for those of us in thrall to the alcohol-industrial complex: Anti-hangover shower gel. It’s wide-awake mornings at Elizabitch HQ from now on.
Author Archives: The Other Elizabeff
Dennis Byrne burps a truth
Dennis Byrne, in an anti-gay marriage op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, accidentally blurted out a truth:
[M]arriage, among other things, seeks to protect the lives and rights of women and children in a historically patriarchal society.
Dennis! Yes! You see the light! You’re tired of being the asshole who’s unfit for mixed company, right? Can we count on your help to dismantle the patriarchy? Sign right here! Hey everybody, good news, we signed up a conservative white guy!
Wait! Dennis? Dennis…?
Oh, hell.
Quotations of Chairman Mom
Upon obliging son with iffy aim to clean up around the toilet seat: “If it comes out of your penis, it’s your problem, you deal with it.”
Lenin to women: cease your infernal girlish prattle.
The following gem was mined from my choice of in-flight entertainment, “Socialism: A Very Short Introduction” by Michael Newman*. It concerns an exchange between V.I. Lenin and Clara Zetkin, who was in charge of the Communist International Women’s Secretariat.
[S]oon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin admonished [Zetkin] for encouraging women members of the Communist Party to discuss sexual matters, rather than the fact that the ‘first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world.’ He thus told her, ‘I could not believe my ears’ when informed that ‘at the evenings arranged for reading and discussion with working women, sex and marriage problems came first.’
No matter what the movement, guess who gets to take a number and stand in the back of the line? You got it. If you answer “What have our male comrades ever done for us?” with “diddly fucking squat,” you win a coupon for your own liberation redeemable after the apocalypse.
To a man, they never get it. The vanishingly few who do (Arthur Silber comes to mind) have experienced marginalization, often in several dimensions, and have generalized from that experience, rather than concluding that Oppressions Can Be Ranked and Mine Comes First. The rest will bully, badger, nag, and blame you, but never treat your political aspirations as anything more than a girlish fit of pique.
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The book in question: Socialism: A Very Short Introduction
Please allow me to introduce myself
as the newest Elizabitch of wealth and fame. As the mission of this blog is to provide a platform for Elizabeths to bitch, I should fit right in. I will bring you occasional updates on French politics as well as whatever brilliant insight strays into my mental crosshairs.
I am 48, white and have a son. My newest marriage is to my oldest friend. Politically I have been reverting to a feral leftist state; since 2008 I have made myself unwelcome in respectable liberal circles. I live in Paris (which is far less glamourous than it sounds, as evidenced by the pool of piss outside the office door this morning), am usually The Girl in whatever software shop employs me and, like millions of women, blend quietly into the background of patriarchy–until I open my mouth.
Thank you for allowing me to be a contributor. May you never have to call security on me.