before I’m misunderstood. It’s not the BDSM or liking for submissive sex that’s fucked up; it’s the repression, the psychological displacement masquerading as über-piety, and you know, the fact that they don’t think women should be allowed to vote.
Posted by Violet under Godbags on June 27, 2006, 8:35 pm EST
You probably know Burrow of Angry for a Reason (aka Lost Clown), but if you’ve forgotten, here’s a reminder: she’s that wonderful feminist blogger who hosted the 11th Carnival of Feminists back in March. Burrow did a fantastic job of choosing and presenting a broad selection of posts, and thanks to her, several new feminist voices in the blogosphere connected with audiences for the first time.
Now Burrow’s in a jam. Her laptop was stolen, and as a graduate student on a limited income, she simply doesn’t have the money to replace it. A blogger without a computer, I don’t need to tell you, is like a photographer without a camera. So let’s take this opportunity to repay Burrow’s contribution to the feminist blogosphere by chipping in to help her get another laptop.
Burrow has set up an Amazon Honor System account to accept donations to her laptop-replacement fund. It’s very easy — you just use your credit card to contribute whatever amount you like, from $1.00 on up. Every little bit helps! And any excess contributions will go to a local domestic violence/sexual assault hotline in Burrow’s area. (If for any reason her blog is down when you read this, here’s the link to go directly to the Amazon page to make a contribution: Amazon Honor System contribution page for Angry for a Reason (Lost Clown).)
Burrow’s also selling her artwork, mostly limited edition lithographs, so if you’d like to add to your art collection and support feminist blogging at the same time, now’s your chance.
It’s never easy to ask for help, and I’m sure Burrow feels a little abashed about her situation. Let’s show her our support!
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 26, 2006, 3:01 am EST
How not to do sociology.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues on June 24, 2006, 7:01 am EST
The wingnuts have got themselves in a tizzy about some old chemical shells that were found in Iraq back in 2004. These were just degraded shells which the DOD itself says were from Saddam’s pre-1991 armament. Yet the magic of wingnuttery has suddenly transformed these relics into the long-lost Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Maha correctly divines that the real import of this story is that we — and by “we” I mean “we who have fully functioning cerebral cortices” — need to ask ourselves again, “just how stupid are these people”?
I took all this in, and then made some coffee, and then sat down to consider the burning question of our time — how stupid are Bush supporters, really? This goes way beyond your average left the keys in the car stupid, which plagues the best of us from time to time. There’s something more primordial going on here. In some cases, IMO, we’re looking at simple turtle crossing an interstate stupid. You can’t really blame them for it. In other cases we may be dealing with more exotic forms of cognitive handicaps, however, such as I’m getting messages from Mars stupid, or the cookbook said to separate the yolk from the white so I boiled the egg first stupid.
Actually the wingnuts remind me a little of my brother’s dog Maggie, who can be repeatedly tricked into thinking that an old yellow tennis ball is in fact a fearsome monster. Now Maggie is a sweet, sweet dog — much nicer than any wingnut you could ever meet — and I shudder to make this comparison. And really it’s not fair, because in most respects I think Maggie is probably smarter than your average wingnut. But she’s a sucker for the tennis ball trick.
See, my brother has this old tennis ball that’s split open on one side. As long as it’s lying on the floor, Maggie is undisturbed by it. It’s just a tennis ball. But all my brother has to do is pick up the ball and squeeze it so the split looks like a mouth opening and closing, and she goes apeshit. ohmygodohmyGOD! bark bark bark bark BARK! BARK! Put the ball back on the floor, she’s fine. Pick it up again and squeeze its “mouth,” she goes apeshit. Every goddamn time.
This has been going on for several years.
You would think that an otherwise intelligent dog would eventually deduce that the tennis ball is not a threat. You’d think that at some point — say, after 200 rounds or so — enlightenment would dawn, and Maggie would grasp the central truth that if it’s just a nasty old tennis ball when it’s lying on the floor, then it’s still just a nasty old tennis ball when it’s in my brother’s hand. Yet she cannot seem to make this cognitive leap. Again and again, she is deceived into yelping madly at the monster that has suddenly materialized before her.
If Maggie had a blog — and what a charming thought that is: dogs with blogs! — she’d probably post about the Weapon of Yellow Fuzziness. She’d advise other dogs that the WYF can appear at any time, without warning, but especially when one’s human happens to be sitting on the sofa with an old yellow tennis ball nearby. Some dogs, border collies perhaps, might wonder aloud if there could be a connection between the old yellow tennis ball and the WYF, perhaps even a question of mistaken identity…but Maggie would bark them down. No, no, no! she would cry. The WYF is real! I’ve seen it over 200 times now!
Posted by Violet under Wingnut Watch, Recommended on June 23, 2006, 7:57 am EST
The feminist blogosphere has been roiling for days now. Sides have been drawn, gauntlets have been thrown. Sisterhood has been trampled in the rush to judgment on this most compelling of questions: is poutine some disgusting shit or what?
