On good days, when I’m not feeling too depressed, I dash off the occasional post that attempts to deliver the Fuck-You-Patriarchy message (or Fuck-You-World message) in a quirky, even humorous kind of way. Then I read things like this and the possibility of humor or quirkiness or really anything besides a loaded shotgun seems unthinkable. Forever.

Whaddya say, gals? Shotguns? Shall we just load up and start blasting the motherfuckers? I mean really: let’s just kill them and then we can have the planet.

Posted by Violet under Rape on May 26, 2007, 7:26 pm EST

14 Comments »

Our new destination.

Dear Friends:

I know you’ve all been looking forward to joining me on our much-anticipated cryogenic voyage to Gliese 581C, but there’s been a change in plans. I’ve decided to follow Congress’s lead and shift our colonization efforts to a different target: Iraq.

Like Gliese 581c, Iraq is also very hot and not quite fit for human life. We’ll need to undertake massive terraforming, probably even the generation of a new atmosphere, in order to render it suitable for human habitation. But it’s a lot closer!

We’re still looking at a long time frame — thousands and thousands of years — but at least we won’t have to fool with those weird sleep-capsule things that have always freaked me out ever since I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was 10.

Of course we still get to re-name the colonized planet country as we like; I think Huge Fucking Oil Deposit would be good. Any other suggestions?

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on May 23, 2007, 3:24 pm EST

6 Comments »

I am so out of it this spring (for various undisclosed reclusive reasons) that all kinds of stuff happens without my hearing about it. Are we at war with anybody new? Have any more European countries gone fascist? What’s the score on the celebrity death/African adoption/drug rehab front? For all I know a giant asteroid has hit the Earth and there’s nuclear winter going on outside.

Which is why I’ve just now discovered that Heart has put up the First-ever Carnival of Radical Feminists. I actually remember this being bruited about a few months ago, maybe over at Laurelin’s, and thinking at the time, “Cool!” But then I had to get back to my punishing schedule of sitting on the sofa and staring into space, and I forgot.

Fortunately Heart is not the kind of feminist who spends hours sitting on the sofa and staring into space. No, Heart’s the kind of feminist who spends hours writing serious posts and pulling together outstanding material from other serious, non-into-space-gazing feminists, with the result being a Carnival that is chock full of radfem goodness. And god knows this old world needs as much radical feminism as it can get.

As Heart says, after listing some of the major feminist accomplishments of the past 40 years:

By and large, it is radical feminism and radical feminists which are and were responsible for all of these many gains for women. When someone asks –- usually adversarially and usually as part of some ongoing campaign to discredit radical feminists –- what radical feminists actually do besides theorize, I can only marvel at the success male heterosupremacy has had in some quarters in managing to conceal or make invisible this revolution which radical feminists really have made in our time, a revolution which has benefited all women in ways which are too numerous to even begin to list and which is ongoing, despite massive, concerted, ongoing attempts to turn the clock back to the days when women were the property of men. I know, too, that it must be difficult for young people to imagine days I remember so well, when as women we lived without the benefit of anything on the list above.

Radical feminism is and has always been the engine that drives feminist advancement. Because to be a radical feminist is to radically question the status quo, to go to the root of things, to see what kind of nasty patriarchal worms are squirming under those rocks. I just wish a giant Radical Feminist asteroid would come along and smush those worms. Smush! Smush!

In the meantime, though, we have radical feminism itself, which, while not as spectacular as a giant asteroid, is, in its own strange way, almost as powerful. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, then by all means go over to Heart’s and start reading. Actually, go over to Heart’s even if you do know what I’m talking about. She’s got the good stuff.

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on May 22, 2007, 4:15 am EST

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A month after the Forces of Goodness in the world succeeded in getting Don Imus fired for racism and sexism, Garrison Keillor has decided to use his Salon column to defend Imus and the other shock jocks:

They’re loud and vulgar, and so what? There’s an audience for that. Plenty of young men feel so squashed by life, they are thrilled to hear other men rasping and hollering about wimmen and the gummint and the danged liberals, and what harm does it do me if the Honk does his act for the poor schlumps stuck in rush hour? No harm at all. The Honk is exercising freedom, bless his heart, just like the snake handler at the carnival or the man who eats flies. If you don’t like it, don’t look.

