In 1972 the Democrats became, somewhat half-heartedly, the party of women’s rights. Throughout the 1960s the Democrats had served as the de facto gathering ground for all the social justice movements of that era, and with the advent of the McGovern Commission rules, what had been informal became formal. The rules were changed, the convention was opened up, and suddenly all the various grassroots activists (feminists, civil rights workers, the anti-war crowd) had a seat at the table.

Ever since then the Democratic party has served, however inadequately, as the political home for people who care about human equality. Think of Jesse Jackson’s magnificent Rainbow Coalition: that has never been the reality, but for 35 years it has been the ideal. It’s what the Democrats are supposed to be.

But increasingly over those 35 years, we women have been taken for granted. Even the lukewarm support we enjoyed in the 1970s is just a distant memory. The Democrats no longer attract our votes so much as the Republicans repel them. We vote Democrat simply because the Republicans are even worse.

This is a wonderful situation for the Democratic party elites, of course. They don’t have to really fight for anything or take risks or work hard for their constituents; all they have to do is be marginally less bad than the Republicans. Or not even that: they just have to maintain the appearance of being less bad. For us, on the other hand, it’s a distinctly unwonderful situation. We’re stuck with riding this donkey (to borrow from Al Sharpton’s glorious speech) as far as it’ll take us, but there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing we can do to actually make the fucker go anywhere.

This has been the problem facing American feminists for years. Long before Hillary ran for President, long before Barack Obama smugly assured the world that Hillary’s supporters would vote for him in a flash, we had a problem. The Democrats weren’t earning our loyalty. They were taking us for granted, knowing that no matter how little they did to earn our support, every year women would still go to the polls and vote Democrat anyway because, remember, the Republicans are even worse.

It’s reached the point that we can’t even rely on the Democrats to stand up for our basic rights. Twenty-two Democratic Senators voted to confirm John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005. A few months later, when Democrats failed to block the confirmation of batshit-crazy Samuel Alito, most feminists I know went into a state of barely-contained fury. Many of us had worked our hearts out for years to elect every Democrat we could, in no small measure because we were relying on the party to stop the erosion of our rights under a conservative Supreme Court. Lot of good it did us.

The netroots have been no better. New Democratic power-players like Markos Moulitsas have made it clear that women’s rights are at the absolute bottom of the priority list — any priority list. Kos himself famously invited those of us from the “women’s studies set” who disagreed to either don a burka or get the hell out of Dodge. (Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.)

What we needed, feminists said to each other, was leverage. How could we get leverage? How could we get the Democrats — old and new — to represent women’s interests? How could we create a situation where women’s votes weren’t assumed to be in the bag, but were a prize that Democrats would have to work for?

Voilà. Leverage is here.

It’s here because of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the shameful way she was treated — by the media, by the Obama camp, and, most damning of all, by the Democratic National Party. Even women who didn’t personally support the Clinton candidacy were nonetheless appalled by the Trashing of Hillary. It’s not that she lost; after all, losing is part of the game. It’s that she wasn’t beaten in a fair fight. She was treated like garbage, and she’s still being treated like garbage. (As of this writing, Howard Dean is refusing to let Hillary’s name be on the ballot for the first vote at the convention, a startling departure from the norm. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in this campaign and she earned more primary votes for President than any Democratic candidate in the history of this country. And the DNC won’t even let her name be on the ballot.) The huge swell of anger in the land is the righteous rage of millions of women — women who are armed and more than ready to punish the DNC. Over and over the message is being beamed straight to the powers-that-be on a laser light of pure anger: You don’t get to take our votes for granted anymore. No more.

It’s a glorious situation. It’s what we’ve needed for years. Finally, the Democrats have to work for our votes! Finally, we have leverage!

That’s why despite my anger at Hillary’s mistreatment, I am thrilled that so many women are drawing their line in the sand. I’m thrilled by the growing PUMA movement (Party Unity My Ass). I’m thrilled that for the first time since the 1970s, women as a group are demanding that a national political party treat us with respect — or else. And they — we — are dead serious. We’re too old to be tricked or browbeaten or guilted. We’ve been riding the Democratic donkey faithfully for 35 years, and damn if that ass didn’t turn around and fuck us.

No more.

What’s interesting, though, is that many of my sister feminists — the prominent pundit types, not the regular Jane Doe types — haven’t yet grasped the import of what’s happening. Even some of those who supported Hillary are now heard to quietly mutter that it’s time to “unite the party.” They don’t recognize the great big lever in front of us because, well, we’ve never had a great big lever in front of us. We’ve talked about leverage for years, yearned for it, but never had it. Most of us have spent our entire political lives being taken for granted. We’re so used to voting Democrat no matter what that it’s become almost second nature.

Another reason, a more insidious one, is the powerful social conditioning that even feminists struggle to transcend. We women are supposed to get along, to not make waves, to put our own needs aside. To sacrifice for the greater good. To unite the party.

But “unite the party” is simply nice-speak for “give up your leverage.” The Democrats certainly know that, as do the Obama trolls who are now flooding our moderation queues with comments. Every time they say “unite the party,” what they’re really saying is, “please give up your leverage. Please just put down that gigantic lever you somehow got hold of and walk away. Please go back to the way it was before, when you voted for the Democrats no matter how much they took you for granted.”

Not bloody likely.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. My own prognostication is that the existing feminist movement and this new wave will remain largely separate, at least for awhile, and very possibly even oppose each other. That’s because modern feminism is dominated by a) young Third Wavers who support Obama anyway, and b) “establishment” feminists who are too plugged in to the money circuit to fight City Hall. This new wave is different: a big grassroots uprising of women of all ages whose latent feminism has been awakened by this election. This group is big and messy and fairly diverse in its political orientation (from leftists like me to near-Republicans), much the way the Second Wave was in the 1970s. But these women are united in their anger and their exasperation and their determination that now is the time to draw the line. No more.

I’m looking forward to it. But that’s another post.

Posted by Violet under Recommended, Election 2008, PUMA on June 12, 2008, 5:53 am EST

84 Comments »

The Obamabots are under the delusion that if Obama wins the nomination (which he hasn’t yet, by the way), all of us in the Hillary camp will forget about the misogyny and come over to their side. Make nice for the sake of party unity. Forgive all the abuse.

Nope.

