when you need to sneeze, but you can’t. Or you’re this close to orgasm but you just can’t.
I’ve got a big swirly post making its way through my head and it’s not ready yet. And I can’t seem to write anything else while this takes over my brain cells.
So in the meantime, enjoy the fabulous writing of T.O.E. and/or head over to the Elizabitchez tumblr where I reblog funny pictures and critique the bad or outdated geography of the 90’s Animaniacs’ Nations of the World song.
then you’re gonna have to acknowledge some super shitty truths.
Capitalism is a system built on unpaid labor, the unpaid labor done by women in caring for children and home and family, the unpaid (or might as well be unpaid) labor of non-whites both in building our country in the past and making the products we use in the present. Capitalism is a system that cannot exist without ever broadening definitions for what kind of work is of little monetary value, because the wages must go down for profits to go up. The only difference between now and before is that people who expected to be valued (middle class, white, male, educated, etc) are finding that they aren’t.
There was a French writer, who I can’t remember and who I actually haven’t read, being that his work hasn’t been translated, but who I had summed up by the amazing Ruthzilla that wrote that the reason the nuclear family was so important to capitalism is that you needed the back up workforce of women who could take over the tasks left by men who went to feed the war machine. That’s probably less true now that (white, middle-class and better) women are in the work force (non-white, non-middle class women have always worked). But no one could go out to their box-of-labor-pain* if there was no one to have the babies, raise the babies, educate the babies, cook the dinners, shop for groceries, clean the house, do the laundry, care for the old and the sick relatives, etc. Etc. And it is no fucking mistake that when we have to outsource these jobs for pay, that pay is never a living wage. Capitalism can barely be assed to value something that it thinks should be “personal responsibility” and cost nothing.
But these are the core things that a person, a family, and most importantly, a society needs in order to continue. There isn’t actually a society at all if there aren’t children being born. Ask the Spartans, who killed themselves off in wars faster than they could make new soldiers. These are the things that must be done before a profit is even made. These are the things that would still be done if every business on the planet was wiped out tomorrow. These are the things that are usually done by women, and if for pay they are usually done by women of color at the expense of their own families.
So if your revolution doesn’t take that into account, if you want to change the system but you don’t seriously take sexism, racism, ableism, etc into consideration and do the long hard work from the bottom up, then you’re revolution isn’t really going to fix anything for long.
Look, I keep thinking I am done writing about the new, stupid, sexist shit that could possibly be going on at the Occupy protests. But no.
It’s not fucking revolutionary to dismiss sexual assault, practice sexism, ignore women etc. It’s the same old same old same old. (It required an extra same old, it’s that fucking old).
H/t to Jack Crow. And the reason why we ladies keep y’all around is because we are your mothers and daughters and girlfriends and wives. There is no escaping a world with men in it. How can I hate all men when I am raising one? Or in love with one? But there’s a whole fucking mess of them that I wouldn’t cry if they fell off a cliff (cough-Julian-Assange-cough-President-Strong-Supporter-of-Women-cough-Harry-Reid-cough-etc-cough).
Kasabian- Underdog
This is the money quote:
When will we start to understand that any movement which asks women to put up with sexism as a sacrifice for the group, as if sexism isn’t part of the problem, is doomed to fail? It’s no accident – or secret – that women make up the majority of the world’s poor and that women are being hardest hit by the financial crisis.
It ain’t radical and new if it’s built on the same old same old, let’s change the world, I’ll give the speeches, and write the theories, and you make the coffee and iron my shirt, honey buns.
Fuck. That. Noise.
We got a giant, I mean the entire side of a cow, london broil for super fucking cheap that was going to go bad if it didn’t get made RIGHT THIS FRICKEN SECOND. And it’s Friday, and I am sofaking tired that I didn’t even know it was Friday till lunch. I thought it was still Thursday. I think I’ve lost and entire days worth of sleep this week and now the days all blerge into one (blerge is a technical term, look it up. Or don’t. Really don’t)
So I convinced Kid to make the London Broil by shouting directions from my prone position on the couch. And Kid did an amazing job. Then I showed him how to slice it on the diagonal .
Kid: I like doing this!
Me: What, slicing meat? Slicing meat is awesome.
Kid: NO! COOKING MEAT!
ME: Yes, cooking meat makes you feel like king/queen of the world. Like “I am the ruler and cooker of the flesh!”
Kid: As long as it’s not human flesh.
Me: OH when the end times come it will be human flesh!!! Muwhahaha
And not exactly off topic, someone needs to print up some bumper stickers that say “Save a cow, eat a banker”
Oh Charles, you bring up the most amazing shit
ETA: MAybe this link will work? Since the one above is not.
