It's the Message, Not the Tone.

Happy news first: I have been added to the "churlish feminist list" for taking issues with the Self-Appointed Captain in Charge of the Monitor and Correction of Feminism's Tone's tone. God, that feels good. Thanks to all the believers, and especially to Happy Feminist and Redneck Mother for sending folks my way to witness my arrant ceorliscnes for themselves.

Less Happy Non-News:
With all the kerfuffle(love that word) surrounding feminism's tone and its negative effect on feminism's efficacy, etc., there has been little talk of the message the various feminisms are sending. Those of us who are churlish :-) have already recognized that our tone is completely bloody irrelevant when dealing with people who don't wish to hear our views. Our views are inconvenient; our facts are inconvenient. You can't believe yourself to be a pro-feminist man while knowing that your wife works 60 hours a week outside the home, then comes home to make dinner and do the laundry while you read the paper and continue doing nothing about it. Feminism is a pain in the ass when it forces you to see how you benefit from, or are taken advantage of by, rather arbitrary sexist roles and beliefs. I could tie that information up in a little pink bow, and it would still be unpalatable.

An example from real life:
Last week in a cross-listed Women's studies and Rhetoric class here at Microburg U., a young man who considers himself pro-feminist presented an argument he considered a defense of an early feminist writer, and based on his assumption that the patriarchy is now dead. The remainder of the class listened to his argument respectfully, as is appropriate in a classroom setting, then very calmly told him that the patriarchy may not be as open as it once was, but in fact lives on. The others provided the young man with unemotional examples of how sex differences and prejudice still inform some aspects of our everyday lives. Because he and I had spoken several times in the past, he looked at me for affirmation of his argument, which in this case I couldn't give him. I did give him the rueful look/nod combination that is standard for telling someone you'd like to help, but in this case you can't. His argument was based on a fallacy, and was therefore false. As far as I was concerned, we were a group of academics sharing information to better our understanding. Flash forward to today. The young man has quit the class because he "doesn't need to listen to rabid feminism." There was no rabidity. As men were not mentioned, there was none of the "man-bashing" that is the standard cry against feminism. The information was simply inconvenient to this young man.

Flash back several years:
An undergrad sociology class I took. The professor set up the class so that we would look at one social issue from every possible angle for the entire course. The first half of the course we read men sociologists, and for the second half of the semester we read women sociologists. The women attended class throughout the course, but the men simply stopped attending when it was time to read women sociologists, because "they didn't need to listen to rabid feminism." Hm.

Aside from the fact that I would still be in fifth grade if I left class everytime an idea that was insulting to women came up, these men are not responding to the tone of the women speaking. The tone in both these classes was information sharing among equals. The information is the problem. Hearing a viewpoint that doesn't, like every other thing in the world, validate you more than everybody else is more than these young men decided to handle. Tone had nothing to do with it.

Swá we eác settað be eallum hádum, ge ceorle ge eorle

(So also we ordain for all degrees, whether to churl or earl - From the Laws of Alfred, translated in Bosworth-Toller).

Imagine my delight when some punk with some serious entitlement issues blog-published his evidence of "churlish feminism," to prove to feminists that their (our actually, although I'm not even mentioned. Damn it!) complaints would be better received by the patriarchy if they were dipped in chocolate, sprinkled with non-pareils, and presented on a satin pillow along with a suitably subservient apology for interrupting the important business of football season. Imagine how my delight became ecstasy as aforementioned punk claimed that he was not either suggesting to women that they be ladylike, like all those mean churlish feminists said. He was just trying to help n stuff. Gee!

There are very few moments that can reasonably be described as feminist medievalist heaven; this is one. In responding to this "nice guy," I get to talk about Anglo-Saxon society, words, and unintended irony. And I get to do all of this while asserting a feminist's right to use whatever damned tone she pleases. Christmas has been extended this year! Yay!

