Men are from Mars, John Gray is a Dick

Tags

dating, John Gray, that's just stupid, things that piss me off

Oh my, this is going to get ugly…..

Not too terribly long ago while riffling through the used book section at a second-hand store (one of my most favorite things to do in the whole world ever), I came across a most horrifying, trauma-inducing book. After coughing up the obligatory half a dollar required to make it mine, I took it home to read, knowing perfectly well that because I am very familiar with and really, really hate the author, I’d probably at some point end up at the kitchen sink trying my damndest to cram it into oblivion down the disposal. But hey, I’m a trooper, and after having previously read some of the horrible advice Mister Fella doles out on the regular, I figured it was worth the money that it cost me to satisfy my curiosity. (It wasn’t.)

Anyway, so the book–you’ve probably heard of it, given that it’s been around since forever– is Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, by author and so-called relationship expert John Gray, and it’s one of several that follows the heretofore established reasoning of his bestselling lump of garbage, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Reasoning that, sadly, many of us are familiar with, and even more sadly, some of us believe, and it goes something like this: Human characteristics come in two sets. One set of characteristics comprises physical strength, dominance, aggression, logic, ambition, courage, responsibility, and an excessively high sex drive. The other is sympathetic, kind, nurturing, needy, intuitive, emotional, giving, cooperative, passive, docile, and submissive, durr hur dumb fucking hurrr.

And as most of you probably see coming a mile away, these characteristics are divvied up by sex. As we’ve previously discussed, this is just stupid. And yet, Gray is just one of many so-called experts who irresponsibly center their views about relationships and sex around such an unsound and defective (not to mention harmful) belief system and then proceed to speak authoritatively on the subject.

According to the cultural narrative, men need sex while women merely (sigh…and infrequently) desire sex, or, more specifically, women desire love and security, which we seek to get in return for sex. Because of this (in part), the tone in public discourse regarding sex is often placed within the context of women giving men sex. The reason I mention this is because not only does Gray make the same claim several times in the book but because it’s also an underlying theme throughout.

He completely sticks to the script regarding female sexuality, which is to say he pretends it doesn’t exist outside of its ability to please men. Women don’t want sex, women want love! Because of this belief, any conversation regarding the woman’s physical pleasure is practically non-existent. The reality that women are just as ‘visual’ as men is completely ignored. The reality that women can and do have sex purely for the physical pleasure, with little or no emotional attachment to our sexual partners, is completely ignored. But we do get to learn plenty about the ways in which to physically please our man in order to keep him from satisfying his (snicker) “biological need” for variety behind our backs. Convenient, right?

It’s a little frustrating to think about how many men have grown up in this fog of delusion regarding women and women’s sexuality. It almost makes me feel sorry for the little buggers. How sad to spend childhood believing that women are these pure, ethereal, magical creatures (who exist to serve you and only you) only to learn that in real life most of us aren’t really like that at all– we’re every bit as fucked up and depraved and sexual as men are. In other words, we’re human.

The book begins with these oh so fitting words:

He wants sex. She wants romance.

He wants sex. Him. Not her, because again, independent of a woman’s ability to please her partner with her body and to successfully barter sex for validation, romance, security, and love, her sexuality does not exist. Let me make this perfectly clear because it’s kind of an important point: In a book that claims to be about sex for couples, here is an author who frames his entire premise around the notion that sex is actually only desired by one person in the couple. This book, therefore, isn’t meant to benefit the couple; it’s meant to benefit the man in the couple.

He further clarifies his philosophy by stating that “Sex allows a man to feel his needs for love.” The idea that men use sex as a pathway of sorts to love and emotional fulfillment pops up frequently throughout the book. It is significant because the message it conveys is that when women turn men down for sex, we aren’t just denying men physical pleasure but the ability to connect to their emotions. Not only is this stupid, it’s also super manipulative. Women are increasingly expected to cater to our partner’s sexual demands (wooo! thanx porn! thanx, asshole relationship “experts”!) and this is just another way to further guilt us into shutting up and putting out.

Incidentally, Gray is also a proponent of the trope that men try to score with random hot women on the regular because they ‘need’ variety and have a biological need to ‘spread their seed’. The idea that they do this, while at the same time seeking sex to access feelings of ‘love’ is so absurdly oxymoronic that it’s almost funny.

I kept a pencil handy while reading the book, with the intention of making notes in the margins about all his whacked-out notions regarding sex. I realized pretty quickly, however, that such an undertaking would require a book of my own and way more time than I care to spend. But because this shit is harmful to women, it needs to be discussed, because even though you know it’s bullshit, and I know know it’s bullshit….some people don’t know it’s bullshit. So, on we go.

When he wants sex and she is not readily in the mood, he easily misunderstands and feels rejected. He does not instinctively realize that a woman generally needs to feel loved and romanced before she can feel her hunger for sex.

Okay look. I’m going to speak my own personal experience into this for a minute. I’ve done the casual sex thing. Sometimes I took men home with me during my bar scene years because I was drunk. Sometimes I had sex with men I didn’t care about or want anything else from because my body needed the physical release and pleasure of sex. And I can say with absolute certainty that there wasn’t one time– not a single, solitary time– that I had the casual-sexytime with these men because they filled up my love cup first. And no, sorry, I’m not an anomaly.

It’s weird how that works. It’s almost, like I said before, it’s almost like we’re all human or something.

Do women want to have sex with men who don’t objectify, dehumanize, and degrade us? Well obviously. The reason I mention this, and this is quite possibly the most important point of all, is because Gray, and so many whacked-out freak-shows like him, often construct a narrative in which the man does seem to disrespect, disregard, dehumanize and degrade his partner, and this seems to be the premise from which Gray et al. work, and then they confuse respect and basic human decency with love and romance and sparkles.

It is Gray who makes the claim that women need to feel loved first in order to become turned on to sex. But then he tells us, several times over in fact, that if a couple is experiencing problems in the relationship, it is the woman’s responsibility to put this need aside and sexy-up up for the man regardless of her desire to do so. Because men can’t (or won’t) express love when they aren’t feeling it, the onus is on women to have sex when we aren’t feeling it in order to improve or save the relationship. This directive comes up frequently in the book:

When sex gets better, suddenly the whole relationship gets better. Through great sex, the man begins to feel more love, and, as a result, the woman starts getting the love she may have been missing.

Great sex is the most powerful way to open a man’s heart and help him to feel his love and express it to a woman. Great sex softens a woman’s heart and helps her to relax and receive her partner’s support in other areas of the relationship. This softening of her feelings dramatically improves her ability to communicate in a manner that her partner can hear without becoming defensive.

When a couple is experiencing relationship problems, sometimes, instead of focusing on the problems, taking a shortcut and creating great sex immediately reduces the problems and makes them easier to solve.

What a narcissistic snotrag this guy is. Can we flush him down the toilet now?

Through sex, a man’s heart begins to open up. Through sex, a man can give and receive love the most. When a woman begins to understand this difference, it changes her whole perspective on sex. Instead of a man’s desire for sex being something crude and divorced from love, she can begin to see it as his way of eventually finding love.

Please take note of the word ‘eventually’. He’s been saying that men use sex to access their feelings of love for their partners. Up until now, he’s given us the impression (even though we know it’s bullshit) that men find the magical pot of love at the end of the sex rainbow. But now he tells us that if we give in to the man’s demands for sex, and he still treats us like garbage, then we just need to keep on having sex! Because you know….he will eventually be a loving person instead of a selfish, disrespectful fuckwad.

It is confusing to her when he wants sex and they are not even talking or he has ignored her for days. To her, it seems as if he doesn’t care if they have much of a relationship. She has no idea that when he begins to hunger for sex it is because he wants to reconnect and share love.

Goddamn you, John Gray. There is nothing confusing about not wanting to have sex with someone who treats you like dirt, you big rotten bundle of ass fungus. Goddamn you to hell for telling any woman anywhere that she should acquiesce to an emotionally abusive man who would ignore her for days and then turn around and degrade her by treating her like a sex object who’d better bend over and put out on command or else. Fucking hell!

Most men are never taught how to have sex. Once they can get turned on or can masturbate, they are somehow expected to be sexual experts. Sure, they know where to put it and how to have an orgasm in two minutes, but the art of giving a woman an orgasm is a different story altogether.

Well, gee. I guess that’s what happens when people like Gray are allowed to open their fucking mouths and speak for all men for the whole world to hear. When sex is something that women give to men and the pleasure is the man’s for the taking, I guess it makes sense that no one bothers to teach men how to please women. That would just fuck up the whole paradigm altogether, now wouldn’t it?

Men don’t instinctively know what women like, and even when they hear about it, they tend to forget.

Well fucking duh to the first part of that thought, bullshit to the second part of it. Men aren’t ALL thoughtless, forgetful morons, but I feel more pity for Gray’s wife that I’d have ever thought possible!

