Day 22: A letter to a mean girl

The other day somebody posted this in a Facebook group for women that I belong to. A group of over 12,000 that exists to support women. Lots of women laughed. Lots of women said they were going to start doing this. Some said they already did do it. One woman said she's going to make a commitment to do it at least once a week. Well, I have something to say to the person who posted it and to all the women who thought it was a good idea.

Unacceptable Schitts GIF from Unacceptable GIFs

I'll start with this disclaimer before I start kicking some ass: Yes, I have real problems. I have real shit to deal with. I probably shouldn't spend my time or my energy giving this another thought. This is why my mom always said I think too much. On the other hand, it pisses me off that mean girls grow up to be mean women, and also I haven't written a rant this month yet, so tonight I'm going to tell you what I think about this shit.

An open letter to anybody who thinks this is funny:

What the fuck is wrong with you? In this scenario we have three women: a woman whom you perceive is rich and snooty; you, the woman who thinks another woman -- a stranger -- is rich and snooty and who furthermore wants to put her in her place; and an unseen woman who works in a grocery store and probably thinks you're pretty snooty yourself.

Let's start with the rich and snooty woman. How the hell can you tell if a woman you don't even know is rich and snooty? By the way she dresses? What if she just came from a funeral? Or a job interview and she really hopes she got the job because they're about to lose their house and she didn't make a point of smiling at your stranger face because she's preoccupied with her own life? What if she just likes to look nice when she goes out? My guess is she's just minding her own fucking business and doesn't even know she's offended you just because you decided she is rich and snooty and will be offended when you ask her where the almond milk is. And my other guess is that you've been watching too much Schitt's Creek, but really, mean girl, what made you decide this particular woman should be the target of your desire for comeuppance?

Can you tell by the items in her cart? Is she buying truffles, $25/pound wild salmon, thick Kobe beef steaks, a case of Champagne .... what the hell do these rich bitches eat that the rest of us don't? And what the hell is in your cart that makes you so fucking proud? I'll tell you what I judge: a cart full of Cheetos and Fruit Loops and hot dogs and Capri Sun and Wonder Bread and Coke and ... Get my drift? But hey. If your cart is loaded down with fresh fruits and vegetables, lean free-range meat, hearty whole grains, and just a bit of slave-free dark chocolate, you win a ham sandwich! Judge away.

Maybe you can tell by the obvious Botox in her non-existent frown lines? By the fact that her face doesn't move even when you ask her where the toothpaste aisle is, even though your entire plan for the day is to fuck with her world? Or maybe her face didn't move because she wasn't offended that you think she works in a grocery store. More on that.

Can you tell by the tiny teacup poodle with a diamond collar in her handbag? By the color of her hair, which looks gorgeous and just a little too natural? The color of her skin? Shall we go there? Yeah, I didn't think so. How the fuck do you tell?

One of my many part-time jobs is to shop for someone who could probably be considered rich at a grocery store where lots of people who are wealthier than I will ever be shop. I have to tell you, I don't even notice if the other women there look rich or not. I couldn't tell you if they're snooty or not either, although I can tell you sometimes one will butt in line at the deli so I assume she's either rude or impervious to my death stare or preoccupied or simply stupid. If I were dressed up for some reason and went there to shop for someone else (for food that I will throw away a week later, but that's another issue), might you think I was rich and snooty? Might you ask me what aisle the tampons are in?

I don't really want to talk about the second woman -- you -- because I don't like you, and I'm giving you more attention than you deserve, and I'm here to talk to your classist ass.

What about the third woman, the woman who works in a grocery store. The woman whose position in life is so low you certainly wouldn't want to be her. I mean, you'll let her ring up your purchases and bag your groceries -- unless she's lost her job because now you're doing all that for yourself. But no. Cashiers and baggers and stockers of shelves still have jobs in grocery stores where rich, snooty women shop. And apparently where you shop. Thank you, Jesus, you don't have to work in a grocery store though, right? You're not rich and snooty, but you're also not .... that poor.

(Ooops. Did I mention I grocery shop for a rich woman? Yeah, most really rich women don't do their own grocery shopping. Snooty or not, they have people who do that for them and it puts food on our tables.)