Several of us have tried over the past couple of months to explain why that won’t happen, but the Obamabots don’t seem to understand. And I know why: it’s because they don’t take sexism seriously. When women say we will not reward misogyny, we’re laughed off. The Obamabots just tell more jokes and hurl more insults and write more crass articles about how the little lay-dees have their little pan-tees in a twist.

The only “ism” the Obamabots take seriously is racism. So I’m going to try to explain the situation in terms they’ll understand, using a racial analogy.

Imagine this scenario:

The shoe is on the other foot, and Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights, but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

Just to make the analogy even more apt, let’s further imagine that some key civil rights issue is on the table — say, voting rights. For forty years the Democrats have been on the side of the angels with that one, but Hillary goes out of her way to say how much she admires and respects those Republicans who don’t think African-Americans should have the right to vote. She says judges with a record of opposing voting rights are good candidates for the nation’s benches — even the Supreme Court.

And the Democratic Party goes along with all this, pushing Hillary as the nominee, ignoring the anger of African-American voters, smugly assuming that they’ll “come back to the fold” by November. After all, say the pundits and the Blogger Boyz, where else are they going to go? The Republicans are even worse.

If you’re an adult American with even half a lick of sense, you know damn well that there is no way black folks would stand for that crap. There is no way any self-respecting African-Americans in this day and age would take that from the Democrats. It’s inconceivable that anybody would expect them to.

Because dig it: if the Democrats carried on like that, they wouldn’t be any better than the Republicans. And they sure as hell wouldn’t deserve the African-American vote.

Why should it be any different with women?

If Barack Obama and his supporters become the new Democratic party, then the Democratic party will no longer be the party of women’s rights. There will still be women in the party, naturally, but basic respect for women as citizens will be a dead letter. It will be the party of John Roberts and anti-choicers and the most virulent outbreak of public misogyny I’ve ever seen. All the sexism of this campaign will be rewarded instead of repudiated.

And that Democratic party will not deserve my vote.

And it’s not just women’s rights at stake. Social Security, health care, sticking up for the working class — those things are important. The Democratic Party is supposed to be the place where those things are defended, not dismissed. The place where those values are embraced. The place where, at every turn of American history over the past century, underdogs and reformers and humanitarians have found shelter.

That’s why I won’t vote for Obama. I’ll be sending a message to the Democratic party: if you want my vote, then you need to earn it. If you throw me under the bus — me and my sisters and my grandparents and my friends and everybody in this country who isn’t a rich man — then to hell with you.

Go on, Democrats, try to get elected without me — me or any of my friends. See how far you get. Go on with your bad self.

And when you figure out that you need my vote, give me a call.

Note on commenting: this thread is closed to Obama trolls. I can’t cope with the volume, given that this post has been linked far and wide. There’s a whole big internet out there where you can make your case that sexism doesn’t exist and we silly bitches are just having a hissy fit because our candidate is behind. Got it. Kthxbai.

Posted by Violet under Recommended, Election 2008, PUMA on May 7, 2008, 11:33 pm EST

227 Comments »

One of the first political facts I learned was this: winning the California primary in June 1968 meant Robert Kennedy had a serious shot at taking the nomination, even though he’d entered the race late and was behind in delegates.

But of course Bobby was murdered a few hours later, so that was the end of that.

I learned about this as a child because my parents were trying to explain to me why another Kennedy had been killed and what it meant for the election.

“Why did California matter so much?” I asked them. “How could he have gotten the nomination if Humphrey already had the party behind him? And what about McCarthy?”

It was thus that I learned about the realpolitik of nominating contests. A lot has changed in the process since 1968, and all to the good. More actual voting, fewer smoke-filled rooms. But what hasn’t changed is the purpose of the whole thing: to settle on the candidate with the best chance to win in the general election.

If I had a time machine and could go back to 1968 or 1972 to chew over a thought experiment with one of those old pros, the conversation might go like this:

Violet: Okay, hypothetical situation. Let’s say we’ve got two strong candidates. Candidate A wins the Iowa caucus. Candidate B wins New Hampshire. Then Candidate A catches fire and in February wins a bunch of caucuses and small primaries in mostly Republican states. Racks up the lead in delegates. But then Candidate B comes roaring back and wins New York, California, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania. Who’s the front-runner?
Old Pro from 1968/72: Are you kidding me?
Violet: No, really — who’s the front runner?
Old Pro: Candidate B, of course. What’s the matter with you?
Violet: But Candidate A leads in pledged delegates!
Old Pro: Candidate A is the guy who had a good February? But then loses in all the big states?
Violet: Right.
Old Pro: You’re actually asking me this question?
Violet: But don’t the pledged delegates count?
Old Pro: You’re talking about nominating the guy who lost New York, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and Florida? Jesus! You’re outta your mind!
Violet: But what about his delegates?
Old Pro: Fight it out at the convention if you have to. Geez. That’s what conventions are for. Look, you don’t get to be the nominee because you were popular in February in Utah. For chrissake, if you can’t win the Democratic primaries in California or New York or Massachusetts or Florida or Texas or Ohio or Pennsylvania, you don’t get to be the Democratic nominee. Unless you’re Hubert Humphrey. Wait a minute, Humphrey isn’t still alive, is he?
Violet: No. But the party bosses really love Candidate A. They say Candidate B needs to drop out so Candidate A can be the nominee.
Old Pro: They want the winner of all the big states to drop out so the party favorite from February can be the nominee? Goddamnit, it is Humphrey, isn’t it? Christ, he must be like 100 now.
Violet: No, he’s dead. See, the two candidates we’ve got are both strong. They both have a lot of devoted supporters and they’re really close in pledged delegates and popular votes.
Old Pro: What do their numbers look like against the Republican?
Violet: Close, though when you look at the state-by-state polls and the exit data, Candidate B looks stronger in a match-up against the Republican than Candidate A.
Old Pro: And you’re still asking me who the party needs to nominate?
Violet: Well, the supporters of Candidate A say that if Candidate B will just drop out, then the party will be able to get behind Candidate A.
Old Pro: It is Humphrey!

And so on.

Look, I’m not ignoring the fact that Obama has fervent support. I’m just trying to get at the sheer freak factor of the insistence that he is the de facto nominee, even after losing all the big states. I’m too old and my head is too full of memories for me not to recognize the surpassing strangeness of it.

