pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IRON BOYZ AND THOSE PESKY FORENSIC VAGINA SPECIALISTS This morning, I learned that people who are 325. employed to check vaginas for evidence of abortions are referred to as forensic vagina specialists. I also learned that Harvard�s Harvey Mansfield has written a celebration of privilege that Yale University Press�poor Harv. I guess his own school wouldn�t publish his sexist diatribe after it ousted its prez because of his propensity to mutter sexist crapola�published. In Manliness, Mansfield claims that, among other things, women secretly like housework and changing diapers, whereas men not-so-secretly like war and look down on so-called women�s work. Now that women are equal, he asserts, women should be able to accept being told that they aren't, quite. Huh. Equal? In what universe? I think it�s time you slide down from your ivory tower on your own slug slime ,Harv, because you ain�t making any women wet, lemmetellya, and you really need to check out the real world where salary inequities and caring for children and smaller statures and misogyny and egregious inequities and organized religion etc. etc. etc. keep far too many women under the thumbs of far too many men who, lemme guess, are just being men when they act like bullies and treat women violently. And can I remind you that you are writing this shit at a time when men are still working to deprive every woman of the right to control her own body, but suing when men are forced to monetarily support their own offspring)? I kid you not. The National Center for (that poor downtrodden group) Men just filed a lawsuit they�ve dubbed Roe v. Wade for Men on behalf of a twenty-something-year-old jerk who claims that he shouldn�t have to pay child support because the woman he impregnated said she was on birth control and thought she was infertile. But accidents happen, eh? And let me guess. Harvey et al. believe that the stripper who was allegedly gang-raped by members of Duke University�s lacrosse team should bear a child if she becomes pregnant as a result of a sexual assault, but the thugs who impregnated her should not be held monetarily accountable because, gawd, when are women going to accept that boys, the poor things, will just be violence-loving women-hating boys? Meanwhile the National Center for Men continues to whine about how freaking unfair it is that too-good-to-clean-up-after-themselves war-loving men die earlier than women. Can I just say that I am so GawDdamn sick of hearing men celebrate behaving badly, then whine when they are held accountable for their behavior? As Kimberly Gadette says in Wake Up and Smell the Diapers, consuming cheese doodles and beer and lolling on the couch does not make for longevity. Darn the luck, if only men liked housework. By getting off that sofa and washing a floor, scrubbing a toilet, raising a kid, they, too, might live longer. Yeah. Reality bites, iron boyz.
(And ironbirds too, I reckon.) Meanwhile, I wish I were in Durham, NC, attending the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival instead of working, especially because it includes a special Class in America series this year. I say that with some irony, since my ex-wife�s best friend�s British father�a man who actually celebrates his classism and privilege but is way too effete to ever succeed at the physical requirements of being a soldier so maybe isn't really a man after all by Harvey's definition�is one of several judges who selected the films for this festival. Okay. I need to pour my homemade soy parsley soup into a Tupperware and scram. But first, let me note that Lucinda was screaming on my iPod last night and I wasn�t paying much attention as I walked in the garden and so damn near stepped on a great blue heron, which startled the hell out of both of us. Its beak was nipple height to me as it stood beside the bridge and it was so close that I felt the wind from its wings as it flew away. Wow! � (Later) For sale: one Congress to the lobby. Oh wait. That�s old news. So you know how I asked my little sister how long she�d known the man-child she�s marrying? Well I opened my mail last night and discovered that she called with the news on the fifth but mailed a letter to me on the second that doesn�t even mention him. I have to confess that there is a certain logic to her getting married to someone who travels though. This means that she can have her daughter on base with her and get a salary increase and while the wandering-actor-boy gets health insurance. Wonder if she even asked practical questions such as, well, how much debt he carries into their marriage (says the blogger who struggles not to cash out her IRAs after taking on a mortgage meant for two alone)? Lawdie. Meanwhile, scientists discovered a new blue ring around Uranus and I spent the morning editing an analysis of 2003�2004 domestic violence statistics. The statistics are sobering. NC�s domestic violence programs provided services to 45,211 individuals, for example, and its courts issued 11,954 domestic violence protective orders (DVPOs) in that same one-year period. And fifty-eight women were killed by current or former husbands or boyfriends and ten men were killed by current or former wives or girlfriends in that state in the same year. Had my little sister lived there, her run-in with her former boyfriend (who stole her car once and totaled it, then waited till the insurance company replaced it before stealing her next car and totaling it)�a boy who showed up at my mother�s house in the middle of the night drunk to punch my sister as her daughter and my elderly mother tried to stop him�would have made that number 45,212. I am flexible to a fault (until I am not�it�s an INTP thing) and nonviolent�except for when I punched that rat Dickboy for fucking my wife, which he fucking deserved�but, had I been there, the number would have increased to 45,213 because I would have used every karate move I ever learned or taught and every ounce of energy I could muster to break every goddamn bone in that loser�s body as slowly and painfully as possible. I also recognize that doing that would have no benefit other than getting Glittergrrl out of immediate harm�s way, since she will just continue to choose the same kind of men until she learns to value herself. Why is it that three of the five children in my family, despite nightmares about that bloody kitchen and recurrent childhood broken bones and paranoid encounters with our mother and an abusive father and every other bad thing that happened to us, can�at least on the surface�function, but the other two just can�t figure out how to do that? Is it an accident of personality explainable by which of our parents� traits we inherited, the fact that the two who can't get it together are the middle children, or what? Hmmm. And would Pottergrrrl categorize me as functioning or as someone careening toward self destruction because of my occasional potato chip-eating ways? I suppose she would say that three of us are dysfunctional, not two. Whatevuh. I gotta post this now, because it�s time to meet my pal at the gym. LISTENING TO: Siouxie and the Banshees 12:36 a.m. - 2006-4-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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