This reminds me of when men call other men by feminine names. You know, when men call boys "girls" and it's the biggest insult because no guy wants to be a girl. Nobody with a dick should fall so low as to be like a girl. And yet here we have women -- you -- doing it to other women. Pretending an alleged rich and snooty woman is someone who works in a grocery store because you think that's such an insult. Who is the real cunt here?

In conclusion, I think we've determined that the problem is not the alleged rich, snooty woman and it's certainly not the grocery store employee. The problem is you. The problem is that you decided today that you wanted to put someone down because .... I don't know why and I don't give even 1/3 of a fuck really. You've probably got a therapist and you still don't know what makes you happy. Obviously though it makes you feel better to insult two classes of women who never did a damn thing to you and who don't even know you with your stupid meme. Really. Fuck you. Jesus is not on your side here and he didn't even think rich people could get through the eye of a needle.

Schitts Creek GIF from Schitts GIFs

I am not defending rich people. I'm fucking sick of the greedy pigs and I think we should make them pay some taxes -- how about at my rate? -- and then eat them. But this isn't about that. This is mean girl shit that you should have put away in 7th grade. I've always hated this kind of behavior, and I'm embarrassed for you that you still think this is funny. Find another way to "keep things real." Like minding your own fucking business.

This rant has been brought to you by someone who is sick of the lack of civility in this country. Can I get an amen?

Sincerely,
Reticula

Day 13: If we were sharing a post-election bottle of bourbon ....

I know. I know. I missed a day. I was spending time with a friend who was visiting from out of town, and we stayed up too late, and I missed. I will make it up though. By the end of the month, I will have posted 30 times. I can imagine how disappointed you must have been to get up this morning, immediately check for a new post here, only to find ..... nothing. I am so sorry. Then again, I've published 623 624 posts here on this old blog. Have you read all of them? Really? Because I'm pretty sure even I haven't read all of them.

For tonight's post, imagine we're sitting on my couch (too cold for the porch), cuddled up under my fuzziest blanket (which leaves something that looks like cat hair all over your clothes), drinking good bourbon (Old Scout for me), eating buttered popcorn, complaining about the dog's farts, and talking about some shit. Or rather, since you're not really here, I'm talking about some shit.

Like the election. Ain't that some shit? I decided to stop saying "I'm good. You?" when someone asks me how I am. I say, "I've been better." Or, "I'm angry/scared/ sad." People are kind of taken aback. I don't care. You shouldn't ask that question if you don't want the answer. But I get that they don't know how to respond. They do their best.

But when they hug me and say, "It's going to be OK. We'll be OK," I say, "No, it's not and we're not. But thanks for trying to make me feel better." Or, "You're right. We probably won't even know the nukes hit." (I lie. I would never say that.)

People mean well, but I simply can't fake it right now. I don't want to. I'm tired of acting like things are OK when we really just stepped in a big, steaming pile of national dog shit.

********
I've decided I need to take better care of myself, no matter how raw I feel. After a really shitty Thursday, I went to ecstatic dance Friday night. Coraline's step-aunt asked if she could spend the night, so I had a few unexpected adult hours to enjoy.

As always, it felt good to move my body and use muscles I forget to use unless I'm dancing and trancing. And as always TOM (That One Man) was there. That one man who comes to get attention from women whether we want to give it to him or not. Last time he behaved very strangely after my group shut him out and even stopped dancing for a while because he wouldn't leave us alone. He circled the room and made random bird noises for probably half an hour, even during the last meditative songs when everybody else was sitting quietly. We're supposed to bow with prayer hands and say "Namaste" if we don't want someone to dance with us, but he didn't give me a chance Friday night. He'd just brush by and then away with his back turned. So instead of staying in my own safe bubble, I had to stay constantly alert for him .... Yeah, TOM shows up at a lot of events and meetings. I'm going to talk more about him in future posts. I'm still glad I went, but this week more than any other in my life, I needed for all the men in the room to back the fuck off. (Some women who were new there actually liked what he was doing, so ....whatever. Perspective. If I showed you a video, you'd see what I mean.)