Maureen Dowd is, of course, an emotionally disturbed individual, but she does provide a window into the babbling stream-of-consciousness irrationality of the Hillary Haters. As such, her recent Dr. Seuss column is noteworthy. Hillary has just won Pennsylvania by 10%, capping a streak that’s seen her take every single major state and swing state (except Illinois). And MoDo’s response is to beg Hillary to quit. Please drop out, O Winning Candidate, so we can nominate the guy who keeps coming in second.

You know, after 2000 I didn’t think American politics could get any weirder. But I was wrong. Weird? Hell, we live here now. Weird City. Permanent residence.

Posted by Violet under Recommended, Election 2008 on April 25, 2008, 12:55 am EST

47 Comments »

I want to talk about Obamamania. But to do that, first I need to say up front what I don’t mean by Obamamania, at least for this discussion.

I don’t mean reasoned support for Barack Obama because of his positions (his actual positions, please) or his electability or his potential as a leader. There are valid arguments to be made that Obama is more appealing on all those points than Hillary (though personally I disagree). There is also the argument that a Clinton presidency would mire the country in another four to eight years of 90s-style wingnuttery (an argument I respect but ultimately reject, because I think the exact same thing awaits Obama).

And I don’t mean support for Obama from the African-American community, a phenomenon with which I’m deeply sympathetic. Just as millions of women (of all races) see their gender reflected in Hillary, millions of African-Americans (of both sexes) see their race reflected in Obama. You can call it identity politics, but what I call it is the chance to finally feel represented after 200 years in a so-called representative democracy. I begrudge no one that yearning.

What I mean by Obamamania is the delusional fervor that Obama inspires in the blogosphere, in the media, and in the college kids who power his ground game. It’s a fervor that is impervious to truth, reality, sometimes even basic common sense.

The truth is that Barack Obama is a Democratic politician who has figured out how to harness Republican-style politics. It’s not just the right-wing talking points he embraces, but the whole emotional approach. It’s the triumph of fantasy over reality, and it has two big components: marketing and pseudo-religion.

I’ve already posted about the marketing angle. Maybe I’m particularly alive to it because I remember Reagan’s “Morning in America,” a campaign that was so vacuous that the first time I saw the commercial I thought it was for McDonald’s. That’s no joke: at the time Mickey D’s was running a very similar ad campaign for their Egg McMuffins. It was all soft focus, feel good, start your day happy kinda stuff. When “Morning in America” came out I damn near freaked. “What the hell are people supposed to be voting for?” I asked my husband indignantly. “Sunshine?”

But millions of people bought it. They looked at Ronald Reagan and saw a cowboy, a hero, a genial grandfather. I looked at Reagan and saw a great big can of processed cheese. And truth be told, that’s pretty much what I see when I look at Obama. Barack’s got a great high-concept shtick, but for chrissake, it is a shtick.

The other element is pseudo-religious fervor, something that the Republicans mastered with Bush 2. For years now Democrats have been giggling at the useful idiots on the right who put up prayer lines for President Jesus, but the same mentality is what’s driving a lot of Obamabots. Simon Woods explores this phenomenon in ‘We Are The Chosen Ones’: A new hymn to Barack Obama.

A few weeks ago, covered in Hillary badges, I approached a young couple in California and, as I was about to offer up my pearls of electoral wisdom, they just began singing at me. And they were singing Yes We Can, the song by Black Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am, whose video has become a phenomenon on YouTube.

If you’re familiar with the religious right, you recognize this behavior. It’s exactly what right-wing Christian kids do. They sing at you. You can start talking to them about anything from the reality-based world — evolution, abortion, homosexuality, the possibility that Bush isn’t Jesus — and they start singing. They stand there with their ponytails and little crucifix necklaces and sing a batshit Christian hymn about holding fast against the devil.

The lure of religious certainty is especially strong for young people, and Obama knows it. That’s why his campaign has deliberately crafted its message to sound as much as possible like modern Christian outreach.

Obama has created the impression that Clinton supporters, like the Pharisees in the temple, are obstacles to change: “I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change. They know it in their gut… But they’re afraid. They’ve been taught to be cynical.”

Straight out of the Christian playbook. You’re just afraid to let Jesus into your heart. You want to believe, but you’re distracted by the scientists and the liberals. You’ve been taught to be skeptical. But all you have to do is let go, and let Jesus in. Just believe.

To people like me, this message is worse than ineffectual; it’s repellent. I’m not fooled and I’m not interested in electing a self-proclaimed messiah. But to a lot of naive young people, it’s extremely compelling. “He’s infallible,” one young Obama supporter is reported to have said. Campus Crusade for Christ, Hare Krishnas, Obamamania: variations on a theme.

Some people on the left will argue that this is all to the good. If Democrats have figured out how to harness the useful idiot vote, what’s the problem? It’s great, right?

I’m not so sure. As politicians keep rediscovering, fanaticism is dangerous. Something about two-edged swords. A few of the more unhinged Obama fans are already talking about burning Denver to the ground if Obama isn’t the nominee — rhetoric that will play straight into the hands of the Republicans. And what happens when the Obama worshippers get a peek at those feet of clay? Jesus and Krishna aren’t around to screw up, but Barack is. Actually he doesn’t even have to screw up; he just has to start governing in accordance with his actual policy positions as opposed to the imaginary ones the Obamabots credit him with.

But a more immediate concern is this: I’m simply not convinced that Obama’s support is as widespread as his followers think it is. Like all religious fanatics, Obamabots make an amount of noise that is disproportionate to their numbers. And their noise is drowning out a big proportion of Democrats.

Which brings me to the blogosphere.

It’s no secret, I think, that most of the liberal blogosphere has become a one-note 24/7 Obama rally. People who support Hillary, particularly women, have been relentlessly insulted, silenced, even banished from sites like DailyKos. The nastiness of the Obama guys — most of them are guys — is breathtaking.

But their Obamamania is of a slightly different flavor than what I’ve discussed so far. Political junkies are not immune to the marketing stuff and pseudo-religion that captivates so many Obamabots, but they do tend to be a tad more cynical than the average bear. Cynicism, no matter what Obama says, is necessary if you’re going to analyze politics.

What makes up the shortfall for the blogger boys is a third ingredient: misogyny. Supporting Obama gives them license to hate Hillary. It’s a license to engage openly, enthusiastically, in misogyny of the most feverish kind. Hating Hillary has traditionally been the preserve of wingnuts, and the liberal boys have felt constrained (though not entirely) to stay away from too much Clinton-bashing. But now, with Hillary running against their man Obama, they’ve got their opening. Finally they’re free to engage in the crazed heart-racing hatred that only the guys on the right have been able to enjoy. Can you imagine how liberating it must be? That’s why they’re so giddy. They’ve been repressing this for years!

