In Defence Of… Patton Oswalt @pattonoswalt

Earlier this week I watched (for the first time) American TV Show Justified, about a cop working in small town Kentucky, amidst gangsters, drug dealers and evangelical Christians. The episode I watched featured a great guest performance from well known American comic Patton Oswalt. He and his co-star played a lovely Stan and Olly routine as they bungled their way through some dodgy moonlighting police work, destined to go wrong.

The next thing I knew Oswalt was the subject of a Salon article by Molly Knefel chastising him for failing to speak out against rape and violence against women. Oswalt had previously defended Daniel Tosh against a feminist blogger who slammed him for making rape jokes. Feminists are angry with him for showing empathy for the victims of the Boston bombings, but not for women who are raped or assaulted (- by men. I don’t think this row is about lesbian rape). Knefel wrote in Salon:

‘What is challenging, though, is speaking out against the normalization of sexual violence, the degradation of women, and the role and responsibility that men have in either perpetuating or combating rape culture.’

Then over on twitter Oswalt got more stick for what? Not getting down on his knees and confessing his sins to the Good Lady of Feminism?

I am annoyed about how the feminists have picked on an individual man in the public eye, and seem to be taking him to task for a complex socio-cultural set of issues in society. He’s just a guy who makes jokes. He’s not Obama or Bono – he hasn’t set himself up as a spokesman or a moral crusader. But more so I am annoyed that feminist writers are peddling a narrative – again- about men, those dirty dogs, and women those poor innocent damsels. It’s very Mills and Boon in a funny kind of way. As I said in what became a rather ‘controversial’ article –  Rape Culture and Other Feminist Myths:

‘My instinct is that holding onto special victim status has some pay offs for feminists. They can continue to present gender politics as a binary opposition between men (potential rapists) and women (perpetual potential victims of rape). Basically, the concept of rape culture is misandrist, and it does not allow for the fact that women are sometimes perpetrators of sexual assault, and men are sometimes on the receiving end.’

I am glad Patton Oswalt stood up for himself to a degree, and didn’t let the feminist mob walk all over him. But I hope that one day, a high profile man (or indeed woman, or anyone who identifies however) actually takes on the myth of ‘rape culture’ and challenges the nasty misandry that underpins it. Women rape too. Men can be victims of rape. Violence in our culture has more men victims as a whole than women. More men commit suicide and suffer injuries at work than women. The ‘rape culture’ schtick is WRONG.

I of course say this often. But when I speak out against feminist rape culture fantasies people attempt to ‘silence’ me. I had my Rape culture myths piece taken down from The Good Men Project, and when I questioned feminist versions of rape culture over at cyborgology blog, my comments were deleted and I was chastised for being ‘unscholarly’. But its the dodgy statistics, misandry and – yes – hysterical premises of feminism’s precious ‘rape culture’ that is unscholarly.

Yes Patton Oswalt has a ‘platform’. But so does feminism. And when it comes to gender issues any man is at risk of being sent to the wolves if he speaks out of line. I believe any subject should be fair game for comedy. And I’ll be taking suggestions for jokes about feminists at the usual address. We could start with this lovely lady as inspiration:

h/t Henry for the Red video.

Let Me Back In

 

Thanks everyone for their messages here and elsewhere, when I took a bit of  a breather from the trials and tribulations of being that – er- notorious  ’internet troll’ Quiet Riot Girl.

But friends, enemies, frenemies and strangers. I’m back.

How’ve you been?

Xx

Darkest Before The Dawn

 

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It’s always darkest before the dawn

-Florence and the Machine

This is a short note to say I won’t be around much in the public rooms of the internet for a while.  I’m not able to speak/write freely or tell of my present situation so, in those circumstances, I am ‘going dark’ for a bit.

Friends can always find me in the usual ways.

See you soon, in the full light of day. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

XXQRG

Metrosexual Machismo – The Secret Of Her Success #metrosexual

 

Freud might have a field day with this ‘Man Extreme’  ad. The (phallic?) snake, eagle and lion are asking to be interpreted more than I have time for here. And anyway I am a bit preoccupied with the name of this gentle perfume: Man Extreme is a bit, well, extreme for something so fragrant. It’s ok, fellas, you can smell like lavender and patchouli if you want. That doesn’t make you a girl. Or does it?

