Sexism: When Rad Brains Fail

Ingredients for this My Time: stupid idiots and their stupid faces, drinking, a gal pal to bitch with, pajamas that just say no, and a night or four in.

Oh Darlings, darlings, darlings. When was the last time you were "poked" on Facebook by some moron sent to the future from the early 2000s in his attack plan, and all 1950s in his head? Let's talk about SEXISM. Lately my gap pals and I have had a pile of bullshit loaded on our vagina carts, and YET, no payout of a hard penis to make amends for such trifling. Then again, we have closed our bank accounts to such payments because mixed metaphors make more fun than the men with brains and Facebook accounts. Here's some of what we're sick of.

Smart White Nerds in Academia.

Hey Assholes, all of you in the US who work in contemporary literature of the world? You use words like "neoliberal" and oppose racism, genocide, Republicans, Nafta, and support Occupy movements, political action, local farms, comic books to discuss world issues, radical left publication, and theoretically women's rights to the things you haven't ever had to discuss as a "right?"

Here's a fucking clue: don't try to fuck every single one of the women around you in your profession. BUT FOR WHY, you ask. Well, they're your colleagues. Sure, banging happens, but maybe you shouldn't send out one mass text to multiple women in your profession, hoping one bites, "poke" them on Facebook like some nerd, ask them all "so you want to go fuck?" as a PICK-UP LINE, or slam your body against theirs and grab an ass in a conference lobby. Guess what you are? A sexist. A man with great ideals who can't even HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH A WOMAN without objectifying her let alone befriend a woman or consider her a colleague. Good job having great morals that mean nothing in actual daily or yearly life. And we women you don't objectify? Well, that's worse. We don't get the benefit of at least a nasty look up and down to take home later to our vibrators because we're nothing. While the harem of women you try to bang laugh at your nasty face and/or bang you and talk about it later to all of the rest of us ladies, the ones you openly call UGLY or don't even mention are farther down the totem pole of the profession than the ones you give a second to because you want to bang or bang again. It's unclear: as sexual beings who like sex and sexy stuff, we don't even know what you find sexually attractive.

Go back to your nerd convention, you measly, sociopathic, never-fucked-in-my-teenage-years-so-making-up-for-lost-time-and-narrow-ideas-about-women piece of shit. You exist, and it needs to be okay at some point for all of us to talk about how you exist and ruin progressive intellectual and empathetic collaboration, mentorship, and art. Let the women who fuck you be condemned to fuck you.

Looked out at the publications you subscribe to, lately? New York Review of Books?

London Review of Books? Are you all competing for the absence of women as a way to somehow have your very own vagina, i.e. absence? Just because you read and teach Fun Home and Persepolis doesn't mean you have taken a long look in your nerd mirror to see how you treat your fellow female colleagues. Your equals.

What's just as bad is the women who sleep with you, don't tell anyone, then bring up how disgusting you are and say they would never sleep with you.

The shame you bring to their bodies, already clearly so fucked up that they can't say to themselves "I'm an adult woman and I'm allowed to sleep with adult men, whether they be creeps, studs, or people I have an actual emotional interest in." How is it that I've heard recently by adult women who pull this kind of strange, anti-feminist, lying to girlfriends in some convoluted way, sad shit and proclaim: "I'm so worried about what my father/my family/my siblings/my peers would think if I slept with someone [that you already did sleep with, Honey]." You are an adult woman and no Nerd Asshole you sleep with cares about what anyone thinks about him. You're his colleague, his student, his teacher, his peer, his something in the world because he does not exist in isolation even though his penis thinks he does. No one has told him that it's not okay to not think about these things. Give yourself a break. Think about them half as much if your desire for sex is paramount. Ladies: it's okay to have sex; it's not okay to lie to girlfriends about sex with men, or to punish yourself for what people might think about you for having sex.

Yes, we all have issues, yes, it's important to be generous with people over condemning, yes, it's important to understand that these issues are more complicated that a simple rant makes them. Wait. NO. No no no. Don't do that. Don't avoid actually engaging--simply and clearly--a real actual thing that happens to women every day (at least where I am and who I'm with--perhaps I'm in a vacuum, because certainly this can't happen elsewhere, right?!) because you have a rad brain. Rape, genocide, murder, war: these are men's burdens because they instigate and carry them out. It takes courage for a man to say that rape is their problem, sexual harassment is their problem, death at large and the destruction of many things are their problem. And it takes courage for a women to say that she has been a victim of men's simply made poor decisions. It takes courage for us all to speak up. Rant. Rant. Rant. Say it and don't look back. Save your life every declarative sentence at a time. Don't let anyone with a rad brain complicate an issue for you that is as simple as you wanting to have a good life.

A conversation I had with a male colleague:

Me: "you shouldn't tell women writers in our classes that their work would be better if they had more sex. That's sexist. We're your colleagues. Some of us your senior colleagues."

Him: "you're racist."

Me: "No, I asked to speak to you because of your sexism."

Him: "But I love women! What are you, one of them--them feminist things? A lesbian? You need to get out more."

Me: "No, I'm straight and I have a boyfriend. And I go out all the time."

Him: "Really?"

Then he cries. Of course he was given the best fellowship for money and prestige in my profession. Which was awarded by people far more established in the profession. And never once in any course, talk, reading have any of those established people addressed his sexism. So what do we do? We laugh about him. And we are told not to worry about such things, it's not productive. Be quiet. Don't rant. I have a rad brain and I can tell you that.