A man’s immediate desire to touch and be touched in his sensitive zones is a given. He does not need much help in getting excited. He needs help in releasing or letting go of his excitement. In a sense, he seeks to end his excitement, while a woman seeks to extend her excitement to feel more deeply her inner longing.

What the actual fuck does this even mean? And why in the world would a woman want to ‘feel more deeply her inner longing’ (barf) for someone who acts like a stupid asshole?

For a woman, arousal slowly builds long before it becomes a physical desire for sex. Before longing for sexual stimulation, a woman first feels warm, sensual, and attractive. She feels drawn to a man and enjoys sharing time together. It could be days before she wants to have sex.

I’m guessing that in his wife’s world that’s called ‘delaying the inevitable.’ I mean, christ on a mutherfucking cracker! this is such goofy, ridiculous drivel that I just can’t even. It takes days to turn a woman on, John? Really? Days? Or is it really, possibly, just a case of, some days I want to have sex and some days I don’t?

And why must a woman feel that she is attractive to her partner in order to feel sexual? Could it possibly have anything to do with the way we’ve had one single beauty ideal (thin, bronzed, blond, etc.) shoved in our goddamn faces everywhere forever until we begin to feel somewhat less-than for failing to live up to that airbrushed, non-existent ideal? Pshaw….nah, that can’t be it. Surely it’s biological. Because EVO-PSYCH ya’ll!

To wait days requires enormous restraint on his part.

It’s really too bad you can’t have someone neutered against their will.

Oh the poor, poor menz!

Of course, if you’re really just feeling gross and yucky and totally unsexy, don’t feel like fucking a complete assbag, and have access to a hammer, you do have other options…

For many men, other than hitting their finger with a hammer or watching a football game, sex is one of the only ways they can feel!

Hey, I’m game. Although I’m pretty sure it isn’t the finger that I’d be aiming for.

[Edit to add: And just so you don’t think I’m completely full of shit when I say that John Gray is full of shit, I present to you some actual research (and oh lookie here, here’s some more! and wooooooooo here’s some more!) to validate my assertion that he is, in fact, completely full of shit.]

Cupid is Burning

Tags

fml, personal stuff

I hear the voices all around me. I hear them everywhere I go and in everything I do. They’ve always been there- from the fragmented echoes of my childhood, with their sweet bullshit lullabies of happily-ever-after, to the relentless edicts of today that I heal from past hurts quickly, move on immediately, forgive indiscriminately, and to never, ever bring baggage from the past into new relationships. Don’t be bitter, they say. No matter what else you do, do not ever punish your new love for the mistakes of a past love. Because it’s so easy to do that, right? Wrong. I know because I’ve been there. And I wish, oh how I wish, that I could silence all those shaming voices!

Because sometimes, sometimes it’s not so easy to move on. Sometimes one can heal from the betrayals of relationships but emerge from them smarter and wiser about the world, and therefore not quite so starry-eyed about love. And the truth about love that no one ever seems to want to acknowledge is that sometimes love is not sweet or good. Sometimes love causes more pain than happiness. Sometimes love blinds us to the selfish intentions and actions of others. Sometimes love breaks us down instead of building us up. Sometimes love is nothing more than the traumatic bond that occurs between the innocent and the abusive, sociopathic, and vile. And I am tired, oh so tired, of always being expected to pretend otherwise when doing so obscures something honest and heartfelt and real. Sometimes the truth doesn’t smile, isn’t happy, and cannot forgive. Sometimes the truth is angry. And sometimes it needs to rage, to stand up and speak to the agony and sorrow from whence it was born.

This is the truth in my life. Once upon a time I was married to an abusive person. He hurt me physically and emotionally, betrayed me in the worst ways possible, and very nearly destroyed me. And no matter how I try, I cannot just walk away from those things or deposit them in a safe place far away from my life, because they are my life. They are a part of who I am now. And because these things are a part of me, there is also rage. I try not to dwell on it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, boiling, festering, binding itself in solitude as it waits impatiently to smolder itself into oblivion.

The rage in my marriage came slowly, as the happiness and the hope I’d held on to for so long slowly gave way to confusion, frustration, and despair. One thing that many people find difficult to understand is that the abusive process doesn’t happen all at once. It occurs gradually, comprising a series of events and circumstances over a long period of time. Emotional abuse, which is often manifested through isolation, constant pointless conflict, hostility, jealousy and manipulation, is so subtle that the process of awareness alone can be painfully lethargic in its arrival. By the time I was able to see past the hope and the dreams of happily-ever-after to the person I’d married for the monster that he was, I was at his mercy in every way imaginable, and he knew this- it was his design, and so he delighted in it. And so I was terrified of him, of the devastation that could be wrought with the flick of his wrist, the slap of his hand, or the slip of his tongue. Eventually though, the anger began to burn inside me. And when it did, it very neatly obliterated the grief and sorrow that had animated my life for so long. But it did nothing to assuage the torrent of fear, which had long since cultivated a life of its own from the wreckage of my childish dreams and believed itself immortal. (And I fear that it is indeed immortal).

That doesn’t mean I didn’t fight back. Oh, I fought back. And when I fought back, I validated his belief that I was worthless garbage, and when I didn’t fight back, I validated his belief that I was worthless garbage. Or so he said.

And round and round it went, and round and round I went, slowly, decisively, the remains of our fragmented life together spiraling out of control somewhere deep inside, twisting and turning and feeding itself into a crescendo of madness, ferocity, and rage. I tried to stop it. I tried to stop it. I left then went back, left then went back, left then went back, left then went back.The harder I tried to escape the harder he tried to hold on. He didn’t fill my head with empty promises or pretend to be sorry. Instead, he filled my head with bleak predictions of how hopeless my life would be without him there to guide me, to support me, to prop me up like the paper doll he’d always proclaimed me to be, and then he set about making it so. And he was able to make it so because I was so afraid of him, and my fear was his power.

But that was then.

That was then and this is now. And now, he is out of my life and has been for quite some time. But the fear isn’t gone and neither is the anger. Even after all these years. Nor are they feelings that can be chastised or shamed away and I refuse to go on trying to do so. I do not know how these things that I hold on to are supposed to play out in my life or in my future relationships. All I know is that they are.

I had someone who loved me very recently. And he tried with all his might to show me that I could trust him not to hurt me, but I just couldn’t see it. For more than two years he laid himself bare and made his life and his heart and his mind an open book to me at the expense of everything, even at the expense of himself. And he did it with love and compassion and patience and kindness. He was goodness, and he believed in my goodness, and he fought the good fight. And then one day he just couldn’t do it anymore and so I lost him. And I am still mourning his loss. I still cannot bear to look at him because I fear that doing so will turn the blood in my veins to water and then I will drown from all the tears that I do not want to cry. He believed in me and I caused him nothing but pain.

And now I sit quietly, reflecting on all of this and wondering where to go from here. I do not know the answer yet, but what I do know is that I have to find a way to shut out all the voices that demand forgiveness and healing and happiness from me, because believing that I should when the truth is that I can’t isn’t helpful at all. The voices that admonish me relentlessly to just get over it already really just need to stop talking already. The thing is, a vital part of the healing process is acceptance. And so, okay. I accept that some scars from my past are permanent. As someone very astute once said, some wounds bleed forever. And no matter what I do I cannot change that, so I choose to accept it instead. Isn’t that “healing” enough?

Perhaps on another day I might mourn the loss of innocence and the sweet broken promises of which the dreams of childhood are made. Maybe there’s time yet for me to sit face to face with a professional and discuss all the ways in which I will never fully heal from my past or unlearn the ugly truths that my marriage taught me about life (despite her likely insistence to the contrary). Not that I plan to ever actually do those things. I’ve lived my past and I cannot unlive it, all I can do is accept that it is an indelible part of who I am. Perhaps I am bitter. But I believe the truth is much more complex than that. Wisdom is generally a celebrated thing, and so should it be celebrated rather than denigrated when we wise up about love and people and relationships. Loving blindly is not, nor should it ever be considered, a virtuous thing, something that we should all aspire to. And yet….and yet…it is. Why is that?

Perhaps the truth is that I am better off alone. I know I certainly am happier alone. What I don’t know is why I keep pushing back against that simple truth and trying to make a life lived with someone else work for me. I’m not sure that it ever will work for me. That is what feels natural to me. To be alone. Is that bitter, or is that smart? I know which one I think it is.

And so today? Today I am going to set fire to cupid and watch the motherfucker burn.

Where is my lady brain?

