Sheria at The Examined Life posted some statistics from the Daily Kos depression poll of the century. Just as well, I need crap like this … extrapolated so as to keep it at some remove. Sanity is precious, you know,  and one wants to go on believing the best of ones’ neighbors, in both the immediate and existential sense. I have always thought that being hateful inside must be the most boring of lives. Read the rest of this entry »

A Rant About Women,  he titles it, which is like dangling raw meat right there—or should I say, holding it out on a very long stick. Like they do at the zoo.

So Shirkey realizes he’s been conned, and by a bright student, and the realization makes him rather pleased. For is not his male student a reflection of himself? Read the rest of this entry »

BlogHer: Who Are Your Favorite Women Bloggers?

“Who are your favorite male bloggers?

Who are your favorite hermaphrodite bloggers?

Your favorite muslim bloggers?

Are you really this stupid?”

Posted by: Up Yours Sexist Fools | July 19, 12:35 AM

Ask a simple question. Read the rest of this entry »

Frank writes on Listics: “Stanley Fish fishes around the Jason Horowitz article in GQ, but neither man can quite bring himself to call the Hillary hating what it is. Jason? Stanley? It’s MISOGYNY … I am puzzled about how the topic of “hating Hillary Clinton” could be addressed without either writer (or their editors) making a single call-out regarding the misogyny and sexism that underlie so much of the vituperative ad feminam critiques.”

Way to go, Frank! And here I thought the only man who could really “get” what it’s like, being on the receiving end, would have to be black. Read the rest of this entry »

Virginia Heffernan writes in the Times:

I know from pushing a baby around Brooklyn’s mean streets that there are a lot of guys who, it turns out, wish they were babies. (”Man, that looks good!” “Ooh, I wish that was me with that bottle!” “Hey, little man, can we change places?”)

So, my question: Is this an exclusively male fantasy? To be a fat, pampered baby in a diaper again? “

And I am like two things … Read the rest of this entry »

Behind Every Great Male Writer , a review by Hadley Freeman:
Many of the most esteemed authors in history have relied on their wives—or if not, conveniently placed women such as sisters or daughters—to help them knock out their tomes: Wordsworth, Nabokov, Carlyle, and, er, Dick Francis, to name but a few … sometimes a wife’s contribution has simply been to smooth the life around her husband as much as possible, clearing the way for him to work, undisturbed, as Jessie (wife of Joseph) Conrad did, ditto Nora Joyce. Both of them, according to Jeffrey Meyers in his book Married to Genius, provided a kind of stability for their highly strung husbands.

Fine. I can take it. Ancient history and all that. Read the rest of this entry »

… And if I may digress. Oh please do, this is your blog, after all. Thank you. I came across a New Hampshire newspaper with that lovely photo of Nancy with all the children in her lap, touching the precious gavel and all. NANNY STATE, it said. WELL THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED, AMERICA, SNEER, THIS IS WHAT YOU GOT.

They shoot Nannies don’t they?

Okay, funnies over. In point of fact, my roots are in New Hampshire; my grandmother was born in Rumney, in 1897. She was the first person to ever go to college from Plymouth Highschool (her little sister the second) and when she finished Colby, she promptly married her very handsome highschool English teacher. Then the First World War ended her chosen career, teaching German, when it was barely begun. They set up housekeeping in West Hartford, and she spent her life in Connecticut. Ostensibly editing the Connecticut Church Times, but mostly telling the Bishop of Connecticut what to do, and and I expect he is just now learning how to get along without her.

When everyone with half a brain leaves a state, that leaves the dregs and seriously inbred. I know and you know, if the mere photograph of an Important Woman, and her grandchildren crawling all over the podium in the capital of these here United States is enough to whip the Live Free or Die fringe into a Freudian lather, we got issues.

What bothers me is the hatred and fear behind such shows of disgust. These are the kind of men I, as a woman, fear most. Who are so full of hatred for the father, likely had the crap beaten out of them by Daddy, the only possible place they can express it is upon the body of the mother, the feminine. Upon women, girls, little girls, the vulnerable, the precious and the “weak”. These are the men for whom rape means rape, and in whom remorse was killed a long time ago.

Sure you have to be tough to survive a New Hampshire winter. Tough is no excuse. We ought to turn upon such contemptuous bullshitters the toughest black heavyweight and watch ‘em piss themselves—whilst he then bestows a kiss upon his venerated mother.

And I will lead a little talk on Freud. Ri-ght. Oh she is filled with fantasy tonight. But the sad fact is, sometimes the biggest buffoons are just little quaking shits. And they are not going to slur Nancy Pelosi or the grandchildren that way, not as long as I am around.

Nor do I see where, like, the White Man has done so much better, hello?

No, Granite-Staters, we don’t want to take care of everybody, not even you. We’re just waiting til you guys get the hang of what it is to take care of somebody beside your granite selves.

My grandmother died in Connecticut, several weeks short of her 101st birthday. Sharp as a tack, in good health til that moment, funny as hell. Never did get the hang of being old.

I see I haven’t gotten around to Norman. Next post.

“When you look another man in the eye it means one of two things.”

He waited for a reply.

I was ready with the answer.

“I want to fuck you or I want to kill you,” I said. Everyone turned to look at me.

“Exactly,” said Paul. “I want to fuck you or I want to kill you.”

Oh tis such a cheery thing, to be a male. So … interesting, so complex, multi-layered …

Not. Oh God so not.

link: Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back by Nora Vincent