Not to put such a negative spin on it, I'm so grateful this is something I share with my daughter-in-law Montana. At the end of the session, I was sitting on the floor with my legs straight out just soaking up the sounds, and she came over and sat across from me with the bottoms of her feet against the bottoms of my feet. It was just right. And all the other people who go are just right too. It's always just TOM.

Afterwards some of us went to a local bar to listen to some blues. And, yes, there was a TOM I used to date and had to block from texting me there, but he didn't bother me, so it was OK. Besides, I suspect my son would have had something to say if he had, and I didn't want to deal. Women aren't the only ones who are fed the fuck up with the way a lot of men act.

Saturday Coraline and I went to the farmer's market where I work and commiserated with our friends there about the election. Then my friend Colorado came to visit, and Coraline went off to celebrate her dad's birthday and spend the night with her other grandparents. Two free nights in a row are rare for me. I had to take advantage.

Colorado and I went out for dinner and ate forbidden foods -- BLT's with avocado and goat cheese (even the fucking bread), and the best sweet potato fries in town. Then we went with my son Drake and Montana to a new blues club, which is in an old bank built in 1928, and is actually blue inside, to hear some friends play. We drank some lovely designer cocktails, listened to some sultry blues, and then came home and stayed up until 4:00 face-chatting with Colorado's sister and drinking more bourbon. I paid for that when the alarm went off for church, but fuck it. The world could actually end this time.

This afternoon I went to a writing workshop for the next All the Sex Monologues, which will happen in fall 2017. We'll be raising money for Planned Parenthood, so it felt good to get to work on something positive and exciting that will counter some of the negativity from the bullies on the Right. I felt like I had found a bit of ground where I could dig in and make a difference. Of course, there was TOW there, but I don't want to write about her. I'll just say I'm grateful for my kids and my friends and the opportunities I had to find peace for just a while this weekend.

**********
So the weekend was a start on taking better care of myself. I know I need to do better in my daily life though. I've had some health issues that I'll write about in another post. I need to lose weight. Coraline and I both eat too much sugar. I need to go to the gym and get stronger. Take the dog on more walks. Write more, Facebook a lot less. Get my house in order for winter. Nothing new there.

But I also want to cut my hair off even if, as a friend reminded me, everybody will think I'm a lesbian, like happened last time I did that. I'm not only tired of hair maintenance though, I'm tired of following gender-biased rules for how I should look. Eventually I might even shave it off like one of the cool kids. I am one angry feminist right now, and I'd like to show that in some physical way. Getting a tattoo that says "Fuck the patriarchy" isn't really my style.

Finally, I'm going to make a real effort to go to the Million Women March on DC in January. I've never done anything like that, and I always resented that I missed being old enough in the 60's to join the protests. And if anybody has anything to say about whether women should be protesting the unpopular election of a rapey old orange hairball for POTUS, you can fuck right off. Comparing Donald Trump with President Obama is insulting and ridiculous. Nobody was ever coming after your fucking guns, but they are coming after my vagina. So I'm going to be there.

Anybody else going?

I guess it's obvious from this post our conversation would probably be pretty grim at times if we were really sharing a bottle of bourbon. Anger. Tears. Searching for connection and hope. Trying to find a laugh or a dance or a song where there is one. It's going to take more than that, of course, but we honor the grief first. And then we start kicking some ass so we don't lose all of our rights and the planet too. Women's work is never fucking done.

It's not what's in your genes that's the problem

(Stolen from the internet)

(Note: Last night's post was number 500! I didn't even know I had that much to say. Thanks for reading all of them, which I'm sure you've all done. If not, read up. You never know when we'll have a pop quiz.)

I was a feminist when I was in the womb. I'm not sure how that happened, because I didn't get it from my mom, and the last thing I remember my sperm donor saying, during the short time we were in contact, is this charming ditty about an 18-year-old cheerleader he hoped to date: "Old enough to bleed; old enough to breed." And then I said, "Buh bye, Daddy. Thanks for the sperm."