Last re-blog. There’s just so much good stuff out there about this transactivism nonsense that has been articulated way better than I could hope to do myself. So here you go. My gift to you is to link you to these kickass blogs. Transactivism is dangerous as hell to the feminist movement and it is absolutely terrifying that so many ‘feminists’ are buying into it without giving it a second of critical thought. Women are being erased. Our reality is being erased. The ability to acknowledge and name our oppression is being disappeared right before our very eyes even while the material reality of this hatred and oppression persists.

Hypotaxis

An asshole I once worked with once said, during a meeting, “In the good old days, men controlled three things: language, currency, and women.” The other white men in the room (everyone in the room was white, only I was female) enjoyed a hearty chuckle – this was HIGHBROW misogyny, as we were discussing The Odyssey, so it was permissible – at least, that’s what I was implicitly led to believe. And, at the end of the day, this is what being a woman is about – sitting in a room full of men and shutting the fuck up because your job/your reputation/your value is contingent upon whether or not they approve of you. I was very young, and had I called the old boys out on their sexist bullshit, I likely would have been told that I was overreacting, or that I took it “the wrong way.”

Oh…

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Hipster misogyny: pretending female bodies don’t exist

There are few things in the world more beautiful than the breathtaking eloquence of my radical feminist sisters. There is nothing I could possibly hope to add to this and the previous reblogged entry, other than to say radical feminist analysis is the most badass fucking thing I’ve ever seen. And that makes me happy.

Feminists Unknown's Blog

I am female and I have a female body. I know! How retro! Weren’t they last seen in biology textbooks from the 1950s? (My bleeding vagina says no.) I am writing this having just read a trans woman’s response to Laurie Penny’s recent article on trans rights the New Statesman. I am not interested in discussing that particular “controversy”; what interests (and angers) me is the following passage:

The British feminist media cadre — particularly its triumvirate of transphobes whose filter on current events is more or less penis shaped — has given Penny heaps of abuse. I will not link their statements, nor bother to once again speak their names, but I reckon you all know who I mean. And they’ve been utterly hostile to Penny solely for having critical thinking that is resistant to the nostalgic imaginations of feminism’s nature-over-nurture iconification of the True Female Body.

It’s hilarious…

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I am angry

Feminists Unknown's Blog

The last three weeks have passed in static-filled silence. A white noise that blankets the bottom of my brain and forms a barrier between my perception and myself. I am somewhere stranded on the other side of the steady crackle, and in the meanwhile, I go through motions, and when I come to a stop, I stare.

This is not unfamiliar. When I was young, and didn’t know myself, the absence would amplify itself interminably. The strain of disconnection and the rising panic, bouncing off the walls of my skull as time slowed to a stop. The thick afternoon light falling in fat triangles as the world goes on, purposively, outside the window. The dead weight of a blank, silently-screaming eternity.

I know myself better now. I don’t panic. I soon notice the signs. I hear the crackle, and am blessedly certain that I am still there on the other side…

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Gender-Based Violence and Romantic Love

Tags

abuse, dating

This is simply amazing and completely on point.

EMK: Want a man? Then shut up and slap a smile on it, cupcake!

Tags

assholes, dating, EMK, that's just stupid, things that piss me off

Soooo….about that Evan Marc Katz fella (remember him? I first subjected you to him here). So the other day I decided to visit his blog to see what the heck he was up to. Which, as it turns out, is quite a bit because Mister Fella posts a lot. Anyhoo, in my introductory post on the little guy, I may or may not have done a sufficient job of explaining his philosophy. As luck would have it, he recently posted this helpful piece for the purpose of whining to his meanie readers about their meanieness clarifying said philosophy for his readership. Yay for us! So let’s get started, shall we?

This is as fun a place to start as any, I suppose.

So, if the questions I take are carefully selected to maximize the value of my advice – because validation doesn’t make for interesting reading – it should be somewhat predictable that my answers are often going to challenge the premise of the woman in question.
And if you’ve been reading awhile, you know that these answers fall into largely two broad camps:
1) Dump him 2) Accept him.

First, just for the fun of it, I simply must point out the part where he says that validation doesn’t make for interesting reading. This is funny because if you hang out in the comments section of his blog for longer than about three minutes or so, you’ll notice that occasionally one of his readers will call him out on his bullshit, and what you’ll notice immediately thereafter is a petulant response by him that if you disagree with anything he says, then you’re just being difficult and what are you doing on his blog in the first place if you’re just going to be all disagree-y about stuff? Not that this is really relevant at all but it gives yours truly quite a giggle nonetheless. And I like to giggle, so thanks, guy!

As for the rest of it, he’s not really lying when he says that the purpose of his blog is to teach women that if they want a man, they need to learn to accept the man they want as he is or dump him. Which I guess sounds pretty legit. You’ll get no argument from me on that point. But the problem is that he doesn’t just tell women that the menz aren’t going to change, he also paints all men with the same brush, acts as though the performance of “masculinity” is a good, necessary, and inevitable thing when you have a penis, and regularly admonishes the same women that they must change in order attract and keep the very men that they are told on the regular to blindly accept. And therein lies the problem. As he reminds us here, in a post titled The Secret to Keeping a Man; Forget the Past and Enjoy the Present, we do not get the luxury of just being ourselves the way the menz do, oh nooooooo. Instead, we must perform for our prospective suitors:

But that leaves you with the same burning question: “what should I DO, Evan?”
Ah, the answer couldn’t be simpler:
Make your PRESENT so amazing that he WANTS to have a FUTURE with you.
For now, just have fun.
Laugh. Say yes. Be easygoing. Smile. Fool around. Enjoy the moment.

Hear that, ladies? Because it’s your job to make your life together amazing. It’s your job. Those getting-to-know-you issues that inevitably pop up along the way and need to be addressed? Suck it up, cupcake! Problems are no fun. Problems make his life less amazing, best to forget that they even exist. Also? What if you aren’t the easygoing type? What if you don’t want to just “say yes” all the time? What if you don’t want to smile like a goddamn robot 24/7? What if you’re not in the mood to laugh at his lameass jokes? EMK doesn’t encourage his readership to be themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Why the everloving hell not? I mean, yes, presumably his readers turn to him for advice because they want to find that special someone. But not at the expense of their authenticity. Not at the expense of who they are, fer fuck’s sake. Sure, the guy sitting across from you may be turned-off by your (GASP!) inquisitive disposition or that obligatory after-dinner belch that you just can’t keep to yourself, but so the fuck what? He should either accept you as you are, or move on, right? Right?

Oh, and lest you naively believe these rules only apply on the first couple of dates or so, you’ll see for yourself below that he still expects this shit of his wife.

And if he’s receiving texts that say, “Where are you?!” or late night calls that plead, “Where is this going?”, you’re not making him feel too good in the present.

OH SHIT! We can’t let that happen, now can we!

“My wife was ALWAYS in the present and that’s why she’s my wife. Because she enhances my life and doesn’t provide emotional drama when it’s unnecessary.”

DOUBLE SHIT! Not unnecessary emotional drama!

I’m guessing he gets to be the sole arbiter of what’s necessary and what isn’t.

I’m guessing he also gets to be the sole arbiter of what’s considered emotional drama and what gets to be treated as a legit fucking issue.

Why the goddamn hell is he trying to condition his readers to walk on eggshells around the men they want?

In this post (I realize that I’m doing quite a bit of post-jumping here, but bear with me as I make my point), titled Why don’t Men Like Smart, Strong, Successful Women? he has this to say:

But a huge reason I’m with my wife is because she spends her time loving and supporting me, not challenging me on everything from movie tickets, to travel plans, to wake up times. She’s easy, in the best sense of the word.

Because God forbid that a woman challenge his almighty authority. God forbid that she have any input in her own life. God forbid that she have any say in travel plans! God forbid that she gets to choose what time she gets up in the morning. God forbid that she be anything but easybreezybeautiful!

This is a real dilemma. You’re undoubtedly a great catch. You can teach us a thing or two. You are a go-getter and worthy of everyone’s respect. But if that go-getter side ends up emasculating your man, or makes him feel insignificant, or second-guessed, he’s not really getting what he wants out of a partner. Men want to feel masculine.

“Masculine” is a euphemism for dominant, authoritative, and in control, as EMK so aptly illustrates for us above. It’s generally best to avoid this type of man at all costs. Also note that you are not allowed to second-guess him (not if you want to keep him!).

This doesn’t mean you should play dumb, or be weak and needy,

Ummm, yes it does actually…..

no more than the nice guy should start acting like a jackass. It might mean, however, turning off some of the things that make you “successful” at work. This is a bitter pill to swallow, perhaps even a double standard. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that “hard-driving, opinionated, and meticulous” are not on most men’s lists of ideal feminine traits.

Gosh, sure sucks that men don’t want someone to challenge them [1] huh? But hey, what’re you gonna do, little lady? MEN AREN’T GOING TO CHANGE!