Go slog through the comments at the big boy liberal sites. Did you know that Hillary Clinton’s heart is a black rotting mass of pure evil? Did you know that if you sliced open her brain it would be crawling with maggots? That her crimes are unspeakable? That her lust for power is insatiable? That she is a monstrous, foam-dripping beast who won’t be satisfied until she’s destroyed the party?

Reading at places like DailyKos and Democratic Underground has become a disorienting experience. I keep wondering if somehow I’ve blundered into Free Republic by accident. Or if maybe all the commenters are really Freepers in disguise. The rhetoric is the same. All the right-wing anti-Hillary hysteria from the past 16 years: it’s all there. Apparently it’s never occurred to the blogger boys that inculcating a whole generation of new voters with anti-Clinton propaganda is an incredibly risky strategy, and pretty much the opposite of what you need to do to build broad party strength. Or maybe they just can’t help themselves.

From where I sit, it looks for all the world like a significant slice of the left has been body-snatched by wingnut-like pod people. The gullibility, the cult-like adulation, the frantic misogyny, the insistence that anyone who disagrees is The Enemy Who Must Be Destroyed — the whole batshit crazy package has arrived.

Is this good news for the progressive movement? The Obamabots think so, but then they’ve shown a marked inability to hear anyone’s voices but their own. What I’m hearing is that a whole lot of lifelong progressives and Democratic voters — people like me and my friends and family — are becoming seriously alienated. Women over 40 resent being tossed aside like so many used Kleenexes. Working folks aren’t buying the Obama Magic. And older people know that what we need is a tough fighter, somebody with the wisdom and sheer gumption to get the job done. Obama’s speeches are so much handwavium to this crowd.

If Obama does become the nominee, then his campaign is going to need some new material. You know, maybe some more of whatever it is that brings people out in droves to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Recommended, Election 2008 on March 10, 2008, 1:46 am EST

89 Comments »

I’m in the habit of carrying on substantive conversations with people in the comment threads, so it sometimes happens that my Serious Opinions About Major Issues end up being expressed not in posts, but in off-hand comments. Which is fine, except that whenever people ask me stuff like “where did you say that thing about x?”, I can’t remember. It’s not in a post. It’s buried in some comment thread. So I’ve invented a comment rescue category, and whenever I run across (or someone points out to me) some comment that really should have been post, here’s where I’ll put it.

Yesterday Julia asked about what it was like during the Women’s Liberation Movement and how it was different from today. Here’s what I said:

Julia, I became a feminist (an adolescent one) in 1971, when Women’s Liberation (as it was still called) was cresting. You know what it was like? It was like every single woman in the country was having an Ah Ha! moment, like HEY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? It was like the scales were falling from a million eyes.

The big question, though, which would take a long time to discuss, is why that happened THEN and not before and not since. Because what had always happened before — and what has always happened since — is that the scales-falling-from-eyes is instantly squashed by a million contradicting impulses and inputs, as I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself.

It’s not discrimination, it’s just nature and

no no you’re exaggerating and

ooh feminism is icky those women are scary and

you women belong with your menfolk (insert race or nationality) rather than ganging up with those other women, those other women (insert race or nationality) are our enemies and

what’s wrong with being sexy? and

why not learn to play the game and stop making a big deal? and

do you hate men or something? and

what are you complaining about, don’t you realize how good you have it? and

women don’t suffer nearly as much as (insert any other group) and

a better way would be to wait quietly and ask nicely instead of antagonizing men and on and on and fucking on.

So why didn’t that happen circa 1970? Zeitgeist. The pill plus the sexual revolution plus labor-saving devices multiplied by the Baby Boomer generation and then raised to the 10th power by a series of movements for human equality and justice beyond the traditional old tribal allegiances that usually keep women apart.

Will it ever happen again? I wonder.

I’ve bolded the bit I want to expand on. We can’t re-create the social and historical conditions that gave wings to Second Wave feminism, but we can notice the extent to which women — most definitely including feminists — have subsided back into tribal and clique allegiances, rather than standing together as women.

Just today I was reading an essay questioning why on earth black women would support a white woman for President, even if Obama weren’t running. Yeah, it’s not as if black women and white women have anything in common.

That kind of anti-ecumenicism is perhaps the single most salient aspect of Third Wave feminism. To some extent it is a good thing, even a great thing: understanding that women’s experiences are different, that the black woman’s experience is different from the white woman’s, and from the Native American woman’s, and from the Iranian woman’s, and so forth. And the queer experience, that’s different too, and then there’s the poor woman’s experience, and the immigrant experience, and the disabled experience, and the fat experience, and all of it intersects in a zillion different ways: a Chinese menu of oppression and privilege.

All of which is extremely valuable and important. Give everyone a voice; let everyone tell her story. No shoehorning into a dominant narrative, no assuming that every woman’s experience is synonymous with that of the middle-class white women who spearheaded waves one and two and who themselves were the beneficiaries of several types of privilege built on the backs of less fortunate women.

What has been lost, though — and this is as plain as day to me, though it’s apparently bad manners to point it out — is the sense that we are all women and that we all suffer in particular ways as women. Feminism is supposed to be about combating the oppression of women qua women, and so for it to work we have to think beyond more immediate allegiances.

Look: women are not a natural group. There are no families of women, no tribes of women, no nations of women. Humans organize themselves around kinship and language and culture, and other types of alliances are inevitably weak in comparison. The Marxists discovered that a century ago, though they kept up the “workers of the world, unite!” self-delusion for decades more. German and French peasants in 1914 had vastly more in common with each other than with their parasitic overlords, but when war threatened all the German people — peasants and parasites together — voted happily to blow the fucking heads off all the French people. It was ever thus.

For all their differences — and women are as different from each other as men are — women all over the world share a set of common obstacles as women. And that will be true as long as patriarchy exists. But getting a bunch of humans to cross boundaries of culture and tribe and race and nation is hard. Way hard. I guess what disturbs me today is that almost nobody even seems to be trying. The Third Wave commitment to multiple feminisms seems to devolve all too often into the basest of human impulses, which is essentially fuck you, stranger.