Feminism has changed throughout the decades of my life. In  junior high, we were the first class of girls who were allowed to wear pants to school. Not jeans, but pants. In high school, we branched out into jeans, butt-cheek-short skirts, and shirts that showed our midriffs. I plastered my bedroom walls with Virginia Slims ads I'd torn from magazines. Smoking long, thin cigarettes indicated I was an independent woman, so don't fuck with me. Going to college came next, over the protests of my dad (technically my stepdad, but my dad), who said I didn't need a college degree, because I'd only end up back in our small rural town in SW Iowa married to a farmer's son. And then once I'd earned that degree at age 29, feminism took a radical turn when I decided to become a breast-feeding, stay-at-home mom and eventually homeschool my kids. What was important was that it was my choice, not something my husband forced on me. I felt like I was claiming my innate feminine power.

Fast forward to now, and we're still fighting the battle. We're still shouting to be heard over the catcalls, often to no avail. Men are still trying to tell us what we should put into our vaginas and what can come out of our vaginas. We are photoshopped and botoxed and liposuctioned and held to a standard of thinness and youth we can never meet, even the thinnest and most youthful of us. We're still catcalled and treated like pieces of ass and raped and even murdered by the men who claim to love us.

We tell our stories, our powerful stories, and in return we hear, "Not all men...." We're called man-haters by the misogyinists who, by definition, hate us for being women. When we say, "Yes, all women" goddamn it we mean, "YES, ALL WOMEN. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU OR YOUR EGO. SHUT UP AND LISTEN."

I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall. I've run out of words. I've used them all, and change takes so fucking long.

So tonight, I'd like to just share some gems from the internet. Some of them I'm sure you've seen, especially the first one. It's gone viral. I even watched it with my senior class, and I suspect we could spend a month on just this video.

It's complicated, this video, because it's so obvious these men desperately want her attention, think they deserve her attention, think their attention is a compliment, that she should be flattered. They're showing their brilliant plumage, whether she wants to see it or not.

One guy on a friend's Facebook made the point that women should wear a burka if they don't want men to flatter them with attention. He said we obviously like it or we'd do something about it. Call it out. Stand up for ourselves. I told him he's an asshole, but OK. Point made. Here's a video that contrasts the experience of a woman dressed in normal Western garb and a woman dressed in jihab.

Obviously, the problem is our clothing, not those men who think their commentary on the bodies and expressions of strange women needs to be shouted out on the street. If all women were to wear long, dark dresses and cover our hair and faces, then everybody could simmer the fuck down and act like civilized human beings. Right?

Thanks, but no thanks. Fuck you. Women's clothing isn't the problem. How do I know? Because of these two websites, among others. Straight white boys texting takes us inside the world of online dating, and the crazy, insulting way men treat women there. It's certainly not about how women are dressed if most of these men are just trying to get a boob shot. (Warning: This site is a train wreck. I was 77 pages in before I could look away.) And then there's Bye, Felipe, a site that calls out men who become mean and aggressive and general dickheads when they don't get what they want -- often simply a quick response.

(I wish I could say these sites surprise me, but they don't. Even at my advanced age, I still deal with this shit from men. Felipe's got nothing on a former male faux friend who couldn't accept that friendship was what I had to offer him .... and that I considered my fine friendship a pretty decent gift even though it didn't come with my vagina -- no pun intended. He eventually became both emotionally and physically abusive, a typical example of nice guy syndrome. It's a sorry world when I have to warn women to beware of men who are too nice, but I've got stories! I digress ...)

Men, I think we can assume, don't have the same experiences as women who walk down the street minding their own business.

A troubling number of mansplainers came up with the brilliant and scientifically loaded idea that the boys-will-be-boys in the first video were simply following their biological imperative to let a fine-ass woman know how much he appreciates her (in case, you know, she might want to accept his seed-loaded penis into her vagina based on the quality of his superior cat calls). Here's one guy who has all the answers.

In a nutshell, men can't help themselves and women should take it as a compliment, and also we only say we don't like it, but really we love it when men call out our body parts and tell us how much they love them, or even worse, don't love them because we're fat bitches. He says men can't help it because it's in their genes. I suspect he means jeans .... For fuck's sake, is this guy even somebody's son? Does he have a mother? Smug bastard.