In EMK’s world, all men like to dominate their partners, and they want simpering, passive women in their lives who don’t challenge their authority. And instead of advising women to tell these men to go fuck themselves, EMK tells women that, unless they want to be alone forever, they need to suck it up, accept it, and literally become weak in order to attract these men. As I pointed out in my introductory post on this guy, that’s some serious patriarchial bullshit right there, and that’s why I say his stupid blog is political as all get-out.

Also? The kind of guy who wants a meek, docile, passive woman is the one who wants her to be that way so that he can steamroll right over her ass. And that’s not the guy you want. Trust your girl on this one.

Fuck “ideal feminine traits”. Fuck bitter pills. Fuck double-standards that are expected to go unchecked. And fuck you, Evan Marc Katz, for being such a loudmouth fucking douchebag.

_________________________________________________________________

[1] this is the part where I point out the obvious, which is that not all men are actually like this, because men don’t operate with a hive mind, and vary just as much in their characters, dispositions, likes, and dislikes as women do. OH THE HORROR

Stop the abuser before he stops you

Tags

abuse, domestic violence

It is an unfortunate reality that the law of nature (or perhaps more aptly named, prideful, stupid rebellion) dictates that we each must learn our own way in the world. I cannot learn my lessons from your life experiences and you cannot learn from mine. And that’s cool. Hey- that’s life! And often the lessons we learn along the way are what make our lives so interesting and rich and fun.

But this isn’t about the fun stuff. This is about domestic violence. This is about abusive relationships. And an abusive relationship isn’t just a “lesson” to be learned. It’s a life-changing, body, heart, and soul damaging battle. So I implore all of you who don’t yet know–about this type of man [1] about the sheer hell that they take you to in the name of love — to please, please take a minute to read this, to take the time to listen, really listen, to learn a little about the mentality of these people, and the warning signs that they exhibit as early as the dating phase of the relationship so that you never have to feel the terror that so many others have felt, fearing that they were going to die, despairing that their children may have to grow up to face this world without them.

The first thing you need to know about this guy is that he is insecure and self-loathing beyond anything the normal, average person can imagine. He often cloaks these feelings beneath a mask of charm and bravado. The dirty little secret that he has in common with other abusers—and which he feels must be protected at all costs– is the absolute self-hatred and worthlessness that he feels. He fears that his intimate partner– you– will get close enough to see and possibly expose these insecurities. At the same time, however, he needs you. Your presence keeps him from carrying the full weight of these feelings of self-hatred—the more of this burden he is able to project onto you, the less he has to absorb. It is through this paradox that you become the enemy, because it makes him vulnerable. He feels that you have the upper hand and therefore does whatever necessary to make you believe that HE has the upper hand. There is, in his mind, no such thing as a partnership. This one-sided mental one-upmanship becomes the prevailing dynamic of the relationship.

The second thing that you need to understand is that he has a mailcious, destructive sense of entitlement. To your person, to your committment and loyalty, to every single thing about you and all that you have to offer him.

His desperate need to gain and maintain the upper hand in the relationship, along with this sense of entitlement, permeates his every thought, every word, and every action. Therefore, nothing about him is real. The name of his game is manipulation. He holds you tenderly and whispers sweet promises of happily-ever-after to you? Sorry—it’s not real. He tells you you’re the only one who could ever understand him? Bullshit. He tells you you’re beautiful? YAWN. He calls you a worthless whore, a zero, admonishes you for dressing like a slut? Take heart, he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t mean anything he says. You’ll spend years trying desperately to change him back into the sweet man he was at the beginning of the relationship. You’ll twist and contort yourself into something that is completely unrecognizable because he will convince you that you are the one to blame for his “change”. Bullshit. He didn’t change, he just let down the sweet facade that hooked you in the first place.

Remember—he is going to dump all of his crap right onto your shoulders. And if you are already stuck in a relationship with an abusive asshole, remember my words. Not only do you not need to believe his put-down words of abuse, he doesn’t believe it either! On the contrary, he thinks very highly of you! (Just don’t forget that he hates you for it!!)

These people do not change. Okay? HE WILL NOT CHANGE. Repeat this to yourself instead of counting sheep at night, write it in a notebook a thousand times, write it across your forehead as a vital reminder every time you look at yourself in the mirror…..just let it get through. There is nothing you can ever say or do to change him. Ever. Period.By the very nature of his relationship with you, you are the enemy whom he seeks to destroy. You cannot love him out of this mentality. Doesn’t matter that he treated you so well at first. IT WAS A LIE. The whole relationship has been orchestrated from the beginning to result in your dependence on him.

Below are some red flags that might pop up at the beginning of the relationship. We are always on our best behavior when we’re just getting to know someone. But we all drop little clues about who we really are here and there—the trick is knowing which ones need to be picked up and examined more closely, and which ones can safely stay put where they fall. Some men are masters at manipulation, and are able to fool even the most cautious among us. But it doesn’t hurt to have a bit of a guideline. And one or two of these alone may be harmless. But the more you see, the faster you need to run, my friend.

Immediate Attachment– If he tries to get way too close way too fast, tells you all of his secrets, or pushes for a commitment too quickly, run. The only indication that this may not be a red flag is his willingness to respect your boundaries. If you make it clear to him that he’s moving too quickly and he backs off, you may be okay, but proceed with caution regardless. If he constantly pressures you for more than he knows you’re ready to give, you’re probably standing at the doorway to hell. Don’t knock on it, and for God’s sake, don’t open it. RUN FAR AND RUN FAST.

Jealousy/Possessiveness– Instead of trying to hide this characteristic in the beginning, he may manipulate you into believing that he is this way because he loves you. He’s just trying to protect you. He’s looking out for your best interests. This one will progressively get worse. At first it will seem flattering to you that he cares so much. But there is nothing flattering about having the mileage checked on your car every time you go to the store.

Isolation- This is one area that is ripe with means for manipulation. He can and will, very early on, find ways to break up your closest relationships with other people. At first he might go out of his way to fit in with and impress the people in your life in an attempt to break down their defenses and to get them on his side. He does this because from the very beginning, he wants to manipulate those around you so that you look like the crazy one, if and when it becomes beneficial to him for you appear that way (such as when you try to break it off with him or begin to talk to others about his abusive behavior).

Remember that he also wants to cut you off from everyone who loves you in order to nullify their influence over you. Again, his methods of doing so will be subtle. He’s probably not going to say right off the bat, “you’re my posession and I don’t want to share you, so I am going to deliberately destroy your relationships with everyone who loves you.” If he wants you to quit your job, he will find a reason that sounds well…..reasonable. If he wants to destroy your relationship with your sister or your mom or your best friend, he will chip away at the weak spots until he convinces you to cut them from your life. Allowing his voice to be the only one in your ear breaks down your defenses that much quicker, because the voices of reason are no longer there to counter-balance the negative impact of his abusive behavior.

Disrespect for your boundaries– This is, in my opinion, the number one indicator of his character. Showing up on your doorstep unexpectedly after you’d told him you wanted to be alone, calling you over and over again when he KNOWS that you are enjoying a night out with the girls, pressuring you to have sex when he knows that you don’t feel well, attempting to discipline your children early in the relationship instead of respecting your role as the parent….these all show total disregard for your opinions, thoughts, feelings, for your boundaries. Even when his actions seem harmless, such as insisting on holding your hand even though he knows you hate hand-holding (I once dated a guy who insisted on holding my hand every time we were in public. Not only did it drive me insane, but it was indeed a sign of things to come), there is nothing harmless about a man who doesn’t care about your boundaries. Period. When I started dating after my divorce, I couldn’t believe the number of men who openly showed total disregard for what I said I wanted. There were constant attempts to change my mind about something that I had made my feelings clear on or to convince me that I didn’t really feel the way I said I did. I couldn’t believe it, and I sure as hell didn’t give them the time of day. If a man disrespects your boundaries, he’s no good. Double that if he tries to guilt trip you for them. He is a grown man. If he can’t handle hurt feelings because you assert your boundaries, then fuck him.

Sexism/Objectification of women– At first he’s probably going to refrain from calling you names like “whore” and “cunt”, and he’s probably not going to tell you (at first) that you, lowly woman, are there to cater to his every whim. But run if you hear him make derogatory comments about other women. If he feels this way about women in general, it is illogical to believe that he doesn’t feel this way about you. No matter how many times he calls you the exception. You won’t be the exception for long.

Blaming you for his actions– In the beginning, he’s probably not going to knock you down and blame you for it. But he may, for instance, act as though he has the right to reach out and grab parts of your body whenever he wants and then tell you that it’s because you’re so beautiful/gorgeous/hot that he just can’t help himself. This is not a compliment. It is a potential warning sign that when he puts his hands on you in anger later in the relationship, you will be blamed for it. Also, listen to what he says when he talks about himself. If he seems to always blame others for the bad stuff in his life, you may at some point be shouldering more responsibility than you ever bargained for.