Emphasis mine: what harm does it do me Keillor writes. Why, none at all, Garrison; none at all. No skin off your nose. It’s those of us who aren’t White Men — you know, us hos and nappy-heads and what have you — who’ve got the problem. Some of us are a little tired of living in a culture where women are routinely denigrated and ridiculed.

“If you don’t like it, don’t look,” Keillor offers helpfully. Hmm. How does that work for those of us who aren’t White Men?

If you get called a nappy-headed ho, don’t look!

If you can’t get a job ’cause you’re a black woman, don’t look!

If you make 76% of what a man makes, don’t look!

If you get raped, don’t look!

See, the central problem for Keillor and other oblivious White Men is that they don’t see, or don’t wish to see, that there is still any cultural bias whatsoever against women or non-whites. In their imagination, the world is a level playing field, a pure meritocracy where no one has an advantage, least of all White Men like themselves. And since there’s no actual, effective racism or sexism at work in this imaginary world, people like Don Imus are just anomalous cranks. Hey, what does it matter if some loser on the radio insults black women? It’s not like he’s reinforcing some kind of harmful prejudice or anything. If you don’t like it, don’t look.

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on May 16, 2007, 10:53 am EST

13 Comments »

In Salon this morning there is a bizarre non-eulogy to Jerry Falwell that is an exercise in pure wishful thinking. “Conservative Christianity has been trying to recover from Falwell for the past two decades,” Alan Wolfe writes, presumably in between bong hits. “With the maturation of American evangelicalism has come an interest in social justice, environmentalism and peace. The people who represent evangelical Protestantism’s future want little or nothing to do with injustice, pollution and war.”

That would be lovely if it were true, but it’s not. Conservative evangelical Christians in America are for the most part perfect clones of Falwell; they are the army of hate that he created. They are the people who voted for Bush, the people who watch Fox News, the people who glorify war and laugh at torture. They are the people who want to put women back in the kitchen and gays back in the closet and a giant styrofoam replica of the Ten Commandments on every courthouse lawn. Anti-equality, anti-religious freedom, anti-peace, anti-knowledge; pro-war, pro-torture, pro-intolerance, pro-hatred, pro-stupidity. Like this:

“The Equal Rights Amendment can never do for women what needs to be done for them. Women need to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and be under His Lordship. They need a man who knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and they need to be a part of a home where their husband is a godly leader and where there is a Christian family.”
-Jerry Falwell

“I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They’ve blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That’s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they’re mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They’re sexist. They hate men - that’s their problem.”
-Jerry Falwell

“It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”
-Jerry Falwell

[re: 9/11 attacks] “…throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say “you helped this happen.””
-Jerry Falwell

“[homosexuals are] brute beasts…part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”
-Jerry Falwell

“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
-Jerry Falwell

“Homosexuality is Satan’s diabolical attack upon the family that will not only have a corrupting influence upon our next generation, but it will also bring down the wrath of God upon America.”
-Jerry Falwell

“I do not believe we can blame genetics for adultery, homosexuality, dishonesty and other character flaws.”
-Jerry Falwell

“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”
-Jerry Falwell

“The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.”
-Jerry Falwell

“God is pro-war.”
-Jerry Falwell

“Can you imagine the insolence of these [anti-war] protesters? … They have the audacity to disparage and demean these courageous soldiers who are enduring great physical and emotional trauma because they believed in the effort to bring freedom to Iraq.”
-Jerry Falwell

“The media have a widely-held agenda (that doesn’t include support of President Bush) and they are not about to tarnish the image of anti-war protesters by showing them for what they actually are …With this tyrannical approach to the news, it’s really no wonder so many Americans don’t take the networks seriously anymore. And it’s no wonder that conservative Internet news sites have grown by leaps and bounds.”
-Jerry Falwell

“God is a Republican.”
-Jerry Falwell

“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”
-Jerry Falwell

“The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.”
-Jerry Falwell

“There’s been a concerted effort to steal Christmas.”
-Jerry Falwell

“The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That’s like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight. “
-Jerry Falwell

“The whole [global warming] thing is created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability.”
-Jerry Falwell

“I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”
-Jerry Falwell

“Textbooks are Soviet propaganda.”
-Jerry Falwell

“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”
-Jerry Falwell

Posted by Violet under Godbags on May 16, 2007, 8:55 am EST

8 Comments »

That’s the question on my mind as I chuckle over the news that Al Sharpton, devotee of the Magic Dead Jew religion, is in trouble for casting aspersions on the beliefs of Mitt Romney, devotee of the Magic Underwear religion.