A woman. An American Woman. In combat. It's called 'feminism.'

Ingredients for this My Time: equality, at least one functional vagina and womb, a bottle of champs, DIET gummy bears, and the world at large and your little lonely apartment.

Oh Honey, did you read THE NEWS? That's right, American ladies, we get to go to combat now along with our penisy counterparts! Oh, and did you hear?

"The move could open hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and elite commando jobs to women."

elite commando

FINALLY. A new stripper name I can get behind. And really, Honey, I get so sick of being rich and spending all my money on things other than preserving my virginity with knife skills, attendance to a despot who is the only leader in the middle east who doesn't disparage sub-Saharan Africans, and equal involvement in the politics of my country. Well, that despot is dead (the world sings in praise!) even though his death was a pretty hue distraction to real problems, and his despot level (don't worry, Honey, I'm making a chart) wasn't anywhere near despoto superior. I mean, he's as good as the USA is, right? He had an army full of WOMEN. See? EQUALITY.

Just look at that dude. He slept on roofs when he traveled to other countries. A roof in Paris. Because that was his tribe's tradition. Well, unless he's in the USA, because we have better ways of dealing with despots. Channels!


I mean, Honey, to be an American woman is to be polarizing. And to live in Missouri and be in the charity board business, looking for a tenured position in charity, is to experience this intensely and have less conversation about it. How do you know that?

A My Time Fun Game:

If you are a curvy, downright fat, sharp-faced, somehow not ideally attractive according to porn and/or MTV standards, repeat the two sentences above about polarization to your colleagues or the cool guys at the bars you hang out with who, you know, would never call you to hang out with them and the other cool guys, but are nice nonetheless and you all consider each other friends. Blink. Blink. Do it. Really. Or if you do fit into an ideal idea of beauty and piety for women, have a busty, chatty gal-pal do it instead. Here's you or that woman:

Now, if you're lucky, here's the best response you can get:

then he backs away into a corner with a Slim Jim

 But chances are you'll get some polite incomprehensible response that is akin to telling you to fuck off, if you were from the planet that could recognize that.

And ask a very petite, slender, quiet (and/or COY DEPENDING ON THE AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL) light-haired lady whose face looks smiley and voice is quiet to say the same sentences, but in the form of a question.  She wonders what they think! That might be you, so you can take this position. Here's this other lady, and the presumption is that you aren't one or the other type, but that if women are polarizing, society NEEDS SAFETY and types you for such occasions:

 Here's what she gets:

"I just like looking at you. You're nice. This other bitch told me her sure opinion on the matter and it was really offensive and unfair. I'm glad you're not like her. Look at my man brain-light head gear."

Girlfriends, compare notes over a bottle of Tattinger. If you're both straight, question what it will be like to have sex with a man again after your little experiment.

Or, maybe your vagina provides such polarizing pheromones into the air that you literally can't remember the last time a straight man tried to have straight sex with you.

That's ok, girl, that doesn't mean your opinion doesn't count. It might mean that you are highly unattractive to your polarizing community, EVEN IF you got laid a lot before. I mean, Honey, that was probably a different time and a different place, i.e. you were younger, hotter, less willing to speak your needs, and there were a lot more men in the cities you lived in. Don't worry, Babe, it'll happen. A lady has ways. Maybe you can enlist a girlfriend for help with this, too?

OH BUT WAIT. I forgot after getting all caught up in my story, Honey. YOU ARE EQUAL. YOU CAN FIGHT IN COMBAT WITH THE MEN. Let's forget that gay folks were allowed to do this before you even though they can't even get married in most US states, because that might remind us that the "right to combat" is actually a rhetorical gesture designed to put undesirables at risk while making them feel they are integrally a part of the physical, spiritual, and cultural essence of our nation. Drink that one away--another bottle of Tattinger, Doll! And let's forget that female people as well as those not in the one or other sex denomination our culture allows for do not en mass engage in war, rape, genocide, profit from them, or encourage them. BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE SEXIST YOU SEXIST LADY, YOU! Remember, sexism is simply stating the facts about the differences in the sexes. Blink. Blink. It's not actually instilling defamatory and destructive reactions to a biological sex or chosen gender. That's just fun!

Oh, am I a Bitter Betty? Er, a Downer Daggy? I'm sorry, Honey. Back to the topic at hand. You now have the right to combat. Women fought hard for this for you. Because female officers fought for that right, that means it is an award for women across this country. That's what feminism is. And you're welcome.

Before we all head off to combat, can we have one last drink? And honey, because it isn't said enough intelligently, the males we know have to deal with the exact same problems about presumptions that we do. But it is also worth saying that males are the ones that destroy the planet and humanity at large and yes, that's a polarizing opinion. But you know what, Honey? It's worth discussing, with men, women, and those whose chromosomes read across a spectrum of in-betweens and others. As you know, I love men. Too much.

THE THINGS I've done when they've asked.

THE THINGS they've done when I've asked!

So, for me, combat as equality makes sense. I fight with them. I die with them. I don't have to love them. I am one of them now. We have a common enemy. It's simple, easy, and I want to kill myself less when I think this way. I've finally found the answer to my suicide prevention: die at war. It is a good day indeed, Honey.

It's a win-win for the USA and women everywhere today!

champers on me,
Dagmar