Constant Nitpicking– Having something negative to say about everything you do or don’t do, etc. He may claim that he is being hard on you because he cares about you and simply wants to help you improve yourself. Not true, my friend. This is nothing but a tearing-down tactic. It is a very manipulative and effective way to erode your self esteem. In time this will lead to outright verbal attacks–calling you stupid, worthless, zero, etc.

A sense of entitlement— He acts as though everything he does or says is justified and he rarely, if ever, apologizes for his actions. Again, at first you will see this in his interactions with others. In time you will be the target.

Deflection–Any attempt to discuss something he did to you or how his treatment makes you feel is turned around back on you. What about the things you’ve done? You will quickly notice that he does it on the regular. He is not a fan of criticism unless he’s the one doling it out.

Secrecy about his past girlfriends or excessive bad-mouthing about all of them–When he talks about how past relationships ended, watch to see if he accepts part of the blame for any of them. If he doesn’t, that’s not good. If he refuses to even talk about them, that’s really not good. What about kids? If he has them, does he have a good relationship with their mother? If he doesn’t, that’s a red flag.

Ditto with the weirdness about YOUR past— If he won’t hear about your past or tries to put you down for any part of it, dump him. Sound like too benign a thing to dump someone over? Then don’t get mad when I say I told you so. This is not a good thing. Don’t ever let someone make you feel uncomfortable in any way about your past. Period. Also a very, very bad sign: if he takes the things that you tell him in confidence and throws them in your face later.

He tells you that you are the only one who can understand him– Bullshit. No you aren’t. But the poor guy does want you to pity him, and if you think that no one else in his life cares enough about him to make the effort to “get” him, then he’s pretty much golden on that one. Sympathy for the abuser is an exceedingly difficult thing to get past once you’ve been sucked into his world. It can and will prevent you from getting away from him.

There’s no foolproof way of guaranteeing that you will never end up in a relationship with an abusive person. Some of them are masters at fooling even the most discerning among us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. And hey, don’t just sit passively by and wait to see if these behaviors ever manifest themselves- test him! Ask him about his ex-girlfriends, and then pay close attention to what he says about them. Call him up one night and tell him about your weekend plans to hang out with a male buddy of yours. Observe his reaction. Tell him about your past– if he can’t handle it, tough shit! Make it clear to him that you’re seeing other people, because you’re not ready to settle down. Ask him how he feels about his co-workers. Does he talk bad about any of them? If so, observe his use of language. Does he use dehumanizing language in his descriptions about them (or his exes or anyone else, for that matter)?

Anyway– the point is, test him. Do it with abandon and without remorse. You deserve to be happy. When the right one comes along he won’t set off warning bells that you have to rationalize away, and he’ll wait patiently for you to decide that he’s a keeper.

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[1] contrary to increasingly popular narrative, domestic violence is very much a gendered issue, which is why this post is directed at women. I understand and acknowledge that the roles are sometimes reversed (I myself have had the displeasure of having known one or two abusive women in my lifetime), but for the sake of brevity and clarity, and as a nod to the reality of the problem, I have identified the abuser as male.

Dating “expert” Evan Marc Katz is concern trolling you

Tags

assholes, dating, EMK, that's just stupid

So there’s this guy. He schmoozes around on the internet like snot schmoozes through the fingers of a three year old whose hands do double duty as Kleenex, billing himself as a dating expert for successful women who are lonely and convinces them to give him money in exchange for really bad dating advice. Oh, and he also writes a dating blog. Mister fella’s name is Evan Marc Katz (or EMK, as he is commonly called) and he is a douche, and I know this because I read his blog on the regular. Thanks to his completely shitty and depressing advice and the gaggle of MRA [1] goobers who insist on frequenting the comments section, the general mood of the blog is super duper gross and obnoxious and decidedly anti-female. He doesn’t like it when people call him on his bullshit so good luck trying to do that on his turf, which is why I’ve chosen to do it on my turf. So put on your tallest shit-stomping boots before we walk through this mess, because trust me, you’re gonna need em.

In this, the first in a series [2] of posts about EMK, we’re going to examine his general (unspoken, of course, because he can’t just come right out and say he hates women and believes them to be inferior) philosophy, which is that women today are failing in relationships because economic independence and changing social mores allow us, to a certain extent, to go about our lives acting like regular humans instead of accepting our natural role as submissive little dimwits whose primary purpose in life is to serve men, fuck them on demand, raise their children, and basically wipe their asses for them. Thanks to the efforts of women’s rights movements over the last several decades, we’re relatively independent and (apparently) the poor men just don’t like it when we get to do our lives on our terms, and this is why so many of us can’t seem to find ourselves a man. He tells us that this problem is ours to fix (as opposed to telling men to grow the fuck up and get over it), and that the way to fix it is to embrace our “feminine” energy (‘femininity’ being that which is comprised of certain specific human characteristics and behaviors which anyone could posses but that men have self-servingly decided are female-specific anyway). Wherever you hear talk of masculine or feminine anything, you should run like hell because, as we’ve previously discussed, this sort of nonsense never, ever bodes well for women. Things don’t happen in vacuums, kiddos. The manchine known as the patriarchy is alive and well and EMK is a greasy mutherfuckin’ cog in it.

For starters, let’s visit the part of his blog where he tries to fear monger the shit out of us into buying one of his books. Here’s some of what the overstuffed little blowhard has to say about how we’re doin’ it wrong:

First of all, it’s not your fault that you don’t understand men. There are no high school or college classes on this subject, no dating Masters degrees that you can put on your wall.

First of all this is idiotic because no woman is ever going to understand men, because men are not all the same. Just as all women aren’t the same. Because in reality, all this talk of gendered behavior is bullshit. But that doesn’t matter in EMK’s world, where hot air goes to flourish and brain cells go to die. And so here we are.

As an intelligent woman, you’ve probably even noticed patterns in your behavior. Your attraction to cute, charismatic alpha males. Your aversion to nice guys who bore you. Your desire to find a man who is taller, smarter, more generous, and more successful than you. Your refusal to settle with the wrong guy, no matter what.

Did I mention the over-abundance of hot air? It’s not necessarily that women desire taller men (and it’s certainly not an innate preference in any case), it’s that many men refuse to date women who are taller than themselves because it makes them feel “emasculated” (and I won’t even get into what a stupid fucking concept that is). Likewise, many men don’t like it when their female partners are smarter and/or more successful than they are, because men have been conditioned to believe that the male half of the species is the superior one and a lot of men don’t like having women around whose superior intellect and/or economic standing serve as constant reminders that maybe this isn’t necessarily the case. But sure, EMK. Let’s pin this one on women as some sort of character defect we posses in order to justify yelling at us for having the nerve to refuse to settle for the wrong guy. That doesn’t sound completely moronic at all!

As a mildly amusing aside, the poor little guy must’ve been really unpopular with the ladies at some point in his life because he sounds kind of bitter about women’s freedom to refuse to settle for boring old dry toast when there are so many bright and tasty pop-tarts to pick from.

His entire blog revolves around the idea that men loathe strong, opinionated women, and that, because of this, no matter how badass we might otherwise be, when it comes to men and relationships, we’d better be sweet and submissive and sit around blowing bubbles or some shit while waiting for them to take complete control:

Men win you over by giving to you. We ask you out. We call you. We pay for dates. We initiate sex. We ask for commitment. We propose marriage. We give. You receive. Reverse this order by asking him out, initiating sex, asking for commitment, or proposing marriage, and a masculine guy will feel, well, emasculated. Thus, if you want a masculine guy, your greatest move is to embrace your passive feminine side.

What EMK is advocating is male control and leadership in dating and relationships. His entire ideology, right down to the language he uses, echoes the male-headship rhetoric that has become so popular in the conservative christian community (both online and off) as a way to fight back against the dreaded progressivism (ewww, equality!!!!yuck!!!) that’s gained a lot of ground in the last dew decades.

Think about that for a minute. In advocating for the right of men to control the terms of the relationship, he is literally advocating for the right of men to exercise control over their partners. He is literally trying to scare the shit out of lonely women by telling them that if they don’t bow the fuck down to men and do relationships strictly on the man’s terms then they will spend the rest of their lives alone.

This is not okay.

__________________________________________________________________

[1] what the hell is an MRA? Well I’m glad you asked.

[2] given my ridiculously short attention span as it pertains to this blog, you may or may not actually ever hear anything about him from me again.

blog post edited on 4/18/15

see also: EMK: Want a man? Then slap a smile on it, cupcake!

A rant. Because otherwise I will hit things.

