The Dan Chronicles

Although it is not comprehensive, Subversive Female’s speciation page is what truly makes the Dannisms shine.

Enjoy

Dear persons of questionable interests:

Seriously?  My most popular search term is “Nevada brothels and campgrounds”?

Hey, asshole:  If you’re gonna buy the woman, at least spring for four walls to keep her in.  It ain’t summer yet.

The Stupidity that is “Sympathetic” Manliness

There’s a new blog out there by Edward Keenan called “Act Like A Man” (I’m not linking because he doesn’t deserve traffic, frankly). It purports to be about finding new ways of defining manliness that cater more to equality and less to active aggression against women. Whatever.

I’m an old school feminist, and I don’t believe in manliness. Not ever, not at all. Manliness is what we call the bullshit that men want to get away with while prohibiting it to women. Manliness believes in inherent, immutable differences between the humanity of men and the humanity of women – it is the graveyard of biological determinists, asshats, and lazy dudebros.

So you can imagine my response to a male poster telling adult women to “be responsible for their choices and grow up” when a woman suggests that perhaps men need to get the fuck overthemselves already and act like goddamn adults instead of manipulative, lazy babies. He suggests that she simply picked a particularly bad seed.

Well, I’m here to tell you that where “manliness” is to be found, Giant Baby asshattery is endemic. I will not reproduce here the nonsense that “Colt” (seriously? is that meant to refer to the weapon or the adolesent horse?) deigned to submit, but I want to share my reply, because frankly I like it, and I don’t want my dear wombats to be subjected to “Colt” if they (you) suffer any longing to read my response.

Colt:

You play semantics here by pretending there is a choice. One of the most salient points of this post is that men see themselves as the default for “human” and women as the deviation from that norm, yet even a man who admits that he is persuing an active definition of what it means to be a “man” cites a list of issues that essentially prove that men are not behaving as “humans”.
The default for “human” should be someone who does not rape, someone who maintains themselves (bodily and mentally), someone with a sense of responsibility to meet at least the bare minimum of subsistence needs (food, clothing, shelter)for both her or his self AND the persons in her or his basic family unit, and someone who respects the bodily and mental rights and needs of the other humans with whom she or he come into contact.

Men simply are not meeting these standards – or if they are, are asking to be rewarded for acting like human beings. They want a cookie for being such nice guys. And sadly, Mr. Keenan seems to be one of those “nice guys”. He wants a cookie for recognizing that men are not performing the bare minimum of requirements to qualify as autonomous humans, and is calling this blog an opportunity to define a “better” version of “manhood” (and god forbid you call it what it is – a blog about reminding men how to be humans, as caliope correctly does).

Therefore, women who a)are sexually and/or emotionally attracted to men, b)recognize that despite men’s inability to behave as functional humans, they are still monetarily rewarded for temporarily posing as humans in the workplace to a greater degree than women ACTUALLY behaving as humans ALL THETIME are, and c)who desire to have children and thus want a co-parent who will either provide money, sex, or a societally sanctioned figurehead to retain the legal appearance of a functional “family” are forced to cope with the giant babies of the world. You suggest that caliope grow up – I maintain that in correctly identifying and coping with the giant baby behavior that men consider an acceptable standard (despite the fact that it does not meet the requirements for “human” status) she has chosen the best path available to her. She is, in fact, the functional adult, resigned to the fact that men have chosen the path of the giant baby and are determined to stay the course even when it means making themselves redundant in social, economic, and theoretical life.

The moderation work I have to do for this post will determine whether I develop a new page entitled “Read this first, and don’t reply until you’re SURE that I’m not going to ban the bejesus out of you. Just FYI.

Go Betty GO!!!!!

Jezebella is magnificent

I am famine-resistant.

That is all.

Commodification of Bodies : Education and Prostitution

We are used to (if appalled by) the entertainment industry and journalism’s obsession with the buying and selling of women’s physical bodies because we know that both industries have a strong profit motive to objectify and demean women. But we generally think of educational institutions as bastions of liberalism, where at least the profit motive is restricted from the need to reduce women to purely sexual objects, endlessly for sale. Apparently that was until now.

As part of a course on consumption, a Virginia college decided to take a field trip to the Chicken Ranch, an infamous Nevada brothel. Listed among the materials the students used to prepare for the visit were The Beauty Myth and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, both popular books, neither of which academically treat prostitution. Nowhere listed are materials by escaped/former sex workers, anthropological treatises on the cultural stigma of sex work, or even human rights materials on the status of women engaged in sex work – all of which are readily available via even the most cursory academic database search.