Remember the Heaven’s Gate people, the ones who all committed suicide because they believed that the Hale-Bopp comet signalled the arrival of the heavenly spacecraft that would whisk them away to their destiny?

See, all the revealed religions pretty much start out like that. Comets, magic underwear, resurrected corpses. The key to graduating from Nutcase Cult to Respected Religion is all in the staying power. Obviously the Heaven’s Gate people fumbled the ball right off the bat with the mass suicide thing, so you’ll want to bear that in mind if you’re thinking of starting your own religion. But if your cult sticks around, maybe loses some of the weirder practices, maybe puts a little effort into blending with the rest of society, then you’ve got a shot.

Your first goal will be to achieve what we might call Scientologist Level: everyone still thinks you’re batshit insane, but they’re nice to you in person and have you over for parties. (It helps if you’re rich.) The next level, which will probably take your group at least a century to achieve, is Mormon Level: knowledge of your cult’s origins is fading among the general populace. People think of you as a slightly strange but acceptable minority religion. You’re on your way!

The ultimate level you want to get to, of course, is Establishment Religion That Is So Old Nobody Remembers It Started as a Batshit-Crazy Cult, which is such an unwieldy name that I’m just going to refer to it as Al Sharpton Level. Note that this level is not merely a matter of being an establishment religion, which is something that can happen within just a couple of centuries if you’re lucky enough to have a conqueror or two on your side. No, Al Sharpton Level is when your religion is so old that everyone regards it as profoundly, incontestably, indisputably normal. It takes a long time for a religion to accrue that level of mossy gravitas. Christianity has a couple of thousand years under its belt.

But the pace of cultural evolution is speeding up, so if you’re starting a new cult, buck up. Your religion could go mainstream sooner than you think. I won’t be surprised* if Mormonism itself reaches Al Sharpton Level within the next century or two (in which case we’ll have to rename Mormon Level, won’t we?). Just think: people will pray to Our Father Who Art On Kolob. There will be Magic Underwear boutiques on every corner. Children in Sunday school will learn to talk through their hats, just like Joseph Smith. Those checkout-line books for baby names and pet names will be joined by “Secret Names For Your Wives When They Die!”

And it will all seem completely normal.

*Yes, I’ll be watching. My religion guarantees me eternal life on the planet Gliese 581C.

Posted by Violet under Godbags, Recommended on May 9, 2007, 9:27 pm EST

27 Comments »

Bushshark.

Posted by Violet under Various and Sundry on May 2, 2007, 5:24 pm EST

7 Comments »

El Generalissimo Torture Presidente, feelin’ good after wielding his mighty phallic pen to keep the slaughter in Iraq going.

So, without the two-thirds majority necessary to overturn a veto, what else have we got?

Well, there’s always impeachment; that’s right there in the Constitution as a possible check on abuse of power. But it’s become traditional in America to reserve impeachment for high-level offenses, like lying about getting a blow job. Stuff like invading innocent countries and starting civil wars and causing the deaths of maybe 100,000 civilians and creating a perfect breeding ground for terrorism and generating your own personal vortex of pure unadulterated hell that sucks in everything within a 10,000 mile radius — that’s candy-ass shit. Not important enough for the big I.

I know, I know — you folks in the U.K. and points east are thinking, “What about assassination? Isn’t that a standard part of U.S. policy?” Why, yes, it is! It’s not in the Constitution or anything, and technically it’s illegal, but then that’s true of a whole lot of what the American government does nowadays. However, assassination is ideally restricted to foreign leaders, and is best carried out by extra-national mercenaries or aging televangelists. Besides, those of us on the left don’t believe in murder; we just want El Presidente to go away. Far, far, far away.

Of course, there’s always this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. —

Posted by Violet under Just Impeach the Stupid Freak on May 1, 2007, 11:36 pm EST

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