Tags

assholes, fml, things that piss me off

I am so tired. So sick and goddamn tired of being talked at by people who think they know better than me. People who refuse to accept the possibility that maybe, just maybe, those things against which I rail are things that need to be railed against, things that I have the right and the voice and the ability and the knowledge to rail against. That those things towards which I direct my energy are things that are deserving of my energy because ignoring them won’t make them go away. That when I am angry I have the goddamned right to be angry and that anger is often the driving force behind change.

I am so sick and goddamn tired of pretending it’s “people” who do this on the regular when the truth is that it’s men who do this on the regular, and knowing that if I point this out, that if I dare to utter the word “men” without some kind of qualifier that paints them in the glorious light to which so many of them feel entitled by birthright, that I will be screamed at, threatened, and/or labeled a man-hater.

I am sick and tired of men who lack the empathy to understand that my experience in this world as a woman is not the same as theirs. Of men who lack the ability to understand that speaking about my experience as a woman does not, in any way shape fashion form or wildest dream, detract from their experience in this world as men. I do not want to invalidate your experience, dude. All I want to do is talk about mine. May I please have five fucking minutes to do so?

I am sick and tired of these men inserting themselves into conversations where they do not belong, were not invited, and aren’t wanted. Men who cannot help but insert themselves because they lack the introspection to comprehend the simple truth that they do not always have the knowledge or the ability or the means or the insight to teach or correct others and that sometimes what they need to do is just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.

I am sick and tired of the men that I otherwise love and respect doing this to me, because the love and respect that I have for them inevitably leads me to temper my response to them when my response need not be tempered at all, towards anyone, because my anger is real, it is legitimate, and tempering that anger only lessens my resolve to change the things that need to be changed. If you, man that I love and adore, cannot respect me enough to accept the possibility that I might teach you something rather than the other way around, because it’s always the other way around in your mind, then you do not love me and you are not deserving of my respect or my love. And yet I give it to you anyway. And I temper my anger at your behest because I want your approval. What if you aren’t deserving of my approval? And if you treat me this way then you aren’t. You aren’t. You aren’t.

I am sick and tired of these men assuming that they just need to explain things to me and everyone else born with a vagina. That they know better than me because they somehow have the ownership rights to the concept of “reason”, and that all I have in my corner is emotion. As if emotion is useless, that it somehow precludes reason and renders it as impotent as the thought process that drives these assumptions.

I am so tired. So sick and goddamn tired of being talked at by men who think they know better than me. For the love of kittens, dudes. Please just shut. the. fuck. up.

Gas lit

Tags

abuse, domestic violence, fml, personal stuff

Abusive fucking assholes. Man, I just really do not like them. They are evil and manipulative and evil. Take my ex-husband. A man who, for many years, made life pretty fuckin hellacious for me. And he did it by (for starters) lying to me, pretending in public to be something other than a monster, threatening my life, generally scaring the shit out of me at every turn, blaming me for all our problems, and slowly draining the sanity right out of me.

Actually I think maybe my sanity was the first casualty in that relationship. How else to explain the fact that it took me several years to even recognize that the fucker was abusing me? But not really because there actually is a very logical explanation for that. It’s pretty complicated, and it involves things like fear, self-blame, and traumatic bonding, among other things. But I don’t want to get into all that right now. What I’m in the mood to talk about is the way in which we argued [1]. It was a curious way, fraught with panic, confusion, and all kinds of crazy.

I mean, all couples argue, everybody knows THAT. The act of arguing in and of itself isn’t proof that a relationship is unhealthy or abusive. It’s how couples argue that matters. It is, according to experts (although I’ve learned to use that term loosely) an excellent indicator of the interpersonal dynamics within the relationship.

Boy, is it EVER.

I’ve had healthy relationships in which I experienced everything from benign disagreements to no- holds barred, knock-down drag-out wars. Sometimes, during the most heated ones, things were said that shouldn’t have been said. Sometimes the issues that led to the fights were so touchy and/or critical that it took a day or two for emotions to calm down and for the issue to be revisited, and hopefully resolved. Shit happens, even in perfectly normal relationships.

Then I married my abusive person. And I had the dreadful displeasure of being in a relationship wherein the rules of fighting were totally redefined and controlled by him.

This is how my abusive ex “argued” with me. He’d start fights from out of nowhere. Well, not really out of nowhere. Leading up to these “fights”, there was usually a day or two in which he moped around all sullen and moody, snapping at me and the kids, ignoring me, and then brushing me off when I’d try to find out what was wrong. After a day or two, he’d either bring up some long lost issue from the past or find something really stupid (like me walking into the livingroom when occupied by him when I should “know better”) to fight about, and then it was on.

He’d start yelling at me. But never about a particular behavior. It wasn’t “you did this”—it was “you ARE this”. “You are a worthless whore. You are a dumb cunt. Everybody in your family knows it and hates you for it.”

Often, after his initial tirade, he’d storm off, slamming doors behind him, leaving me in a state of shock. Like–what the fucking fuck was that? And so I’d follow him. And I’d demand to know why– why he was starting a fight, why he was saying all those mean and hurtful things to me. And he’d yell some more. About how I always insisted on keeping things going by following him. About how I provoked him. About how, since I knew how bad his “temper” was, I should leave him alone before I made him beat me into a bloody pulp.

During our arguments, I was never allowed to defend myself or talk long enough to counter his accusations (how does one counter an accusation of being a worthless cunt, anyway? I don’t know, but that didn’t stop me from trying). If I tried to talk over him so that I could be heard, it would only make him yell louder, thus indeed escalating the situation. And by “escalating the situation,” I mean, by his acts of terror which included tearing doors off their hinges, destroying my stuff, hitting me, pushing me, knocking holes into walls, threatening to cut off financial support for me, threatening to take my kids from me….the list goes on but you get the drift.

Some so-called “experts” like to argue that domestic violence is merely the result of anger problems in the brain of the abuser. This is a false, idiotic, and dangerous assumption. For one, it necessarily leads to blaming of the victim (you know he has anger issues so WHY WOULD YOU PROVOKE HIM?). And two, it completely erases the fact the domestic violence is not about anger, it is about control. Did you get that cos if you did say it with me: ABUSE IS ABOUT CONTROL. Anger is not emotive for abusive assholes, it is instrumental. There is a big difference, and the “experts” who claim otherwise should be stripped of their credentials, stuffed into a tiny box and shipped off to Outer Mongolia IMMEDIATELY. But I digress.

I finally reached a point at which I refused to be drawn into his arguments. When he’d go into one of his tirades, I’d just sit back, not say a word, and watch him go. My refusal to participate did not lead to shorter, quieter, or calmer tirades. Instead, it often made them worse. I didn’t know it at the time, but his tirades were carefully orchestrated acts meant to cause me great anxiety, get me involved in the fracas so that he could claim mutual conflict, further break down my confidence, and make me question my very sanity. Things became much more difficult for him when I refused to do this, and in turn, they became much more difficult for me.

On the flip-side, if I had an issue that I wanted to resolve, I’d mention it to him, and immediately, he’d deflect. He’d say I was crazy, he’d say the issue was my fault, or he’d say that I needed to focus on my own “fuck-ups” instead of bothering him about his.

No issue ever got resolved. Because abusers, you see, get off on keeping their victims in prepetual states of anxiety, focused on petty, everyday contrivances so that they don’t really ever have the brain space to step back and take a gander at the big picture, because if and when they ever get the chance to do so, their first and last reaction is usually along the lines of “Oooohhh holy fucking….what the holy fucking FUCK……”

Yeah. Cos they are assholes, and they feel entitled to 24/7 access to servanthood and pussy [2] on demand, and they will resort to the most heinious of tactics to have these things.

____________________________________________________________

[1] there is a word for this. That word is gaslighting. If I were a better person I’d scoot over to my laptop so that I could link to some very informative articles on this phenomenon. But alas, not only am I a wicked and lazy person, I am also lacking in the skills required to link to such pieces on this, my pitifully inadequate iPod. I most humbly apologize and promise to post some links later. *Update to add promised links: here and here.

[2] in the case of male abusers, obviously.

Not tonight, dear. I have a headache and you’re an asshole.

Tags

assholes, Dennis Prager

Conservative blogger Dennis Prager is such a funny little asshat.

Yeah, yeah….I know, he’s a racist and sexist pig, and there’s nothing funny about either one of those, but what IS funny is that he suffers from a really severe form of ED. No….not erectile dysfunction…well, yeah, that too….but the ED to which I refer is Entitlement Dysfunction. This dysfunction affects about 3% of the population and is best described as the way in which one worships his penis, and his belief that possession of said penis entitles him to the unalienable right of sex on demand.