Essentially, this university has unicorned prostitution and prostitutes into a more exotic form of service work and wanted to interview the women engaged in prostitution as if it were any other job, with up- and downsides which equate to an ordinary workplace. The (extremely cursory) questions are revealing of both how extra-ordinary prostitution is, and how thoroughly the students manage to miss the point:

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Alexis: "Most women in this business wear
the pants in the family."
Is there a certain look most men prefer?
Alicia: "Every man wants something
different. There's all different kinds
of girls."
Why aren't there brothels with male
prostitutes?
Rivenburgh: "Former Hollywood Madame Heidi
Fleiss is trying."
Do you still give a military discount?
Rivenburgh: "Yes."
What's the worst part?
Alicia: "Being confined, being cooped up.
I have to be here 24 hours a day."

Where are the questions about who constitutes family, and why? The questions about what it means to be “feminist”, and what kinds of self determination and independence are possible when your physical appearance is dictated by men who will be consuming your body? Perhaps most important, what does it do to someone to be not simply on call, but bound to your post 24 hours a day?

Frankly, I think the “field trip” is a shameful excuse for both ogling the ‘other’ (prostitutes) and pretending that doing so is a legitimate source of academic inquiry. Even accepting that the reporting cut significantly into the work the students did (which, given the length of the article would not be surprising), this project shows no sign of critical thought at all.

Read the “full article” here: Class trip to Nevada brothel

Fight For Me Hillary!

Dear wombats,

Given that I’ve taken such a long break, I had hoped to return to you with a proper post full of analysis and BLAME.  Violet, however has tipped my hand by sharing the following. In the comments I hope those of you who care to will share your favorite bit of this video (and judging by my own reaction, it’s likely to be the moment that made you cry).

In the spirit of sharing, I will tell you that the title of this post represents my tipping point.

Enjoy

8 Random Things About Me

Tagged!

1. I’ve spent more money on tattoos over the past 6 years than on clothes. I call that a win.

2. I have ornithophobia.

3. I can’t watch horror movies because of the gore, but I have no problem with handling human bones in real life.

4. I was born on the anniversary of California Admission Day – only a month and a half late.

5. I procrastinate on writing articles by pulling the keys off my keyboard and cleaning it out with q-tips. The fun part is figuring out how to put the keys back on.

6. I have active memberships in libraries in 6 different states, 5 different countries, and 4 different continents.

7. My first memory is of being on a camping trip and getting sick. I remember my aunt asking through the tent if I was ok. And I said back “I don’t wish to discuss it”. (I think I was all of four years old)

8. I was named after a Neil Diamond song. I’ve never quite forgiven my mother for that.

Wombats, consider yourselves tagged:

Jez , Theriomorph, Jo, Rainbow Girl, Jenna, Laceyfish, Liz, Cara

Toast(er)

Apparently they don’t really give you a toaster. Sad.

hat tip pheenobarbidol

The End of America

I’ve been saying for years that the so-called accidents of elections that resulted in the Bush “presidency” were significantly more sinister than were ever presented. I freely cop to being a conspiracy theorist, because I’d rather be overly alert than caught by surprise. But I’ve never quite drawn out my observations into a coherent schema beyond individual sets of events – the crushing of legitimate journalism that resulted in Faux News and the disappearance of powerful dissenting voices, for example. I read books and articles on anthropological and religious theory, on Modernization and Middle Eastern politics, on the politics of the psychology of isolation, depression, and schitzophrenia, on Environmental and economic policy and I can see where, through laziness, busy-ness, fear, ‘othering’, fundamentalizing and minimizing our world is becoming a grey, homogenous place. Standardization. Industrialization. Capitalism. Blind obedience. Uniformity and Conformity.

Eventually: Eugenics

I fear for us. My fear is more generalized than localized, usually, because America is just one of many places. Because I think in terms of cross- and divided- culture, in terms of Patriarchy, and in terms of community and self-chosen social containment. But as a United States citizen (and also, therefore, an American), I also think in terms of Ideology. I live every day in the knowledge that the US is the most powerful government on the planet, recession or no. It informs my sense of security, it informs my right to an opinion, it informs, ultimately, my sense of Self.

I have a right to choose things for myself.

I have a right to an opinion on the system of governance to which I subscribe.

And I have been watching, observing these rights be erased, slowly and quickly, quietly and under voluble protest. I have observed the decimation of the Bill of Rights. I have observed voter disenfranchisement and ‘election’ by Appointment. I have seen local, national, and international consequences – the benefits to a megalomanic and his multinational corporation cronies – but I did not systematize them. Naomi Wolf has, and while I may question certain details of her observation (Guliani withdrawing from the presidential race is foremost among the problematic details) and dislike her use of anecdata, the formula is there. The essentials, the skeleton, are correct. “America” as an ideology and a democracy are disappearing – have been for years. And something needs to be done.

Hat tip to Gwytherinn for the video