 

Metrosexuality seems to be so blatant, so ‘out’, so obviously ‘feminine’ in many ways – those tits! those legs! that make up! that hair! – that it is no wonder many men, whatever their sexual identity, are a little bit anxious about giving in to something that seriously puts their ‘traditional masculinity’ into question. Before we blame straight men for this macho reaction to the explosion of men’s beautiful self-love, let’s not forget that the ‘gay beard’ craze is just as uptight and macho as any heterosexual expression of ‘manly’ anxiety. Remember 2011′s popular beardy ‘gay movie’ Weekend? And don’t get me started on GayBros - ‘straight acting’ gays who make the 70s Clones look positively forward thinking!

 

 

Then there’s Ballet Boyz. On one hand, this bunch of pirouetting peacocks remind us how comfortable young men are these days with a) showing off their bodies, b) embracing their ‘feminine’ side, and c) showing off their bodies.

 

 

On the other hand, there’s some familiar ‘disavowal’ of full on feminine flamboyance going on.  There’s the obvious ‘manly strap on’ in the name – Ballet BOYZ, with an added hard man hip hop flavour. And there’s the slightly ‘laddish’ (No Homo) atmosphere of an all-men dance company, run by two men, that enables a (bearded!) Guardian journalist to say:

 

“[the company] doesn’t do ballet. Instead, it does 21st-century choreography with a muscular and occasionally dangerous edge.”

 

Phew!  that’s ok then!

 

It is within this rather ‘backs to the wall’  21st century context of pretty boy, pretty insecure masculinity that Dove for Men have launched a new shampoo. And in which a Brazilian ad for their metrotastic hair care product has caused heads to turn.

 

 

Dove has traditionally described itself as being For Women. So when they launched their Dove Men cosmetics and toiletries range they needed to set it apart from the girls’ stuff.  And they’ve come up with quite an ingenious way of doing so. Judging by the reactions on twitter and elsewhere, this ad is a hit. But why? The advert involves an office worker who is plagued by long luscious locks, a la Pantene for women, and is only rescued by a colleague telling him how Dove for Men can restore his masculinity. Critics have called it ‘confused‘, as it veers between taking the piss out of men wearing ‘feminine’ cosmetics and celebrating (and of course selling) that very idea. But I think the cleverness of this commercial lies in its willingness to embrace the confusion that many men experience when buying into consumerism and narcissism, but also worrying about whether or not they are ‘still a man’. So the machismo that Dove are obviously espousing and exploiting is also subtly put into question and sent up.  Does shampoo really make your hair grow long and shiny? Of course not. As this tweet shows, the silliness of the premise is part of the ad’s success:

 

http://twitter.com/bgrtd/status/314739112013860864

 

And making a man enact the exaggerated, posing, overly ‘coquettish’ movements of a woman in a shampoo ad, a subtle but not-missed message is put across about how ridiculous and unrealistic this version of OTT femininity is, and how gendered marketing for the same products is kind of lame in 2013. But for many men (and maybe women too) watching, whilst they are laughing at the joke, they are also reassured by it. Dove for men is a real brand, selling real shampoo to ‘real men’.

 

 

You’d think that maybe one group of people who are not convinced by these manly marketing strategies would be the ‘beauty bloggers’ and ‘male grooming’ bloggers who see these gimmicks day in and day out. But  the fact that consumer experts such as Grooming Guru are, despite a few misgivings, convinced by products labelled as ‘For Men’ shows how metrosexuality is still  somehow threatening, even to the most enthusiastic metrosexual men. GG says:

 

‘I’ve personally always found the ‘man’ prefix superfluous and silly (though I still think the “For Men” tag has value for brands like Nivea, Clinique and L’Oreal who need to differentiate their men’s lines (often reformulated to suit men’s skin and its unique needs) from women’s. So come on guys, don’t spoil your perfectly good products with thoroughly daft names okay?’