Moving on ....

Other people followed a different red herring and berated the producers for showing too many Black and Hispanic men, leaving the impression that this kind of behavior might be cultural and not just the normal expression of every man's residual cave-man genes.

If the jihad video didn't already debunk the "not cultural" explanation, this one should.

So, as it turns out, not all men behave that way under these circumstances. Maybe they've found a way to override their biological imperatives? Maybe they aren't real men? And yet, New Zealand has a reputation for being one of the more sexist countries in the world. Why aren't they behaving toward this model the same way men in NYC did toward that totally normal woman, and what excuse do we give now for those many New Yorkers who do behave like Fred and Barney? Maybe this video will make it clearer.

I get it. The problem is that women can't catch footballs as well as men. So much has become clear now.

I'm preaching to the choir, aren't I? I've just wasted all these words and videos, because you all got it before the first video, didn't you?

Well, maybe not all of you. Tomorrow, or maybe Sunday, I'm going to share with you a comment from a man who clearly hates my guts (not because I tried to be his friend; that's not happening) because I'm an American woman. And he took the time to stop by and share both his disdain and a link to his disdainful website. If he could, he would probably leave me a photo of his penis so he could get really mad when I didn't appreciate it enough. In any case, his comment proves only that some people who stop by and read aren't feminists at all, but fall into that surprisingly common category of men who think they know what's best for all women, if we would just shut up, fix them a ham sandwich, and give them a blowjob.

In all seriousness, I'm fully fed up with this conversation. A friend asked me tonight what the solution is, and I don't fucking  know. It's complicated and divisive and I probably can't and won't stop talking about it, because these attitudes like the ones in the first video lead to rape and physical and emotional abuse and lower wages and children and mothers living in poverty and all that shit that will not go away even if all women everywhere just shut up and look pretty and give all the blowjobs to all the men.

Good night.

#yourtribenotmine

Tonight is the last post of June. I missed a day that I didn't make up while I was on a mini vacation, but I can live with that. I had a shit ton more things I wanted to write about this month, but I procrastinate. The clock tells me it's 3:03 am, so I'll just share a brief snippet of conversation from karaoke this past Wednesday.

I went to karaoke with my friend The Professor. Neither of us had been in a while, and we spent more time catching up than we did listening to people over-sing on the stage. A note about karaoke: Your friends won't tell you when you suck. Neither will strangers. Nobody gives a fuck.

So a couple of drunk barsexuals were trying to make out and stand up at the same time with limited success right behind me. They kept falling into the back of my chair. I told The Professor I hoped they would end the show they were putting on soon, before they spilled my cider.

He agreed, and then he said, "Going back to that conversation about whether men should complain about how they suffer the same issues as women, you know two men would not be able to do that in this bar tonight."

"I'm sure you're right," I agreed. "Probably wouldn't be safe."

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, as if he'd found a loophole.

"However," I said, "that's not because women would get upset with them. It's because men would get pissed off. That's not our problem either. That's on your tribe."

"Touche," he said. "You're right." We both laughed.

He didn't say anything else about it, and I was grateful. So-called acts of sexism directed at men by men really isn't sexism. It might be called bullying or assault or simply intolerance, but it's not sexism.

The end. I deleted everything else I had to say about it, because those who get it are already singing in the choir, and those who don't get it, won't hear the message anyway.

If you think I'm sexy ....

I'm sitting here on my couch at almost 2:00 am wondering what the hell I should write about tonight. There's always my old standby, vaginas, but believe it or not, some people think I write about vaginas too much, and they'd like me to write about something else.

So I've been thinking what topic has bumped into me most often in the past few days. You'll be surprised to learn it wasn't vaginas, but feminism. And in particular, the part men play in those issues that concern feminists. And in particular, what men can do about it.

The first incident that stands out is one that happened on Facebook. A friend, fellow writer, and former colleague at the university where I used to teach posted something about a female writer he admires. He said she's a great writer and that she's sexy as hell ... and then he wrote a parenthetical disclaimer for his feminist friends to indicate he wasn't trying to offend.