And so we have the essayist who believes that black women and white women have no common cause. We have queer feminists who feel like they’re on a different planet than straight feminists. We have pro-porn feminists who seem to think that their worst enemies are anti-porn feminists. And don’t even get me started on the chasm between Western feminists and non-Western feminists.

Some people will tell you that it was like that even in the early 70s; that the ecumenicism of Women’s Lib was an illusion. That Women’s Liberation was just middle-class white girls and it only looked like universality because other women’s voices were silenced. In fact, I suspect that’s becoming the dominant narrative. Certainly it’s believed by a whole bunch of young feminists who weren’t even alive at the time.

All I can say is that in my experience it wasn’t like that at all. The feminist circles I was exposed to in the 70s were made up of women of all races and nationalities and backgrounds. What we talked about, what fascinated all of us, were the commonalities between us. A middle-class Jewish girl and a Lakota woman comparing notes. A privileged wife and a prostitute realizing that they were both fucking for their supper. Black women and white women talking urgently together about their menfolk, about the “race traitor” business and that whole godawful clusterfuck.

And through it all the realization that if women were ever going to be liberated, it would be because we’d done it ourselves, working together as women. That we couldn’t rely on any other justice movement to do it for us. Not humanism, not Marxism, not pacifism, not the civil rights movement — nothing. Because no matter how hard women worked or how much they threw their hearts into those other quests for liberation, at the end of the day it was mostly just the men who got free.

Yep, we knew all that then. And those days are gone. Gone, gone, gone. Gone, she said. Gone.

I have no idea how to bring them back. But I think we need to try. I think if feminism is going to have a fourth wave — if the dream of women as fully human is to survive into the permanent consciousness of the species instead of being embalmed as a quaint relic of the 20th century — then we’d better figure it out.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Feminist Theory, Gender Issues, Recommended, Election 2008, Comments that should have been posts on February 23, 2008, 1:11 am EST

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Obama has taken some heat for his remarks to the newspaper editors in Reno, Nevada, in which he largely repeated the Republican narrative of the past two decades: Reagan was a great president, bringing Morning in America to a country weary of the intellectually bankrupt Democratic politics of pork and sloth.

Obama is way too smart to actually believe that. But his comments in Reno weren’t about what he believes, but about what he needs to say in order to court independent voters and peel off Republican support. (Newsflash to the young’uns: Obama is a politician, kids. He’s not the saint of purity who farts rainbows.)

The more I see of Obama, the more I understand his game. He’s decided to exploit the Republican propaganda of the past 20 years, rather than fight it, in order to get himself elected. The right-wing lie that Reagan was Saint Ronnie, who won the Cold War and could leap tall buildings in a single bound? Fine, use it. The right-wing lie that the Clintons were incompetent/dishonest/dirty/all of the above? Fine, use it. The right-wing lie that the 60s and 70s ushered in an era of excess and we need to get back to family values and personal responsibility? Fine, use it.

The problem with this tactic is that these right-wing lies are dangerous. The lie that the Clintons were incompetent/dishonest/dirty/all of the above is one reason Dubya is in office. The lie that Reagan was a great president is the other. The Reagan lie, in fact, is probably the dominant political fact of the American landscape, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, dig into the tubes and read up on the Southern strategy, the Moral Majority, Iran Contra, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Iraq, the trillion-dollar deficit, the end of the Fairness Doctrine (hello, hate radio and Fox!), AIDS, union busting, the defeat of the ERA, the assault on women’s reproductive rights — oh, geez, I could go on and on.

The meme of Saint Ronnie is dangerous. It needs to be exploded. It needs to die. Endorsing it may give Obama the mainstream appeal he personally needs to win, but at what cost to our country?

On the other hand, perhaps the fight is already lost. Perhaps the truth is already a lost cause. One of the most striking things I’ve noticed in this campaign season is the unthinking repetition by young Democrats of the “fact” that the Clintons were incompetent/dishonest/dirty/all of the above. Democrats saying this! It’s right-wing propaganda, but they don’t know it. Repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. The wingnut noise machine is so effective at saturating the very air we breathe that people don’t even know they’ve been brainwashed.

I recognize the pattern because that’s exactly what happened in the feminist movement. When the backlash started in the 80s, women my age realized that we were in a fight for the truth. We wanted to educate our daughters and pass on the torch, but we were up against a 24/7 noise machine that was telling them that feminists were man-hating prudes, that feminists hated sex, that feminists were just ugly girls who were jealous of the pretty girls, that pornography was empowerfuling, that Andrea Dworkin was in bed with the religious right, that all Second Wavers were vicious racist homophobes, and on and on and on.

And we lost. We lost the war for the truth. I know this, because most of the young women I see around me believe at least some of those lies, sometimes all of them. And what’s even worse, a lot of young feminists believe it too. Feminists.

I’ve seen young feminists repeat the Larry Flynt version of feminism as if that’s what really happened. I’ve seen young feminists describe the Second Wave in terms that have more to do with Rush Limbaugh than reality. I’ve seen young feminists claim that when older feminists try to knock some sense into the conversation, it’s really just sour grapes because the old hags are jealous of how young and pretty the new girls are.

I know of one professional anti-feminist who’s been haunting the fringes of the movement posing as a disaffected feminist, with a shtick that is largely a rehash of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Christina Hoff Sommers. Her story is that she used to be a feminist but all the ugly girls were jealous of her because she’s so pretty, plus all the feminists were sex-hating prudes and evil censors who were intent on squelching her “voice” (feminists love to talk about “voices”). I doubt if there’s a feminist over 40 who can’t peg this person as a ringer from 10 paces off — we’ve been here before, kids — but a lot of young women who encounter her think she’s for real. Ooh, they were mean to you because you were so pretty? It’s sobering testimony to the power of the backlash.

To the power of propaganda.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Politics, Recommended, Election 2008 on January 22, 2008, 7:08 pm EST

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Ella’s still a puppy in that picture; you can tell. Look at that face! And those ears. A good breeze and she’d lift right off.

Meredith is so proud of her, beaming big and happy, her arm around her girl. The diploma says Super Dooper Dog Training…something, can’t make it out. And the diplomate is Ella Emerson. Meredith’s doggie daughter. I bet it’s Ella’s graduation from puppy class. They’re so happy. Freeze them in that moment; keep them there forever. Don’t move.