Pushing products ‘for men’ may of course in one sense be a wheeze to make more money – it creates two markets where once there was one – but I don’t think this is the whole story of Dove for Men, Or Man Extreme, or Ballet Boyz. Because the ‘market’ of men’s vanity and self-love (not to mention dance) has been growing and going strong for a long time now. I don’t think anything, not even – gasp! – gender neutral packaging would stop the tide of metrosexual consumerism.  But while that phenomenon is here, it may as well also do the job of soothing men’s troubled, but oh so moisturised brows, about their anxiety over what it means to be a ‘man’ in the modern age. Going back to Freud, I think that in the early part of the 20th century, he was exploring how the gender binary is a form of ‘neurosis’. Now, in the 21st century, I would like us to admit that as long as we split people into this arbitrary division between ‘men’ and ‘women’ and try and flatten out human complexity and the many many ways of expressing our identities, we will be stuck with silly, complicated but ultimately macho ads like the Dove for Men one.

The gender binary, unfortunately, seems to be a winning formula. But I’m not buying.

A Tale of Three Hashtags #silentnomore #INeedMasculismBecause #tellafeministThankYou

Hashtags are used for all sorts of things on twitter. From the tweetalong telly tags such as #splash, #bbcqt  and #masterchef, to marking cultural phenomena  such as #metrosexual, to the personal esoteric ones like my #blueonblue and #FoucaultsDaughter. But it is in gender politics – where else? – where a hashtag war has broken out.

Funnily enough, this particular game of tag began with the twitter classic #bbcqt. The historian (and tweeter) Mary  Beard appeared on the programme last month. That night and the next day she got a lot of shit on twitter from what are known in the business as ‘haterz’. From what I can see, and from my own modest status as @Notorious_QRG, I think once you have a certain number of followers on twitter, you start to get some random crap thrown at you. But Ms Beard is also a feminist, and what do feminists tend to do when they get stick? That’s right, she wrote an article about the ‘misogyny’ and ‘abuse’ she was suffering, in the Guardian.

This brave stand against her ‘abusers’ by the lowly professor and TV personality led to an expression of sisterly solidarity: the #silentnomore hashtag. Feminist women began to break their silence and tell twitter about all the misogyny and abuse they too suffer. I made some criticisms of this hashtag, and was told by one feminist to get out of their ‘space’ and stop ‘abusing’ them!

Then another hashtag popped up called #INeedMasculismBecause. Some men, including Mens Rights Activists used this hashtag to start discussing some inequalities men and boys face. But the feminists swooped down and started attacking the MRAs and men in general. Jezebel suddenly developed a hitherto non-existent sense of humour, and rubbed its hands in glee, laughing at how the feminists had ‘hijacked’ the hashtag.  I couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy of how feminists had claimed criticisms of the #silentnomore hash were ‘abusive’ and yet they were laughing in the aisles at their own take over of an opposing hashtag.

But it didn’t end there. Melissa McEwan another self-effacing, timid feminist blogger and tweeter, set up the rather obsequious tag #tellafeministThankYou. And guess what, some men and non-feminist women piled in with some ironic ‘thank yous’ to feminism for some of the wrongs it has committed against, oh, sex workers, boys, men, non-feminists, etc. And of course McEwan and her friends cried ‘abuse’ again, conveniently forgetting the Lulz value of hijacking hashtags pointed out by Jezebel only days before.

One of my comments on the #INeedMasculismbecause tag was that I needed ‘masculism’ or whatever you want to call what challenges feminism, because feminists dominate discussions of gender. I want to hear some other voices in the mix. But the whole affair has only proved my point. With feminists having the platform of the national press and high profile online publications to claim their ‘victimhood’, the views and perspectives of those of us who disagree with them get drowned out.

But I will be #silentnomore ! I think the feminists dealt with this hashtag war badly and cynically. I think they know they are the dominant force in gender politics, and any kind of democratic opening out of debate just makes them go into attack mode and try to ‘silence’ their critics.

#FeminismIsAwful !