Offend? Listen, if a guy -- or a woman, for that matter -- wants to tell me I'm a great writer and then follows that with I'm sexy as hell, I'm going to be anything but offended. And I am a feminist, but there's nothing wrong with thinking and saying somebody is sexy. Not one damn thing. My friend obviously admired several of the writer's qualities, and her sexiness was only one of them.

Who wouldn't appreciate that? I would. In fact, I'd say "great writer" and "sexy" are on my top 10 compliments a man can give me. Or a woman. Yes, it would make me blush, but in a good way.

I can see why men get confused though. Because some people -- feminists included -- have been known to confuse a genuine compliment with sexual objectification or harassment. Although I can't speak for all feminists (and certainly many feminists would argue that my status as a stay-at-home mom and homeschooler of many years would deny me the privilege of speaking for any feminists), I offer these examples to distinguish the difference.

Imagine man #1 posted something about me on Facebook: "Reticula's a great writer. I read every one of her blog posts at least 5 times. And she's sexy as hell too. She kicks my ass on the bike trail though."

Assuming he hasn't just walked right through a restraining order, this man gets a 

(screencrush.com)

As far as I'm concerned, man #1 can continue on in that vein indefinitely. Hell, take out a fucking billboard. Too bad he's probably married.

Now imagine man #2 posted about me on Facebook: "Reticula writes a lot about vaginas on her blog. Hee. Hee. Now that's one vagina I'd like to ...."

Doesn't matter what the rest of the sentence is. Much as I love vaginas, this dickhead gets a 

(sodahead.com)

One more example.

Man #1 says: "I love boobs."

Batman loves boobs too.

Man #2 says: "Did you see that pair of tits that just walked by. Man, I wish she'd come closer so I could make like a motorboat and ...."

Simon loves boobs. He hates man #2.

I'm going to write more about objectifying women as body parts in a couple of days. These are actually mild examples, but man #2 is still going to make the average feminist's head spin and spew pea soup. He needs to pipe the fuck down.

If anybody doesn't get my point with these 2 examples, just ask. I can come up with dozens.

Like I said, this issue bumped into me several times this week. And the prevailing idea is that it's time for men to stop making this a women's problem and start kicking some ass from within their own tribe. Or army.

For example, watch Lieutenant General David Morrison,  Chief of (the  Australian) Army, dress down his own troops. It takes him 3 minutes to kick the bar back up where it belongs.

Salute! This speech will make a difference, because General Morrison means it, soldier. I believe he will follow through. I haven't seen a high-ranking US military officer make a similar statement though, despite an epidemic of rape among our troops. Too bad it had to be an  Aussie who kicked some soldier ass.

And he's sexy. Mmm. Love a man in uniform.

This next video is longer, but it won't seem long when you watch it. If you're a man, please watch it. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your stories.

If you're a woman, watch it because it's time we taught this to our sons and held them to a higher standard, damn it. They need to battle something besides video game zombies if they're going to change the world. And, yes, I already taught my son this stuff.

Only a man could give this message: Men's violence against women is not a women's issue. It's a men's issue that cruelly affects women and other men. Men are the ones who can stop it. Women have had to call it out, and take the heat for doing so, but men have to stop it.

Thank you, Dr. Jackson Katz, for a lesson in gender-relations common sense. You are my hero. And OMG, you are so sexy. If you ever lose that gold band on your left hand, you know where to find me.

Seriously though, neither General Morrison's nor Dr. Katz's videos would have gone viral this week if more men stood up to other men when they're verbally or physically abusing a woman. Or when they're talking about women in a way that is verbally abusive. Women can't fix that shit alone. It's too easy to make us either the victims or the ball-busting bullies, and then say we're PMSing bitches or man-haters.

I will attest that a lot of men stand by and watch other men behave terribly for reasons I don't understand. If I had to guess, maybe it's that they don't want to rock the boat or they don't want to seem like pussies or they don't want to lose a friend. Or maybe they just aren't the white knights a lot of them think they are. Yeah, that's a challenge, boys.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Any experiences you'd like to share?