Broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes, broke-ass hoes

Attending a private liberal arts college made me hate feminists for a while. That's the opposite of what's supposed to happen, isn't it? You're supposed to become deeply ensconced in women's issues, go vegetarian and develop an in intense love of short-haired indie rock chicks while protesting endlessly the use of the word "chick" to describe WOMEN because I am a WOMAN and I will not allow myself to be DENIGRATED by the heteronormative, chauvinistic corporate automaton and be told that I am a helpless baby bird that subsists on PREMASTICATED CORN NIBLETS and possesses no control over my UTERINE. CONTENTS.



People at private liberal arts colleges actually talk like that (well, sort of.) Which raises the question, if you're not a bird, why are you so fucking shrill?

Don't get me wrong, the women who devoted most of their time to the campus feminist group tended to be nice, reasonable people on a regular basis. I just couldn't listen to them talk about feminist issues because after a while, my ears would start to bleed mysteriously. Which is not something I'm proud of. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to learn about the raping penis and modern ways to hate it. I wanted to give my vagina a big cuddly hug. Unfortunately, my arms just weren't long enough, and confusion gave way to resentment. I retreated to the frat house to shake shake shake it to the dulcet tones of "Ass 'n' Titties" by DJ Assault.

But in Spring Term 2008, something amazing happened. Our own Kid Combustible pointed me to the blog Jezebel, and I've been obsessively refreshing the page ever since. The magic of Jezebel is that the site sells itself as "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion For Women. Without Airbrushing." Essentially, it's a pop culture blog that happens to be pro-women. Even better, it's a pop culture blog that I consistently agree with (and that doesn't happen often.) And they're feminists, so I guess that makes me a feminist too.

So. What's the point of this diatribe? Mostly, I've been galvanized by Jezebel's recent coverage of the Sarah Palin debacle. (That's not a Jezebel article, but it should be read nonetheless for reference.) Anyway, they dared to ask the question that has been on my mind since we first heard of Tina Fey's horrible evil twin: why does Sarah Palin blind normal, reasonable women with rage? Personally, I think it's because her spokesman is named Tucker Bounds. What the hell is up with that. Also, I have a hard time enjoying the company of people who are cool with torturing wolves with helicopters and then shooting them to death. Doesn't anyone collect bottlecaps anymore?

And if you're badass enough to aggressively interrogate lupine beasts from the skies, do you need a guy named Tucker Bounds to man your spokes?

But seriously folks. The pros did a good job of explaining why exactly I react so violently to the mere thought of Sarah Palin. And by react violently, I mean I could get pretty into an episode of CSI wherein the team investigates charred remains found in a deserted Alaskan woodland near a business that rents helicopters and AK-47s to wolves and librarians who are fired for allowing people to take out banned books.

I'm just saying, that episode of CSI sounds rather engaging. Think about it, CBS!!

Enough hate, though. The point of this post is to declare my love for Jezebel. For the aforementioned reasons, and also because they introduced me to the video series Target: Women with Sarah Haskins, which in turn led me to one of my favorite shows (albeit one that I can only watch online) InfoMania. Thanks, guys!

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The internet done me wrong again

So Sony is making a game called "Fat Princess", where your chance of winning is increased by locking a princess in a room, force-feeding her cake to make her weigh more, thus making her hard to carry around. Take a minute to digest thLOL. Okay, sorry.

There is a ton of shit that sounds really damn offensive about this. You have to lock her in (as described by Yahoo!) a "dungeon". You have to force-feed her. So she gets fat. It portrays women as being unable to defend themselves. It portrays women as being objects to behold or be sought after for capturing. IT IS CALLED "FAT PRINCESS". It's hard to separate the offensive from the downright stupid, because both seem to be feasting on each other like fucking piranas here.

However, the real majesty of the Yahoo! article about this is the last three paragraphs. Seriously, it is fucking majestic:

Sony has yet to issue an official response, although Joystiq did receive a particularly informative update from James Green, Fat Princess' lead art director, who clued gamers in on the origins of the game:

"Does it make it better or worse that the concept artist (who designed the look, characters, everything) is a girl?"

Hmmm...hope the game's detractors don't mind eating a bit of crow.

HAHAHAHAHAH FUUUUUUCK YOU YAHOO! GAMER WRITING PERSON!

Holy shit, seriously, this is, like, the basic element of someone being offended. Intent is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what you were trying to do, all that matters is that people found it offensive and wished to tell you about it. Building on that, it also doesn't really matter who was trying to do anything. Women can offend other women. You know Ann Coulter? She offends everyone, women too! Of course she designed the look and the characters and what not - that was her job. She probably didn't find it offensive. That's fine. However, other people really really do. These feminists aren't trying to speak for all women - they're trying to speak for the type of women who sees a video game that children will probably play that revolves around kidnapping and force-feeding princesses. Just because one woman doesn't find it offensive and draws all the art and designs it means absolutely nothing. This crow will not be eaten. This crow shall fly, motherfuckers.

This article (and the linked Joystiq article and its comments) lead to the heart of this problem: people assume that there is pleasure in getting outraged at these things. They assume that we enjoy getting ourselves riled up and writing angry screeds over and over again. At least, I assume that's what they assume. I can see no other reason why people seem to get so mad at people for getting offended. It should be considered a rule of thumb on the internet that the faster and louder people are willing to shoot down any allegation, the more obvious it becomes that they aren't willing to confront the issue themselves. Perhaps if these people would stop talking about how much they hate femi-nazis for twelve seconds and think that maybe they aren't fairly portraying women in this and other forms of media, maybe there could be a dialogue. Maybe there could be something, some sort of evolution. But no. Never. No one wants evolution. People want the internet to remain a funtime happyplace where anyone can say whatever the hell they want and not have to worry about being offensive or whatever. So enjoy it, kids. Enjoy a culture that completely belittles women almost as a god damn bylaw and completely decimates any criticism on the fact. Enjoy your childish jokes and your hate-fueled stupidity. Enjoy yourselves, fuckos.

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