Letter From An Alien: Deconstruction #fridayflash

What would Derrida say about us? If I told him that I shall be spending today immersed in ‘texts’ I wrote a year ago? Some of them ‘letters’ to you. Some of them cries out into the ether. That I will be going over my words with a fine-toothed comb, looking for clues, looking for an escape route. That copies of my throwaway texts, some of them casual tweets, are also sat in a file in a drawer in a filing cabinet in a grey office. Waiting to be deconstructed by the little man in his grey suit whose hopes and dreams have amounted to this bureaucratic role as a servant. To the crown. Would Derrida frown and smile that wry smile of his? Would he shake his head and sadly say that you take a text out of its context at your peril? That if you try to consider words and words alone, separate from the sad desperation of the person who wrote them, separate from the blank incomprehension of the person who read them, separate from the cold officious room where the little man in his grey suit will one day be reading them out in a dead pan monotone, you lose all meaning? That deconstruction, inspite of what thousands of English  Literature Undergraduate students may believe, is not an academic exercise? It’s blood and guts.  It’s the opposite of abstract. It’s finding the life that is hidden in every text. The fear. The love.

What would Barthes say about us? He knows a thing or two about this. In his book, A Lovers Discourse, he ripped out his heart, laid it on a table, and ‘deconstructed’ it with a scalpel right infront of us. He reminded us that all those cliches we have come to associate with a trite, sentimental expression of ‘love’, are much much more. Goodbyes at train stations, scented notepaper, whispered ‘I love yous’ are merely cyphers, outward acceptable codes for a torrent of feeling, of loss, of pain, of the fear of death enacted in the scene where our Lover slams the door in our face.  I think Barthes would have some compassion for us.  If he were to join us in the cold, officious room, he’d probably be solemn as he transcribed the words coming out of the mouth of the little man in his grey suit. He’d probably find beauty in the translations of translations of words once written in great anguish. And he would save his wry smile for the moment when we started to argue about who ‘owned’ which ideas, whose texts were whose, he’d cough and mutter something about The Death of The Author. And the fact that, if we’re going to be picky about it, he has some claim to ownership of our ideas and our texts anyway.

What would Foucault say about us? I don’t know. I am not so sure he would be that concerned, no matter how much we wish he would be, about our individual feelings. Our petty struggle. He is more of a bigger picture guy. I suspect that if he too found himself with us in the cold, officious room, it could get quite crowded in there, he’d notice the lay out. Not from an interior design perspective, the State has no eye for style, but in terms of Power. Who goes where, who stands, who sits, who is left behind a glass screen. He might smile wryly too, and he might pull out an old battered copy of Discipline and Punish as he noted that whilst the days of flogging in the public square are long gone, there is still something theatrical about this scene. That the desire for rituals of public humiliation haven’t left us, we’ve just made them less gory. I hope at least, he might also spare a thought for Foucault’s Daughter, and how I said she’d get into trouble one day. How, in my fumbling attempt at fiction, I ended up doing what he does, and dissected, analysed, prophesised reality.

What would Freud say about us? For the Daddy of Psychoanalysis is also the Daddy of Deconstruction. It was he who, before anyone was ready, began to pull apart our words, and showed how words are rooted in thoughts, and thoughts are rooted in base impulses. I expect Freud would say very little. He might puff on his pipe and knot his brow. But it wouldn’t escape his attention, that it is me, not you, and not the little man in his grey suit, who has accepted that this is a psychological drama. That we have been interacting on a subconscious level, and that if I want to make sense of what has happened, I won’t find the answers in the cold, officious room, I’ll find them on the analyst’s couch, in my own mind, through my writing.

And, as much as I may have made out you to be the centre of this story, as Derrida, Barthes, Foucault and Freud know full well, it’s me I am writing to and talking to, it’s my thoughts and feelings and, yes, ideas, I have been ‘deconstructing’ all this time. The girl who wasn’t there is here. And she hasn’t finished yet.

Can You Delve So Low?

