Trust Me

Before you leave for work, check that your crock pot is on “low” not “warm” or you will eat cereal for dinner.

An Irrational Superstition that Dr. King Saved Us From

This post is so brilliant you should just go read it.  But I will warn you now that I find this so profound

Racism is a much more manageable social evil if we believe it’s nothing but an irrational hatred. If it’s just a bunch of people who hate because they’re crazy, then we can shun them and continue to be racist in our own ways, with the excuse that we’re just rational about it. Which is why there’s such a problem explaining to people why this tide of anti-immigrant sentiment is so racist, because it doesn’t resemble the racism they were taught about in schools, the racism that’s largely a myth. We’re taught that racism was this irrational superstition that Dr. King saved us all from with his rational speechifying. And anti-immigrant sentiment has all these arguments for it, about jobs and language and all sorts of things. Totally different.

But of course, racism is a system that has real, tangible benefits for the dominant race, as this lynching example shows. And the excuses offered to create the illusion of moral righteousness for the troops of enforcers always exist.

that you should expect me to continue to make it explicit when I discuss the immigration issue.

BREAKING NEWS! Bill Hobbs Still Hates Muslims

Dang, head propagandist over at the TNGOP, Bill Hobbs, is the gift that keeps on giving. Every week, it seems, he manages to draw attention to how much he hates Muslims.  Well, and Barak Obama, who is, as you may know, secretly a black nationalist, funky Christian, terrorist-sympathizing, gay, homophobic, church-choir-member-murdering, shrill-wife-having, affair-having, secret Muslim, so it’s the same thing.

And this time, he gets to get in the National Enquirer and so, instead of just telling other political wonks that he hates Muslims, he’s now told every grocery shopper in America.

Bill, relax.  I think everyone now knows.

See Cobb,  KAG, Tiny Pasture, Newscoma, and so forth.

Martin Kennedy, I Hereby Challenge You to a Duel

Isn’t that what you dudes do when your honor has been besmirched?  Well, consider your face slapped with my glove.

I would accuse you of deliberate intellectual dishonesty–and I may here in a second, if I don’t calm down–but I have had this conversation with other men and so I’m going to clarify for you, just this once:

“The patriarchy” does not mean “the men.”

Dismantling the patriarchy does not mean getting rid of men.

I mean, for gods’ sake, if my goal was to just get rid of men, why would I be worried about how many black men are sitting in prison?  Wouldn’t I and my feminist sisters be sitting around all “Woo hoo!  How do we improve the incarceration rates among non-black men?  How do we also ensure that one in three white guys in the prime of their lives are sitting in prison and out of our hair?”

If “the patriarchy” bothers you so much, we can use another term, but it doesn’t change the fact that rich white men in this country have hegemony–that the system is set up to give them power and keep them in power and that it’s been very difficult for those of us who aren’t men or who aren’t white to break into the power structure, let alone rise up in it.

And really, you know what?  You know me.  You have shared time with me and enjoyed my company.  So, for you to come here and say to me, “I would suggest that the vast majority of women would agree that the men in their lives enhance their lives.” like I don’t feel like the men in my life enhance my life?

…

…

I, myself, will take this opportunity to refrain from saying something we can’t come back from.

But you’ve gravely insulted me.

I want to change and improve how people get along; I’d like to find a way for men to be in the world that doesn’t revolve around a notion of manhood predicated on some kind of ongoing violent contest to see who has the biggest dick (either really or metaphorically); and you want to turn that around into me hating men?

And then, AND THEN, for you to so directly link the presense of men with the presense of the bullshit power and violence issues, suggesting that, if we don’t want the former, we must reject the latter…

Isn’t that exactly what Egalia was implying yesterday?

She says

The bottom line for me is that the election of Hillary Rodham Clinton would serve as a long overdue blow against the suffocating patriarchy, while the election of Barack Obama would merely result in patriarchy as usual

with the implication being that being a man is the same as being a man who supports and affirms the bullshit power and violence issues that automatically go with being a man in our society.

And we all sit back and shake our heads and cringe at her over-simplifying to the point of foolishness and a bunch of you sit around and tut-tut about what a shame it is that Egalia just seems to think that all men are inherently evil and isn’t she a whack-job?

But you come around here talking the exact same bullshit, about how the presense of men is necessarly the presense of bullshit power and violence issues, talking like I’m the man-hater?

Fuck that shit, Martin Kennedy.

I don’t believe that men are inherently evil.  I don’t believe that all men are secretly rapists, that they secretly, or sometimes openly, take pleasure in the suffering of women.  I don’t believe that men are incapable of having rich emotional lives or of showing love and tenderness.  I don’t believe that their greatest, and sometimes only value to women and children is as a deep pocket.  In short, I don’t believe the things that society tells me about men.

I don’t believe all of you are inherently broken in ways that make you a danger to yourselves and others, even as its obvious that the system is set up to break you in ways that make you dangerous.

I can hate that system, what it does to y’all, how it chews through most of you and fucks you up so that a few of you can remain very powerful, without hating you.

In fact, it’s because I love you that I wish and work for a different way, one that doesn’t thrive on your suffering (especially as your suffering, within the system, is usually placated by giving you tacit approval to take out your pain on those of us who are smaller and weaker than you).

If you didn’t know me, and didn’t see that, I’d say, fine, I need to do a better job of communicating that.

But you do know me.

So, honestly, I don’t know what to make of that.