I posit that it is. I’ve never eaten poutine, of course, but I’m not going to let that stand in the way of my analysis.
Look at the photograph above. The french fries look appealing, yes, but what’s with the gravy? What’s with the horrid little clumps of cottage cheese? And yes, I realize that technically that isn’t “cottage cheese” but some other form of slimy white cheese curd, but who are we kidding here? It’s slimy, it’s a cheese curd, end of story.
Do any of you really imagine that, absent the patriarchy, people would spontaneously come up with the idea of combining boiling beef fat, slimy cheese curds, and potatoes? And then slurping this concoction out of a styrofoam cup while squealing, “Ooh, la la! C’est magnifique!” ?
I think not.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 22, 2006, 9:39 pm EST
Sunrise at Stonehenge this morning.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 21, 2006, 8:51 am EST
Back on the Father Hugo thread, Steve asked:
So here is my question. And I admit it is asked with some sarcasm: Who are the women that guys like Glenn Sacks are hanging with? Or the women whose behavior and privilege and advantages have been so oppressive to him?
Damn, I’d like to meet some of them, because — to date — all I see and confront is almost limitless male privilege, an ongoing get out of jail free card that never expires and that to this point continues to bestow the benefits of patriarchy on me even when I’m not the least bit interested.
Steve’s question popped into my mind when I was over at Amanda’s this morning reading her roundup of sexist dating advice. Sites like AskMen.com are keeping the stereotypes alive and well, depicting women as shallow, grasping harpies who use their evil sexual wiles to take advantage of men. Aw, poor men!
Check this out (Amanda put the re-gendered version up, but this is the original from AskMen.com):
Women aren’t content just to be happy. Their brains are wired differently than ours — they crave conflict, drama and instability. They like to start fights over nothing. Because they need and want to be constantly reassured, they thrive on insecurity. They are illogical and emotion-driven creatures. This is why they test men by constructing damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t traps to put men’s commitment, loyalty and motives on trial.
Most of these traps come packaged as innocent questions or offhand remarks. Innocent? Dream on. In fact, they’re designed to make a man fail, and woe to you if you do because the punishment for failure is merciless. Tender trapping may be a ridiculous and childish game that women force men to play, but there’s no way you can avoid it, so the trick is to sidestep her booby traps. Ultimately, this means learning how to effectively skirt around the truth (a.k.a “lie”), because when a woman asks you these questions, she isn’t really looking for an honest answer. She wants you to lie — and when you do, you’ll shut her up for a while and maybe even earn yourself some premium nookie.
So here are a few of the most common questions women use to trap men, along with some stupid responses men give (the truth) and the smart responses they should provide (lies).
“What are you thinking?”
A classic. Women are like little children — they believe that the sun and universe revolve around them. So when a woman asks this question, what she really means is, “Are you thinking about me right now?” Her female psychology drives her to imagine that she dominates your thoughts 24/7. Nevermind that she’s not thinking about you; what’s on her mind is buying the 147th pair of shoes she doesn’t need.
“Do you love me?”
What she’s really asking is, “Is this relationship going to end up in marriage or am I just wasting my time hanging out with you?” Never forget that women look at dating and marriage as businesses, and if she’s not going to realize a future profit, then she will have no further use for you.
And on and on it goes.
AskMen.com claims to be the largest men’s lifestyle website in the world, with 6 million readers a month and a “34.58% market share of all surfers interested in men’s lifestyle content.”
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues on June 21, 2006, 6:11 am EST
I think I need to start a flamewar with somebody. But who? Any suggestions?
Posted by Violet under Reclusive Leftist, Various and Sundry on June 20, 2006, 5:48 pm EST
A lot of the men who are drawn to the FRA/MRA movement are probably just garden-variety assholes who are happy to blame feminism for their problems. But then there are the actual monsters: rapists, child-abusers, and wife-beaters who find the FRA/MRA rhetoric a convenient cover for their crimes.
The rapists are aided by a number of MRA spokesmen who claim that most rape allegations are false. Rape hardly ever happens, they say; it’s just a lie told by conniving bitches out to destroy dewy-eyed innocent men who would never hurt a fly. The child-abusers and wife-beaters have Fathers’ Rights Activists who claim that most child abuse and domestic violence claims are false. Fathers don’t really sexually abuse their kids, much less hit their wives, they say; that’s just a bunch of lies told by vindictive and/or delusional divorced mothers.
One FRA particularly devoted to the latter form of propaganda is Dean Tong, who runs a website called the Abuse-Excuse. It’s heavy on speculation as to precisely which form of mental illness could possibly be motivating all those divorced women to make such outrageously false claims about their ex-husbands. But alas for Tong, it turns out that one of the “wrongly-accused” dads he’s been advising is Darren Mack, who stabbed his ex-wife to death and shot the judge in the case. Whoops! Apparently Darren didn’t get the memo about how all accused fathers are really innocent non-violent types who just want a chance to hug their kids.