See, yonder punk, for all his protestations of rhetorical superiority, does not attend to language. If he did, he would know that the word churl (OE. ceorl m.) is historically, and currently, loaded with class distinction. In fact it was a class distinction. Just like the word lady (OE. hlafdige f.) was, and is. To oversimplify, there were three classes of free *men*(neither slave nor royal) in A-S England; ealdormen (later eorls, upper nobility), ðegns (petty nobility, they held less land, were most often warriors in a greater lord's service, and could rise to ealdorman status), and ceorls (small land-holders, primarily concerned with farming duties, although they were also permitted to carry weapons, participate in community gatherings, and redress grievances). Ceorl could also be used to simply denote "man." A single woman was ceorlleas (man-less), the verb denoting women marrying was ceorlian (literally, something like "to acquire a man").The adjective churlish (ceorlisc) however, carried with it then as now the distinction of being proper to the common man, i.e. vulgar. When it was applied to women, however, it meant that the women were behaving in a manly fashion, and that was unseemly. Unless it wasn't. One compound of ceorl was the word ceorlstrang (strong as a man), used to describe exceptional women and boys.

The wives and daughters of ceorls were not hlafdiges, they were simply wifs. To be a hlafdige, a woman would have to be attached in some way to a ðegn or better.

In using the word churlish to describe feminist behavior he doesn't like, this non-noble man who is admonishing Twisty, BitchPhD et al. is saying "be weaker," or "be less like men," or "be more like the wives and daughters of highly ranking men." In short, "be ladylike." To which I say, "no."

But perhaps Ancrene Wiseass' cries of "churl power!" are even better.

What's That Got To Do With the Price of an Intact Hymen in China?

It seems that exporting bad food and groundless optimism to China is not our only cultural contribution to the next superpower. Now that women are beginning to be treated with some semblance of dignity in the east, two fine examples of Chinese patriarchy have come together to get around the wild new world of free-ish women by encouraging wealthy men and properly virtuous and malleable girls to marry each other.

As reported by the NYT, Women who "applied for the job" of being married to billionaires responded to the shock expressed by others around them with these gems:

"Isn't the purpose of saving our virginity to get a good price?"
No, darling, the purpose of saving your virginity is to have sex only when you want to, and with a man you're interested in fucking.

Another woman defended her application thusly:

"Things are different from before because everyone has a right to choose," said the applicant, Wang Yue, who said that in a physical relationship, feelings could always be developed later. "If Americans can be liberal, why can't Chinese?

Young lady, I think it my duty to inform you that accepting and pursuing the commodification of your hymen as that which makes you valuable is NOT liberal. Consider what happens after the first sexual encounter in your marriage. Will you only be a valuable woman for that one time? You're being played, and you don't even know it. I want to give you some advice my great-grandmother gave everyone she could get to stand still for 7 seconds: When you marry for money, you earn every last penny. Consider the implications of that before filling out any more applications. I hope you will see the size of the bullet you just dodged by not being chosen.

What's Missing in this Picture?

This is a picture of BushCo signing the "Partial-birth abortion ban" (a.k.a. late-term abortion ban, if you're one o' them evil scientific "facty" types) into law in 2003. How happy all those present seem to be in putting an end to the millions of late-term abortions that occur every year because women don't like stretch-marks. What's that you say? These are generally emergency procedures, occuring only when the life of the woman is at stake? This illegal law doesn't provide a reasonable exemption for the life of the woman, you say? That can't be so, because these people are all pro-life. Ask them, they'll tell you. Except they aren't pro-life, and they aren't pro-human sanctity either. What they are is anti-female autonomy. Period. This aggression towards women shows itself as a moral opposition to abortion, or contraception, or sexual education that educates people about sex, or even social programs that make pregnancy and child-bearing less frightening, but it all stems from a central thesis: women and their bodies rightfully belong to men and/or the state, and must be governed by men and/or the state. There's an astonishing lack of uteri in this group. And that is very much the point.

Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the United States 33 years ago today. In re-legalizing abortion (which had been legal in the US prior to xenophobic concerns in the middle 19th century), the Supreme Court of the time recognized that women, much like people, are people. The wingnuts and their little kinglet have spent the time since trying to get an American woman's right to bodily autonomy revoked. They are frighteningly close to achieving that goal.