Perhaps you are wondering, “Who is this absurd little creature, and where might I find one for myself?” The answer to that is easy, but I must first warn you that Pragers are for entertainment purposes only. Should you find yourself becoming serious about one, you should know that he will demand sexy-time with you often until you find a way to circumvent his erectile medication or convince him that Candy the inflatable can-do orifice is just you having a really bad day (which actually shouldn’t be too difficult. Pragers are known for their ability to forget during sex that there’s another person inolved).

Anyhoo, that’s my warning, and you can either take it or suck it. Pragers cannot be found in toy stores. They can only be found online, at such misinfo-tainment sites as Townhall.com and Creators.com. And here, of course, thanks to Miranda the Delivery Girl (and I expect a tip for my efforts, by the way….).

The following delightful show of sexual frustration can be found in its entirety in the Prager archives at Townhall.com. It’s old, it’s funny as hell, and it’s been lampooned already a million times. As usual, I am late to the party but I can live with that if you can. So anyway, getting on with it. The piece is appropriately titled ‘When a Woman isn’t in the Mood’ (Parts I and II).

Here are some of the most awesome excerpts:

* “The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is “not in the mood” and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.” Translation: I haven’t had sex in a really long time because my wife thinks I’m an asshole.

* “There are marriages with the opposite problem — a wife who is frustrated and hurt because her husband is rarely in the mood. But, as important and as destructive as that problem is, it has different causes and different solutions, and is therefore not addressed here.” Translation: Who gives a fuck about your problems. Didn’t you hear me? I haven’t had sex in months!

* “First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife’s refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him.” I once tried to give my body to my ex husband because I was sick of it, but I was 8 months pregnant at the time so he wasn’t interested. Does that count?

* “This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny).” Actually it sounds awesome! I’ve always wanted a penis of my very own. I’d dress it up in a pretty pink tutu, and finger-paint with it, and if I ever needed to satisfy a sweet tooth, I’d dip it in sugar for an instant lollipop! I wonder if Ken would ever let me have his body……

* “This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet.” Miranda the Psychologist says: Mr. Prager is stuck in the angry phase. Luckily for his readers, the quiet phase comes next, and it will last for as long as his wife continues to refuse his advances. And since she’s probably doing the gardner, the limo driver, and three of his closest friends, chances are his quiet time will last for at least a decade.

* “They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.” I wonder which is more emasculating, being constantly rejected by your wife because you’re an asshole, or admitting to all ten of your readers that you feel emasculated because of your wife’s constant rejection. And what is a ‘male sexual nature’? Do they sell those at Target, because I want one!

* “The idea that the man she is married to, let alone a man whose intelligence she respects, will to any serious extent measure her love of him by such a carnal yardstick strikes many women as absurd and even objectionable.” Captain Obvious to Clueless Dumbass. Come in, Clueless Dumbass. If you tell your wife what you’ve just told your readers, she’s probably going to, oh, you know….STOP PUTTING OUT FOR YOU.

* “Compared to most women’s sexual nature, men’s sexual nature is far closer to that of animals. So what? That is the way he is made. Blame God and nature.” But….but God made women to reject the advances of rabid animals. So what? That is the way she is made. Blame God and nature, you stupid prick.

* “Furthermore, a woman who denies the man she loves sex is not kind.” Ah, Dennis…sometimes I don’t know whether to berate you for your sexist pigotry or give you a bottle laced with arsenic and sing you a lullabye.

* “Every rational and decent man knows there are times when he should not initiate sex.” When he runs out of Viagra? “In a marriage of good communication, a man would either know when those times are or his wife would tell him (and she needs to — women should not expect men to read their minds. He is her man, not her mother.)” And those times, Poohbear, are when she says the word NO. It’s really a very simple concept if you’ll just try to get it…..

* “…..because a happy husband loves his wife more, this cycle of love produces a happy home.” Translation: Are you reading this, Sweetikins? If you’re reading this, let’s make a deal. I promise to stop kicking the dog, punching the walls, and scaring the shit out of the kids if you’ll shut the fuck up already and take care of your womanly duties.”

* “…..to repeat the key point, rejection of sex should happen infrequently. And it should almost never be dependent on mood.” What if I’m in the mood to put your penis in my mouth and bite down on it really hard?

* “If most women wait until they are in the mood before making love with their husband, many women will be waiting a month or more until they next have sex.” Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! Because wimmen hate having teh sex!! Because sex is what men do!

* “When most women are young, and for some older women, spontaneously getting in the mood to have sex with the man they love can easily occur…” For all other hags who have trouble becoming aroused, there’s Viagra. Oh wait….that’s for men. A woman just needs a good romance novel with a Fabio lookalike on the cover and fields of wildflowers and a horse, because there’s always a horse! to get in the mood. Carry on,carry on….

* “But for most women, for myriad reasons — female nature, childhood trauma, not feeling sexy, being preoccupied with some problem, fatigue after a day with the children and/or other work, just not being interested — there is little comparable to a man’s “out of nowhere,” and seemingly constant, desire for sex.” I think the word you are looking for here is entitlement. Entitlement is the problem with dumb fucks like you, not any sort of real, actual desire.

* “What if your husband woke up one day and announced that he was not in the mood to go to work? If this happened a few times a year, any wife would have sympathy for her hardworking husband. But what if this happened as often as many wives announce that they are not in the mood to have sex? Most women would gradually stop respecting and therefore eventually stop loving such a man.” Yes, he really did just compare sex to work. Although, from his wife’s perspective, I can see how this is a reasonable comparison.

* “Partially in response to the historical denigration of women’s worth, since the 1960s, there has been an idealization of women and their feelings.” Bad feminism! How dare you demand respect for women! Go to your room right this second, young lady, and don’t come out until you are ready to repent for all the damage you’ve caused!

* “Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex: It should always be mutually desired and equally satisfying or one should not engage in it.” Um, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say no to sex if I don’t want to have it, but maybe I’m just really radical! “Therefore, if a couple engages in sexual relations when he wants it and she does not, the act is “dehumanizing” and “mechanical.” It’s also RAPE, you dumb clod.

* “If her husband is a decent man — if he is not, nothing written here applies — ” and with that tiny little qualifier…. “a woman will be rewarded many times over outside the bedroom (and if her man is smart, inside the bedroom as well) with a happy, open, grateful, loving, and faithful husband. That is a prospect that should get any rational woman into the mood more often.” ….Mr. Prager neatly renders this entire ridiculous post as impotent and pointless as he himself is. Good men don’t believe this shit. And smart men don’t say it.

And the fact that the Prageman is apparently neither good nor particularly intelligent, well….I feel sorry for his wife, but at least he’s funny. Or….something.

Oh, and here’s a link so you won’t think I just make this shit up.

Gender essentialism is bullshit

Tags

conservative hoo-ha, things that piss me off

Gah humbug! It never fails. Every time I get together with me chums to slurp the hooch and shoot the shit, two things always happen: we end up griping about what annoying little shits men frequently are, and then someone hollers that we’ll never figure men out so why even bother because hurr durr Mars and Venus. And then everyone else agrees, we all sing kumbaya, and all the world is twinkies again.

But ooopsies! I don’t like twinkies. Nor do I like sexist hee haw dressed in the clothing of wisdom. And it really irkens me gherkins to be reminded that my girlfriends and most everyone else within orbital proximity to the sun are so damn durrrr when it comes to recognizing gender essentialism for the sexist bullshit that it is.

I mean, maybe it’s just my vagina causing me to overreact (because that’s what vaginas do obviously) but shit! could we please wake up from our collective fucking nap already and grok just what the hell is happening here? It is not good for women when the society they live in starts genderbaiting everyone everywhere forever about how different men and women are. Because why? Because even a simple drunken analysis of these man-made sex-based “differences” reveals the designation of a superior class and the concomitant devaluation of its supposedly inferior counterpart. Or, as my daughters would say, those differences are used to justify the oppression of women DUH!

Think I’m full of shit? Okay then, lets examine some of the human characteristics which are falsely dichotomized by gender, shall we? One (the man) is dominant; the other (the woman) submissive. One (the man)is aggressive; the other (the woman)is passive. One (the man) is competetive and achievement oriented; the other (the woman) is relationship oriented. One (figure out yet where I’m going with this?) is logical; the other (yeah, I though so, crybaby)is emotional. One of them leads; the other follows. Different but equal, right? But there’s just one small problem with the different-but-equal bullshit justification: in a society that celebrates power and rewards domination, there is nothing equal about the characteristics which are said to define men and women. Nothing. At all. Ever. Period.

And there you go. It’s pretty simple, really. I mean, does it really take a four-thousand word essay to explain why this shit is harmful? Oh, it does? Okay then. Here’s some research for you. From an expert. Allow me to quote the expert as she explains the nefarious effect that an emphasis of gender differences can have on something as simple as communication.