Every time I look at this picture I cry. I know it’s in poor taste to pay too much attention to Yet Another Dead White Woman. There are a lot of dead people in this world. Lot of dead people, most of them not young white women. A whole lotta hurt in this goddamn world.

But it’s the dog. A woman and her dog.

A woman and her dog.

I’m a woman and I have a dog and I used to have two dogs and my girls are everything to me, oxygen and love and sweetness, and I’ve gone hiking with my girls in the woods and I know how Meredith felt, I know what happened, how it was out there with Ella happy and free and hi! what’s your dog’s name? and one time when I was a little younger than Meredith was when she died I was chased by a crazy man in the woods but I got away, I got away, but Meredith didn’t. And Ella barking, I can see her now, barking, Mom! What’s wrong! Mom! Mom! Mom!

I can’t help it. This picture destroys me.

Listen: it happened when I was 20 years old. I used to go hiking by myself in the state park near my house. It never occurred to me that this wasn’t safe. It was only a 6 mile hiking trail that looped around a reservoir; it wasn’t like being out in the middle of nowhere. I would park my car near the trailhead and set off, arms swinging, breathing deep, making up stories in my head about the Civil War soldiers whose bones and blood and bullets were sunk into the ground beneath me. I never once worried about being safe.

Until it happened. Until the day I needed to use the bathroom and couldn’t wait. There was no one else on the trail, but I moved several yards off the path into some bushes before I squatted down. When I stood up I saw him. I don’t know if he’d been there all along or if he’d been following me at a distance, but now he was standing a hundred feet away, staring at me. And I knew I was in trouble because he ducked down behind a tree. Like he thought maybe in that split second I hadn’t seen him. Like he thought maybe he was still hidden.

I turned back to the trail, deliberate-like, not running, trying not to be scared. Nothing very bad is happening here. I’m just going to continue on my hike. I will continue on my hike and I will drive home and I will make dinner. When I reached the trail I turned around. He was following me.

I started to run lightly, just lightly, just kind of speeding up here a little, not panicking yet, okay? I’ve just decided to jog the trail today, that’s all that’s happening. I will run today instead of hike. But I could hear him behind me. I turned around and he was running and his face was contorted and he was chasing me now, yes, he was chasing me

I ran. I put my head down and ran like I never knew I could run. I was the wind. I was an Indian brave, I was in a western from my childhood, just run, swift and silent, you’re the wind, you can do this, you must do this you will do this you will get away you can do this just run run run run run

I whipped my head around and he was behind me, thudding, pounding

run run run run run run run

I don’t know how long it took me to reach the reservoir. I don’t know how long I ran. I don’t know at what point I finally lost him. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of miles, and running at full speed it could only have been a matter of minutes. How long did it take? Half my life, at least. That’s how long.

When I reached the reservoir I collapsed on the wooden bridge. There were other people in the distance, chatting, looking at the birds, the kids bouncing up and down on the planks. I watched the woods, waiting for him to come out.

He didn’t.

Now here’s the funny thing, the reason I know that people become insane when they’re in shock: I didn’t tell anybody what happened. It was like I still had to be silent and secret to get away. I walked to my car like nothing had happened. I drove home and went inside my apartment and lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Only then did it occur to me that perhaps I should report the incident to the police. And I hesitated because I thought — I actually thought, in my crazy shock-addled brain — that somehow I had brought it on myself by squatting to urinate in the woods. Better not tell the police that. Totally insane.

No, nothing ever came of it. No, he was never caught, and no, I never heard anything more about it.

And I never went hiking alone again.

Oh, women can’t do that my sluggish brain finally processed after some 20 years on the planet. Oh. I see. I thought I was a normal person. But I’m a woman.

It was only later, when I got a dog, that I felt safe again. My Katie and I went everywhere together. We toured the national parks and deserts and wild places west of the Mississippi, hiking everywhere we could. Almost ran out of gas on Pine Ridge, me gripping the wheel on the gravel road, and Katie watching me watch the gas gauge, a zillion miles from the nearest station. I have a picture of Katie in the Badlands, facing into the giant prairie wind ruffling her fur, eyes narrowed against the blowing dust. At the Bonneville Salt Flats I worried about her feet — is salt okay for dogs’ feet? — but she liked it. Salt is cool to the touch. Still, when we got back to the car I bathed her paws with the water from our jug. She watched me wash and dry her feet, the way she watched me do everything. Patient, curious. My daughter.

She used to tell me when she wanted a drink during a hike. I’d sit down on a rock and open my little bottle of water, and if she wanted a sip she’d nudge me and sort of lick her lips. If she didn’t, she didn’t.

On the beach at Carmel Katie herded the waves. She’d never seen the ocean before and the whitecaps excited her to a frenzy. Did she think they were sheep? Did moving white things stimulate some genetic switch in her brain? Must herd moving white things. I would sit in the sand, my heels dug in, savoring a hot coffee, while Katie wore herself out, running up and down the beach, barking at the surf. Bark. Bark. Bark. She’s gonna get it under control, people would say, giggling, friendly. Strangers videotaped her. She was a star.

That was the apex of my life, though of course I didn’t realize it at the time. I bet nobody ever does. My dog, my love, on the beach of the Pacific Ocean, my feet in warm sand, long glinting rays of sunlight in late afternoon.

In the deep pine forests of the north ridge of the Grand Canyon, night fell and we were alone, but I wasn’t afraid. Even Vegas at night on the strip — it was just another hike for me and Kate. Some Lakota boys I met dubbed us Woman And Dog. Woman And Dog, safe and strong and happy.

Then Molly came along and we were three, three girls out for a hike. In the woods of North Carolina. In the woods of Maryland and Virginia. In the woods. See, when you have dogs, the world is a good place. And other people with dogs, they’re good too. Dog people are good people. You smile at each other, big expansive smiles, arms open to the world. You let your dogs play together.

Is that a boy or a girl? What’s his name? Dandy? Hey, he and Ella like each other!

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Various and Sundry, Recommended on January 12, 2008, 12:57 am EST

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“Obama,” she said to the pollster. “We think Obama is the best candidate to turn this country around.” She and her husband had discussed it endlessly. Clinton was too centrist, too loaded with baggage, too much of the same old thing. Obama was the new, fresh hope that the country could rally around.