When the Kid was too small for grand complicated explanations, I used to ask him “Kiddo, is this gonna help or is this going to hurt?” Does it help if chores go unfinished or hurt? Does it help when you leave a trail of filthy socks all over the living room for me to pick up, or does it hurt? You get the idea.
So since the whole dust up over Hot Chicks of OWS, you gotta ask “Does this guy help or hurt the Occupy movement?” And the straight up truth is that he hurts it. He hurts it my making women feel less safe and therefore less equal. He hurts it by making women leery of throwing their energy into something that is only as radically changed as “nice tits, make me a sammich”. And it hurts OWS because it invites the dudebros in, more of those same shitfaces who will shout you down and mansplain and accidentally* grab your ass.
And while us ladies get it, for the most part, that this is hurtful, we need you guys to get it too. We need you calling this shit out because the hurtful ones are the same fuckers who will get in our face and ask if it’s that time of the them month when we call them out. But they might listen to you. And even if they didn’t listen, we’d hear, finally, that some of you all are on the side of help.
That makes a mountain of difference. So when you’re sitting there, either occupying a park or occupying this grand park of the interwebs, ask yourself if what you’re doing is helping or hurting. Are you helping by being silent in the face of douchebaggery? Are you helping when trying to play Devil’s advocate to explain how the douchetocracy works? Are you helping make the world a better, safer, more equal world for everyone, including us 51% of the population? Or are you doing harm?
As usual, standard disclaimer that silence and or commiseration with people who are racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, etc etc etc is also hurtful instead of helpful.
It has been updated. Look to your right!
Proving that us panty-wadded ladies weren’t wrong, the shitface behind Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street likes to make rape jokes on facebook.
And you know, I am not at all surprised. There was never a brief moment where I thought “maybe the douche-defender who thinks us complaining feminists are just jealous of those beautiful women is right. Maybe I’ve had it wrong this whole time and street/internet harassment is really a compliment.” Because I fucking know better. Because I have lived in this world for 36 damn years as a member of the fuckhole class. Because even with grey hair and a fat ass I still get harassed on a damn nearly daily basis. (That ain’t a humble brag, y’all. That’s the sound of seething fury and barely contained rage.)
And shit, if this is what the revolution looks like- then I don’t want no part in it. Seriously. I walked away from the Democratic party and voting to get away from the liberal dudebros. I sure as hell am not gonna throw my support, my energy, my single remaining ounce of give-a-damn into some new order that looks suspiciously like the old order, at least as far as women, POC, etc are concerned.
Fuck that shit.
and I never will be. I will also never be Troy Davis’ mother. When it comes to the police, I am highly unlikely to be charged with a crime I didn’t commit. But if I was, the chance of getting the death penalty is damn near nothing for me. Same is true of the Kid. Because we are white.
Now before I continue, you absolutely must go read Renee. Go ahead. I’ll wait. *
Now I may be a lot of things that rack up points on the old kyriarchy oppression chart. I’m a woman. I am poor. I am a mother. Etc. Etc. But I am not now, nor will I ever be, the n***** of the world.
Now I meant to write this post when everyone was popping “I am Troy Davis” posts on their facebook. But I was working 11 hour days and there were other things going on. Then I meant to write this post when the Slutwalk shit happened. But I was working and there were other things going on.
But that’s all bullshit. I could put off writing about it because I am white. And racism really doesn’t do me any harm. Actually, I benefit from it. That’s privilege, not needing to give a damn or write a post or call out an injustice because it ain’t my problem. (Except that it is my problem. And your problem. And you over there lurking, it’s your problem too).
I have been I am Hillary Clinton, and I have been I am Spartacus (aka Melissa McEwan) but those are both, wait for it…. white women.
And yes, both the Slutwalk women and the Troy Davis posters were well intentioned. But intention doesn’t matter a damn bit in oppression. I am sure that the white folks who ripped Native children from their parents and sent them to Indian schools thought they were well intentioned too. I am sure that the asshole cop who started the whole Slutwalk thing with his comments on how ladies should dress in order to avoid being raped thought he was doing a community service. I am even pretty sure that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were well intentioned when they wrote that fucking song. They just wanted to point out how shitty the world treats women.**
But that shit ain’t right. Trying to fix an injustice using oppression is like a doctor trying to fix a heart attack with bacon. You just end up compounding the problem at another person’s expense.
*No seriously, go read Renee. Cause if you don’t it’s just one more example of a white feminist taking the credit for the hard work a black woman did before her. She gets to be the expert on race, cause duh. I am just an ally and often a lazy ally at that.
** Also it breaks the cardinal rules of language reclamation. You either have one, or you are one, or you don’t get to use the fucking word.