In the realm of intimate heterosexual relationships,
women and men are told that they are as different as if they
came from different planets and that they communicate in
dramatically different ways (Gray, 1992; Tannen, 1991).
When relationship conflicts occur, good communication is
essential to resolving the conflict (Gottman, 1994). If,
however, women and men believe what they have been
told—that it is almost impossible for them to communicate
with each other—they may simply give up on trying to
resolve the conflict through better communication. Therapists
will need to dispel erroneous beliefs in massive,
unbridgeable gender differences.

That one was from the DUH files. Here’s another one from the same place.

One cost to children is that mathematically talented girls
may be overlooked by parents and teachers because these
adults do not expect to find mathematical talent among
girls. Parents have lower expectations for their daughters’
math success than for their sons’ (Lummis & Stevenson,
1990), despite the fact that girls earn better grades in math
than boys do (Kimball, 1989). Research has shown repeatedly
that parents’ expectations for their children’s mathematics
success relate strongly to outcomes such as thechild’s
mathematics self-confidence and performance, with
support for a model in which parents’ expectations influence
children (e.g., Frome & Eccles, 1998). In short, girls
may find their confidence in their ability to succeed in
challenging math courses or in a mathematically oriented
career undermined by parents’ and teachers’ beliefs that
girls are weak in math ability.

I suppose I could quote forever, but you get the drift and you have the link. Now stop bugging me and go read it.

Disturbing trends in dating advice: a rundown

Tags

conservative hoo-ha, dating

One played-out trope that really frosts my cupcake is that women care more about relationships than men do. We care more about maintaining them, making sure we’re happy in them, and making sure our partner is happy in them. Meanwhile men, the reasoning goes, have other, more important things to worry about. This, of course, follows another played-out trope, which is that women are just naturally more caring than men are.

In keeping with this philosophy, there is a whole shitload of resources available to women who need dating or relationship advice. This seems pretty harmless, and maybe it is. But because I’m not a complete moron, I believe, as I may have already said a time or two, that the things we learn about the world and the people around us actually affect our beliefs, actions, and choices. And all this relationship advice aimed at women, along with the absence of its equivalent directed towards men, couldpossiblyinsomecases result in some pretty darn male-centric relationships. Thus the presupposition that women are the caretakers in relationships can and does become a self-fullfilling prophecy.

With this belief in mind, I’m going to examine some of the trends that I’ve noticed in the world of dating advice. Now, I have quite a bit to say about these things because I find them pretty damn disturbing, so I plan to make this a prominent focus of this blog.

To give you an idea of what you have to look forward to, here’s a quick breakdown of some of those trends:

— Women need to start being women again, and letting their men be men.

— You are the keeper of your dude’s boner and it is your responsibility to keep King Ding-a-Ling stiff and solid at all times. Because men are visual creatures!

— Men are visual creatures!

— It doesn’t matter if you’ve been with him for one month or twenty years. The second you let on that you are human, his resulting disgust will drive him straight into the arms of someone who doesn’t do such things as eat, pee, or breathe in front of him.

— Men need to feel needed! It’s okay if you’re a career-obsessed, independent woman, just keep that shit at the office, girlfriend, or no man will want you!

— It is a cardinal sin for women to discuss your relationship problems with friends.

— Sex is as vital to life as food. For men, anyway. For women, well….who cares about what women want, the goal is to keep the men alive by fucking them whenever, however, and wherever they want to be fucked. So shut up and get to fucking, Ladies!

— Feminism means the death of our civilization as we know it.

— Men are going to wank off to porn because they have to wank off to porn, because evolution, and since there’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it, it would be best for all parties involved if women would just stop being controlling prudish bitches about it and get the fuck over it already.

— All problems in society can be cured if the women will just stop being mean to all the men in the world and let them be dads to our illegitimate little bastards.

As I said before, these may sound harmless. But there be a large chunk of peeps out there (Presidential hopeful Rick Santorun being just one of them) who believe that marriage is the cornerstone of civilization, and that in order for marriage to survive, men need to step up and take control of their lives and their wimmin. Lots of us think that’s just really stupid and aren’t down with the idea of marriage to controlling assholes. Therefore, society is going to have to be returned to the days of yore when women were quite literally forced to be financially and emotionally dependent on men. The financial aspect is being handled via legislation as we speak. What the hell do you think this war on abortion and contraception and welfare are about? Durr….do away with these things, and what the hell is the end result? Think about it, yo. And I contend that the emotional aspect is currently being handled via indoctrination of some really dumbass ideas about men and women. Sound crazy? Well, it is crazy. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening…..

Dumb chick myth #234,000

Tags

dating

A long time ago it was revealed to us that woman originated from the planet Venus. Obviously, this means (among other things) that our language isn’t native to the planet on which we currently reside. Accordingly and appropriately, we have this. You’ve probably seen it in various forms since you were a wee little tater tot, and here’s the gist: “Women are irrational kookballs who never know what they want, and even if they did, they’d never come right out and say it, they’d say something completely different, becuz they’re women!”

And because most men aren’t actually mind readers like we all expect them to be (gah, those dumb ol difficult fuckerz) this drives them batshit crazy, thus was born the womanspeak translator meme. Apparently it’s normal, healthy, and good to believe that when your partner says “I’m hungry, let’s go get something to eat” what they actually mean is “I hate you, you lying scumbag jerkoff! you think I’m fat don’t you! I love you soo much, God I hate you! please just go DIE IN A FIRE!”

Yes, yes….I know, it’s cute and silly and completely harmless if we make jokes about how fruitcakey and emotional and irrational women are. But all this collective garbage about the biological inability of the female to express a genuine, sincere thought has the nefarious effect of silencing women. Because if we never mean what we say, then why should we ever be taken seriously? That’s not a hypothetical question, by the way, and this isn’t just some abstract thought experiment– very real women are affected in very real ways by myths such as this one. If you need proof, just ask any woman that’s ever been to a bar on any given night of the week about all the times she’s been pestered to death by shit-faced assholes who think the word “No” means something other than “Thanks, but I’m not interested, so please get out of my face.” Or how many times she’s been brushed off as just another crazy old harpy after having expressed justifiable anger or outrage. Or how many times, in her professional life, her input and ideas have been dismissed by both her peers and her superiors in favor of those presumed to be more ‘rational’ (i.e., people who have dicks).

I mean, c’mon…..you don’t really think those things just sort of ‘happen’, do you? Cultural myths such this one– fun though they may be– have a most irritating way of inflitrating our collective subconscious and affecting our perceptions about the people and the world around us. Not that that’s a revolutionary concept or anything — it’s common fucking sense.

It is in this spirit that I present to you a few excerpts from my version of the chicktionary. Please try to learn something from it.

What she says: “No.”

What she means: “No.”

What she says: “I love you.”

What she means: “I love you.”

What she says: “I don’t want to talk about it right now so please leave me alone.”

What she means: “I don’t want to talk about it right now so please leave me alone.”

What she says: “No, I don’t want you to buy me a drink. What I want is for you to fuck off.”

What she means: “No, I don’t want you to buy me a drink. What I want is for you to fuck off.”

What she says: “Do you see this relationship going anywhere?”

What she means: “Do you see this relationship going anywhere?”

What she says: “Dry-humping my leg is not going to make my headache go away any faster but it will make me kick the shit out of you.”

What she means: “Dry-humping my leg is not going to make my headache go away any faster but it will make me kick the shit out of you.”

What she says: “You can pick the movie. I don’t care.”

What she means: “You can pick the movie. I don’t care.”

What she says: “Are you tired?”

What she means: “Are you tired?

What she says: “I promise I’m not mad at you for totally fucking up the garbage disposal even worse than it was before you started trying to fix it.”

What she means: “I promise I’m not mad at you for totally fucking up the garbage disposal even worse than it was before you started trying to fix it.”

What she says: “Go out with your stupid friends, I don’t care.”

What she means: “Go out with your stupid friends, I don’t care.”

What she says: “Do these pants make my ass look fat?”

What she means: “Do these pants make my ass look fat?”

What she says: “You smell like shit! Did you forget that we have a shower?”

What she means: “You smell like shit! Did you forget that we have a shower?”

What she says: “No I am not interested in dancing with you chatting with you standing still while you feel me up having a drink with you letting you buy me a drink going out on a date with you fucking your brains out letting you fuck my brains out talking to you smiling for you explaining myself to you being nice to you acknowledging that you exist. I really do just want you to get out of my face.”

What she means: “No I am not interested in dancing with you chatting with you standing still while you feel me up having a drink with you letting you buy me a drink going out on a date with you fucking your brains out letting you fuck my brains out talking to you smiling for you explaining myself to you being nice to you acknowledging that you exist. I really do just want you to get out of my face.”

See? That’s not so hard now, is it? Now stop being an ignorant douche, and for the love of GOD! please learn how to stop and ask for directions onceinawhile!