You’d think Tong would be embarrassed, but he’s obviously decided to bluff it out. Here’s what he told CNN:
Well, she had made allegations of domestic violence, that he had hit her. I had him tested by one of my psychologists, and the results of those findings and conclusions were that he had no propensity to be the monster that she was pinging him to be. I met the man last July in a Las Vegas hotel. We had breakfast together, and he certainly didn’t appear to me to be a risk to his child or his wife. So I mean, this is totally beyond surreal for me.
Yeah, who would have thought? Because of course Charla Mack couldn’t have been telling the truth — she’s a woman, women lie, women who are getting divorced lie even more, and women getting divorced who have children lie so much that if you gave them a polygraph test the machine would explode. Right? And on top of that Tong’s cadre of top-flight psychologists (who clearly got their degrees from the very best mail-order diploma mills) said Darren was fine, and during breakfast he didn’t say jack about stabbing anybody to death, so who could have seen it coming?
I would love to be able to report that the CNN interviewer smacked Tong upside the head and screamed, “HE FUCKING STABBED HIS WIFE TO DEATH AND TRIED TO KILL THE FUCKING JUDGE, YOU STUPID ASSWIPE! DOESN’T THAT SUGGEST TO YOU THAT JUST MAYBE YOUR SO-CALLED PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS ARE PERHAPS A TEENSY WEENSY BIT INACCURATE? GIVEN THAT ANY THOUGHT, PINHEAD?”
But of course no such thing happened. Instead they went on to talk about what Charla and the judge did to piss Darren off so much. (Hint: Darren just wanted to be able to hug his daughter!)
Thanks to Trish Wilson, who connected the dots on the Tong-Mack business and has blogged about it thoroughly. Here’s Trish’s original post, with more from Red State Feminist and Amanda.
Darren Mack is the guy whose violence was being defended on the MRA/FRA message boards, as discussed in this post.
Posted by Violet under MRAs/FRAs on June 19, 2006, 6:27 pm EST
Which is really nice, if you’re into that godbag thing.
Those wild and crazy homo-ordaining Episcopalians have broken yet another barrier by electing a woman to head up the entire U.S. church. The conservatives are muttering darkly about schism. Well, they’ve been muttering darkly about it, but the darkness of the muttering is now approaching pitch-black.
You can see their point, since Jesus clearly said that if you want to spread his word, the single most important thing is to have a penis that only becomes erect in response to females. A penis that wants to party with other penises is not a desirable substitute, though as long as you don’t give in to your penis’s proclivities you’ll probably be okay. But of course if you don’t have a penis at all then you’re right out of luck. You can help out the penis-bearers by sweeping up the church and bringing cupcakes for the bake sale, that sort of thing, but that’s it.
The new female bishop is married, so perhaps she can use her husband’s penis as a proxy. He could come along to all the meetings and just sit next to her, with his penis. The church could even give him a special title as the Right Reverend Proxy Penis-Bearer or something. That ought to square things with the conservatives.
Posted by Violet under Godbags on June 19, 2006, 12:24 am EST
Happy Fathers’ Day and all that — though I have to be honest that the main father I’m worried about today is the sparrow and his mate* who are building a nest in the rose planter on the deck. At least I think they’re sparrows.
The rose planter is not a good place, and when I saw the beginnings of the nest yesterday I decided to clear it out. I felt bad about it, since the birds had already worked hard, but I thought better to nip it in the bud now before it’s too far gone and while they still have time to find another place. (I’m surrounded by hundreds of acres of woods, so it’s not like my yard is some kind of sanctuary.)
As I scooped out the nest material I yelled out to the birds that the rose planter was not a good place for their babies, and that they needed to find somewhere else. I placed the moss and stuff on the ground and said, “Look, here’s your stuff! Now carry it somewhere else.” Then I crowded some extra plants into the rose planter to discourage them from trying again.
A lot of good that did.
When I got up today, lo and behold they’d been at it again in the rose planter, and now the nest is well-developed. I’m sure the mother really needs to lay her eggs now, so I’ve decided to let it be. I rearranged the extra plants I’d put in there yesterday (the birds had worked around them by building the nest rather precariously on the edge of the planter) and settled the nest a little more securely. Now I’m waiting to see if they come back.
If they do, then I’m thinking perhaps I can put some wire fence around the planter to keep the critters away — critters who might like to gobble up some bird eggs. And I guess I’ll just forego tending the rose for the summer and hope it survives.
Bird nests and baby birds absolutely wrack my nerves. I can’t be detached about it: I just worry endlessly about them. Every time a bird has built a nest close to my house like that it’s been a weeks-long vigil of anxiety for me.
*Never say this blog doesn’t occasionally provide amusing grammatical errors for the delectation of my readers.
Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on June 18, 2006, 5:36 pm EST