“Obama,” she said to the people at work. “He’s the most electable. If he’s on the ticket he’ll beat any Republican they put up. You can’t say that about Hillary. Could Hillary really win against somebody like McCain? But you just know Obama would take it in a landslide. If the Democrats want to take back the White House, he’s the best bet.”

“Obama,” she said to their friends over dinner as her husband nodded. “Of course I would love to see a woman president, but what matters is who’s the best candidate.”

“Obama,” she said to the leaflet people as she and her husband arrived to cast their votes in the primary. “We’re voting for Obama.”

Inside the booth she closed the curtain behind her. The ballot was the AccuVote kind, with a blank oval next to each candidate’s name. She looked at the list.

I HEREBY DECLARE MY PREFERENCE FOR CANDIDATE FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO BE AS FOLLOWS:

She thought about the first time she’d ever paid attention to a presidential election, the first time she’d been old enough to care, though not yet old enough to vote. 1972, the year of George McGovern, the year of Nixon’s landslide, the year of Shirley Chisholm. A woman running for president! She’d been thrilled, though most people treated it as a kind of stunt. A lady president? What was that, the punchline to a joke?

“JOE” BIDEN
Wilmington, Delaware

She thought about when her high school social studies class had debated the woman-for-president issue. It was wildly theoretical, of course, like time travel; that was understood. But it was a good workout for the students’ thinking skills. She remembered sitting in the little plastic chair in the stifling room usually used for band practice while earnest acne-faced boys talked about women’s emotionalism and the monthly unreliability which could lead to a menstrually-induced nuclear holocaust, so at the very least female candidates should be required to be post-menopausal — ah, but then there was the hot flash problem too, couldn’t those continue intermittently for years?

RICHARD EDWARD CALIGIURI
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania

She thought about the TV shows she’d watched when she was a kid, the episode of Bob Newhart where Emily had to ask Bob’s permission to go back to work. And All in the Family, when Gloria became a feminist and Mike went nuts, screaming “take my pants! just take my pants!” and the studio audience roared. She’d watched that episode in the living room, sprawled on her stomach the way she always watched TV, banging her bare feet up and down on the carpet. She thought about her own first job, where all the women in the office were expected to fetch coffee for all the men. Her first day at work and the boss had called her into his office and she was ready, ready for some big important task, ready to show what she could do, and he said “black with a teaspoon of sugar,” and then he smiled.

KENNETH A. CAPALBO
South Kingstown, Rhode Island

She thought about the stupid old man who’d refused to hire her because “young married girls like you just get pregnant and leave,” and how she’d sat in her car after the interview, defeated and furious. She thought about the job she did get, and what happened there, and how years later she’d exploded when her father said Anita Hill was lying because if a woman was really being harassed she’d just quit, right?

In 1984 she’d gone to the polls to vote for Ferraro — that was what it had been in her mind, voting for Ferraro, not Mondale — even though everybody knew that idiot Reagan would win. The ERA was dead but at least there was a woman on the ticket, even if it was just for vice-president. It was something.

HILLARY CLINTON
Chappaqua, New York

She thought about the day the Clintons won — the Clintons, plural, because that’s what it was. Before it all went insane, before the right-wing crazies ground the country to a halt out of sheer spite, before Whitewater and Kenneth Starr and Lewinsky, before all that: there was hope. She’d loved Hillary, loved her for being a feminist, loved her for her brilliance, loved her for standing up to the press. Damn right you didn’t want to stay home and bake cookies; damn right. You tell ‘em.

“RANDY” CROW
Kelly, North Carolina

“CHRIS” DODD
East Haddam, Connecticut

JOHN EDWARDS
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Everybody said Hillary had compromised too much, just like Bill, anything to win. But it wasn’t the same, not at all. Hillary had been playing a different game altogether, a game men didn’t understand, a game that maybe some younger women didn’t understand either. All the compromises, the curtseys to the Man, the power suits, the toning-it-down, the polite smiles, the endless pressure to be strong enough for a man but soft enough for a woman, like some kind of goddamned SuperWoman deodorant — jesus, wasn’t that what they’d all done, every single woman of that generation? Hillary had started out as Rodham but had to take her husband’s name so she wouldn’t scare the rubes; been there, sister. “She really needs to tone down that aggressive feminist stuff, it turns people off,” said the pundits. Been there, sister. “The reason Bill cheats on her is because she’s so smart; men don’t like that,” people said. Been there, sister.

DENNIS J. KUCINICH
Cleveland, Ohio

DAL LAMAGNA
Poulsbo, Washington

“TOM” LAUGHLIN
Santa Rosa Valley, California

BARACK OBAMA
Chicago, Illinois

“The fact that Hillary’s a woman isn’t enough for me,” somebody had said. But it’s enough for me, she’d thought to herself. That wasn’t true, though, not really. No right-wing Republican woman would get her vote, ever. But Hillary was a Democrat, and she was a feminist, and she was a woman. I know it’s not supposed to matter but it does, goddamnit, it does. Her eyes welled up. I can’t help it. I’ve waited all my life for this.

“BILL” RICHARDSON
Santa Fe, New Mexico

O. SAVIOR
Minneapolis, Minnesota

MICHAEL SKOK
Cheektowaga, New York

She filled in the oval next to HILLARY CLINTON. No one would ever know.

“Could we ask you a couple of questions?” The exit pollsters smiled as she and her husband walked out to the parking lot. “Would you mind telling us who you voted for today?”

She smiled back, her arm resting on her husband’s. “Obama,” she said.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Recommended, Fiction, Election 2008 on January 9, 2008, 8:05 pm EST

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My family is trying to talk me into coming back to life. They liked having me alive — I guess it’s some kind of love thing — and with the holidays approaching they’ve been pressuring me pretty heavily to climb back into the ol’ meat suit. My mother keeps calling me up in the Smoking Lounge, talking about Thanksgiving dinner and Molly and Christmas trees and the various advantages to being alive as opposed to dead in a tent with an ex-parrot who has a pumpkin for a head.

Last night I got online again and cruised around the blogulofeminewsosphere, trying to reacquaint myself with the world. Having spent the past several weeks in a kind of self-induced psychotic break, it was a bit of a shock to be plunged back into the harsh glare:

• A gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail because she was out without a male guardian. Her husband protests the ruling yet still claims that Saudi society — in which women have virtually no legal rights and are the wards and chattel of their male relatives — is “very respectful of women.”

• Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., no doubt jealous of the Saudi success story, are brainwashing their daughters from birth to think of themselves as the property of their fathers.

• Some freak in Texas editorializes that the wearing of pants and unveiled hair has “led to the slow whorification of ladyhood.”

• An 11-year-old gang-rape victim in Georgia (U.S.) is accused of being a lying slut.

• Rape victims in Hungary are denied justice by courts and police who maintain that women who are raped are really just prostitutes or (you guessed it) lying sluts.

• Western expatriate sexist creeps in Moscow are thrilled to discover that “women’s lib never happened here.” Indeed: violence against women in Russia is so pervasive that 70% of married women are abused by their husbands. Political will and funding to deal with the problem are virtually non-existent. Moscow, a city of 10 million, does not have a single shelter for battered women.

• At Jets games in New York male fans form gauntlets and demand that any passing woman expose her breasts; the women are spat on and pelted with beer bottles for refusing. (One woman who cooperated was subsequently threatened with arrest for indecent behavior — yes, she was reprimanded, not the hundreds of men surrounding her.)

• The Australian teenagers who gang-raped a girl and then sold the video of it as homemade pornography are released without serving any jail time.

• The rape nightmare in the Congo continues unabated; many hospitalized victims are so badly injured their internal plumbing no longer works.

• A feminist activist in Iran is sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned as punishment for advocating women’s rights.

• Less than 60% of Americans believe unequivocally that women should play an equal role with men in public life.

• Maureen Dowd refers to Hillary Clinton as a dominatrix, Chris Matthews calls her a she-devil, and a McCain barnacle calls her a bitch. (I believe “lying slut” is reserved for rape victims.)

• The U.N. reports that most of the 800 million illiterate adults in the world are women; most of the 100 million children not in school are girls. Women earn three-quarters of what men do and their unpaid labor would, if calculated, equal trillions of dollars. Women hold only 17% of the parliamentary seats in the world, but they constitute 70% of the people living in poverty.

Yep, the world is still a shit pie for women. And that’s by no means a systematic survey; it’s just what caught my eye in the hour or two I spent getting caught up around the tubes. My reaction is twofold:

1. I want to go back into the tent with Raoul.
2. We need more feminism in the world. A lot more.

On the first point I need not elaborate; long-time readers will have observed that I have a tendency to disappear (into a tent, the Smoking Lounge, France, what have you) when The Horror Of It All starts to be too much.

I don’t need to belabor the second point either, but I do have something to add. Look again at that list of news items. That’s why I have no tolerance for anti-feminists. None. Zero. Feminism is the belief that women are human; it is the movement to secure their full human rights. It’s about stopping the rapes and the lashings and the mutilations and the oppression and the abuse. If you think that the best way for you to spend your time in this world is by working against feminism, then I’ve got no time for you.

And that goes for all anti-feminists, whatever the variety. MRAs with miniature dicks? Check. Christian fundamentalists who think Saudi Arabia sounds like Big Rock Candy Mountain? Check. So-called liberal dudes who become annoyed every time they’re asked to consider women’s rights? Check.

And the women, too, alas — though I don’t mean those true believers who have been Stockholmed into accepting their own God-ordained inferiority. No, I mean the women who cynically capitalize on the popularity of anti-feminism for the sake of their own self-aggrandizement. (You know the shtick — from Ann Coulter to Wendy McElroy to Toni Bentley to the trolls who haunt the blogosphere posing as “feminist critics.”) Since they are also women under patriarchy I usually hold my fire, but do I have time for them? That would be no, Bob.

So the next time some anti-feminist goblin shows up here and I promptly zap its tiny ass into a smoldering cinder, you’ll know why. I got no time for those people.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Why We Still Need Feminism, Reclusive Leftist, Recommended, Holidays, Raoul on November 22, 2007, 2:11 pm EST

17 Comments »

Grendel’s Mother struts the runway in her Jimmy Choos at the 6th century Denmark Annual Fashion Show and Mead Fest.

Never mind, I already know the answer.

So there I was, working at the computer, glancing at the news, trying to get my filing papers in for the next cloning project, when across the bow came this ad for Beowulf, the exciting new shit movie by some shit director, featuring Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s Mother. It’s Grendel’s Mother as you’ve never seen her before — indeed, as you never would have expected to see her in a gazillion years, given that she’s a lake monster whose salient characteristic is a ferocious tendency to rip people to shreds. Grendel’s Mother is many things (vengeful, powerful, terrifying), but sex-aaay ain’t one of them.

Until now.

The unwritten but unsecret rule in Hollywood, as in the rest of contemporary Western culture, is that if it’s female, it’s gotta be fuckable. Exceptions can be made, such as in the case of outer space creatures (Alien, for example, and while I haven’t seen the sequels I don’t believe the alien ever appears in stilettos and thong to do battle with Sigourney Weaver in a vat of baby oil, though I could be wrong), but these are rare. A powerful female who can’t be reduced to a butt naked fuck-me Barbie doll is a noxious and unnatural thing, too awful to contemplate, like Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno. So instead of Grendel’s Mother the Monster of the Mere, we get Grendel’s Mother the Super-Hot Naked MILF with Huge Breasts and Stiletto Heels That Appear To Be Growing Right Out Of Her Feet.

What the hell is up with those heels, anyway? Is she wearing shoes, or are those bone spurs? And where did the filmmakers get the idea that stilettos would be the appropriate fashion statement for a 6th century Danish monster?

But what am I saying? None of that matters. Literary fidelity, stylistic coherence, basic logic — these are trifles. Here’s all that matters:

In essence, Beowulf is porn for 13-year-olds, as it caters to two of the most basic, primal fantasies of hetero adolescent males: slaying a dragon and bedding Angelina Jolie…

Sexualized to the point of absurdity, this Beowulf is obsessed with heaving bosoms, vaginal caves, sultry demons stroking phallic swords that melt in their hands, and warriors fighting monsters in the buff, this last example composed in such a way that threats to the penis are plentiful but images of the member are always carefully obscured, Austin Powers-style. What this says about the film’s target audience is clear: boobs and violence are cool, shots of the male crotch are not.

Is he describing Beowulf or Western civilization?

As far as I’m concerned, this movie is just another data point for my thesis that popular culture is all geared towards 13-year-old boys. Boobsandviolence, boobsandviolence, boobsandviolence, relieved only by the occasional change-of-pace foray into violenceandboobs. <