This will not be the best post, because I cannot begin to adequately express the rage I feel when pro-birthers speak. I recognize their hypocrisy for what it is, and I resent the insult to my intelligence. I do not consider it incumbent upon me to prove my own humanity to my legislature, nor do I for one second believe that my legislature would demand that every healthy citizen donate blood for the benefit of another citizen who will die without it, so the whole "a fetus has the right to live regardless of the woman's wishes" argument does not fly with me. Nor does the adoptive home argument. I owe nobody a baby.

There are, however, a few things I can and will say. Should this, my country, decide that it has the legal right to co-opt my body for its own purposes, to declare me a less-than-human less-than citizen because I was born with a uterus, I will no longer consider the laws of this land applicable to me. Period. Should the democratic party continue in their "roll over and play dead strategy" of declaring women and their rights "fringe issues," rather than fighting for the civil rights of all citizens, the democratic party will no longer recieve my votes. Period.

Doing My Part for Corporate America

via Majikthise, in turn via Miscellaneous Heathen

Even if Hefeweizen is just plain nasty beer, this ad is a must-see. As Majikthise says, Reinheitsgebot & cute sells.

Fun for me!

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Heo Cwaeth!

1. When provoked, Heo Cwaeth will swivel the tip of her abdomen and shoot a jet of boiling chemicals at her attacker.
2. Heo Cwaeth, from the movie of the same name, had green blood.
3. You can tell if Heo Cwaeth has been hard-boiled by spinning her. If she stands up, she is hard-boiled!
4. Medieval knights put the skin of Heo Cwaeth on their sword handles to improve the grip.
5. Heo Cwaeth has a bifurcated penis.
6. The colour of Heo Cwaeth is no indication of her spiciness, but size usually is!
7. Heo Cwaeth is actually a vegetable, not a fruit.
8. Heo Cwaeth is picked, sorted and packed entirely in the field.
9. You should always store Heo Cwaeth in an airtight container in the fridge.
10. New Zealand was the first place to allow Heo Cwaeth to vote!

Cranky

I'll spare you the saga of graduate-school funding (yea or nay?) that I've been dealing with for the entire break, because the program hadn't figured out whom they would hire as late as last Monday. I'm sure many of you have dealt with the same situation. And, while I find this non-information epically rude as a professional practice and extraordinarily insensitive to the basic needs of students from an educator's perspective, I've accepted that my department is a slow-moving beast. I know that first year grad students in my department are not funded, but rather hired on a semester basis, as needed, and at a greatly reduced rate of compensation. (Still, a person would like to know whether they need to seek employment and funding elsewhere before, say, it's too late.) I've even accepted the fact that the ability to blow shit up is demonstrably more valuable to our society than the ability to think, speak, and write well. Humanities folks learn that early on.

What is driving me absolutely mad is the dedication the department has to graduate student ignorance. I have been confused. I have directed simple and pointed questions to people who have the answers to those questions. In return, I have received gentle smiles and circumlocution. Still confused by the original problem, and now irritated at the insult to my intelligence (I'm a GD Language and Lit major, people, I know when you're distracting me with non-answers peppered with football scores), I have consulted others in my peer group who have received demonstrably false information when they pressed for answers to their questions. Playing the good little simpering half-wit with which my professors clearly prefer to deal, I have smiled right back and pretended I'm satisfied to wait until they deign to come up with an answer, even a plausible lie. Others, knowing these ropes, do the same. Department meetings are as filled with code-words, expected mannerisms, and profoundly unpleasant pleasantries as the average Jane Austen novel or DAR function.

Let us assume for a moment that the answers to my questions, and those of my peers, might be hurtful truths. This is reasonable to assume when one sees another fidgeting away from answering a question, I think. Wouldn't it be nice if we, as students, were told what exactly was going on, and why? Even if it hurt? Wouldn't it be much more instructive, if momentarily unpleasant, if those we had charged with assessing our performance in this portion of our educational journey would say "You've done this poorly, and you failed to do that well. Here's how one goes about fixing these problems"? If the answers are not hurtful truths, just inconvenient ones, then wouldn't it be ultimately kinder to explain whatever the situation is, so that we are not left paranoid about our own abilities?

Seriously, folks, playing simpering half-wit while being openly lied to or equivocated with is extremely bad for my blood pressure. I'm not sure how many false smiles I have left, and I really don't want to release the Kraken this early in the game.

Hence, one cranky Heo.