And when you slam
Down the hammer
Can you see it in your heart ?
All of the rumours
Keeping me grounded
I never said, I never said that they were
Completely unfounded

So when you slam
Down the hammer
Can you see it in your heart ?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Can you delve so low ?
And when you’re standing
On my fingers
Can you see it in your heart ? … ah …
And when you try
To break my spirit
It won’t work
Because there’s nothing left to break
Anymore
All of the rumours
Keeping me grounded
I never said, I never said that they were
Completely unfounded

You won’t sleep
Until the earth that wants me
Finally has me
Oh you’ve done it now
You won’t rest
Until the hearse that becomes me
Finally takes me
Oh you’ve done it now
And you won’t smile
Until my loving mouth
Is shut good and proper
FOREVER

All of the rumours
Keeping me grounded
I never said, I never said that they were
Completely unfounded
And all those lies
Written lies, twisted lies
Well, they weren’t lies
They weren’t lies
They weren’t lies

I never said
I never said
I could have mentioned your name
I could have dragged you in
Guilt by implication
By association
I’ve always been true to you
In my own strange way
I’ve always been true to you
In my own sick way
I’ll always stay true to you

I Shall Be Released

This rendition of Dylan’s I Shall Be Released by Mama Cass, Joni Mitchell and Mary Travers is really quite something. Look at those outfits!

I don’t have much else to say, except it’s a song that has huge resonance for me. Maybe I will tell you why one of these days. Any day now, any day now…

 

Good Men, Bad Girls

 

 

Late last year there erupted a furore over an article published at the Good Men Project, by someone who admitted to having raped someone. I am not going to re-tread over that ground now. There is a good post discussing some of the issues by our very own stoner with a boner if you are interested.

I just want to draw attention to the fact that, during this hoo ha between feminists, the GMP and others, I noticed that an essay by me, Rape Culture and Other Feminist Myths, had been removed from the  Good Men Project website. Along with some work by another ‘anti feminist’ woman blogger, Girl Writes What. I don’t know the exact timing of the deletions (and my other essays for GMP were shifted from the main site to their lesser known Good Life Blog). But I am slightly perturbed that whilst it was the GMP executives, Tom Matlack and Lisa Hickey, who had caused the wrath of the feminasties, Girl Writes What and I seemed to be being scapegoated. If the GMP had ‘gone too far’ and annoyed feminist readers and writers, they had to ‘make amends’ somehow. And it looks like they have done so by removing writing that has already annoyed feminists.

 I always had issues with the Good Men Project, but I saw value in working with them and writing for them from time to time. I can’t help but feel that ironically, since uber -feminist GMP editor Hugo Schwyzer left the site quite a while ago, the ship has gone adrift. Where once there was some sort of balance between Schwyzer’s feminist ‘line’ and a more questioning, dare I say it? Pro-men stance from Tom Matlack, now there seems to be confusion and a void. And when it comes to gender politics, if there is so much as a crack in the paintwork of a ‘non-feminist’ space feminism will come and fill it, and take the whole show over.

 

So now we are left with a site about men that is kow-towing to feminism, and does not welcome non-feminist women or men! I am used to being the ‘bad girl’ now, and feel no personal loss at falling out of favour with the GMP. But I am  no longer interested in what GMP has to say about men, women, or gender issues. There are plenty of good men – and women – and those who identify otherwise – writing about these things in other places, such as A Voice For Men, MRA London blog male femme, stoner with a boner and of course, here, at QRGHQ.

On Letting Go and Keeping On…

                                                                                      

 

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day and you shall begin it well and serenely.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

This was the view from my hotel room when I spent a night in Perpignan during my French holiday in October. Waking up to the sight of the foothills of the pyrenees, dusted lightly with snow on the higher peaks, made my heart soar. I am not in such a picturesque spot anymore. And I long for some beauty and joy to start my mornings, as the shortest day approaches in England. As darkness prevails.

 

But I have my methods for letting go and keeping on. Tai chi, therapy, friends, mindfulness. So, with what sometimes feels like a gargantuan effort, I am able to take Emerson’s advice and begin tomorrow ‘well and serenely’.

 

You might have thought I had this down pat by now. If you had read one of my ‘juvenalia’ poems from around 20 years ago, entitled, yes, Let It Go. The younger, earnest, anxious me wrote:

 

Let It Go

 

Start again,

Breathe slow.

Ease your pain, let it go.

Find a way through the darkness,

Explore the worst that you know.

But in the end, you must

Let it go.

 

It’s taken me two decades but I think I am learning to do just that.