This is your brain on women
I have had it with my sex. I hereby proclaim myself Female By Accident; it’s just an “F” on my driver’s license and a mistaken chromosome set; otherwise I have nothing to do with the mewling, puling, totally lacking in anything like dignity or character half of humanity known as “women.” Men say you can’t trust anything that bleeds once a month and doesn’t die; fellas, you don’t know the half of it.
I found a trackback to one of my posts, leading to this. This is the website of one of these “intelligent, compassionate young women” I’ve always been reading about, but she’s a soggy mess like all the rest of them:
I carry more Texas in me than I realize on most days. “Bless her heart,” is exactly what I think about Sheehan. She’s lost her son, and no one, and I mean no one, has any right to pass judgement on her grief or her campout.
And further down…
Until you’re a mother that’s lost her son to war, you don’t get to say Women Should…
Blah blah blah and fucking blah… my post, of course, is “appalling.” Oh good, that means I won’t ever be on this Suzy Sincere’s Christmas list. But just in case she might not be entirely sure I am to be persona non grata (what can I say, it’s the Compassionate Conservative in me, I hate seeing anyone all torn with confusion and indecision), I left the following comment:
Oh give me a goddamn break. “Bless her heart”—I’m sure you really mean that, I merely want to throw up. Thanks to women like her—and now you—the feminist cause has been set back to maybe the Middle Ages. After years of grousing and complaining that men treated women like little children and crazy witches who couldn’t keep a logical thought in their head and couldn’t be trusted alone with a potato peeler much less a paying job we now learn that the Heroine of the Hour is a Gold!Star!Mother! who sobs for the camera and has set herself up as a screaming fishwife demanding the president meet with her for a SECOND time, so he can… what, see her screech and shake and emote and make a total wreck of herself in front of the world? Look! Gaze and wonder at the flower of American womanhood!
How disgusting, how totally without dignity or regard for the rules of civilized behavior this woman and women like her—and the feminized, spine-deprived men who bow before them—are. How many more depraved displays of utter lack of character like this Sheehan woman is displaying will it take before sops like you will quit responding like Pavlov’s dogs at women making disgraceful spectacles of themselves? Oh don’t bother answering; I know the number is “infinity.”
Women are always pulling this “the babies… the children…. the mothers!!!” technique whenever something looks like it might actually get accomplished for once. Men, most of whom are desperate to do anything for women (mostly so they’ll quit fucking nagging already) usually go along with it because they think it will, if not get them time in the sack, at least get them peace and quiet for just this goddamn once. Of course, it never happens — women find something else, some new thing that they just can’t stand, and it’s back on the emotional roller coaster. Men who break free merely have to put up with being called “sexist beasts,” and so on, but they at least have the comfort of not being female. Women who refrain from joining in on with the sobsister act don’t get to escape that way. We get special treatment.
As for the quote from LaShawn Barber’s post on this subject — well, all I can say is I’ve not been on tv nor am I interested in doing so, so I have no need to be one of those nicey nice conservatives. Someone’s got to keep up the “frighten the horses” end and as everyone including Pat Buchanan seems to have abandoned that post for Comfort-’n'-Country Lane I guess that person might as well be me.
And just to make sure you all know how I think (note: that’s “think,” not “feel”) about the Cindy Sheehan Circus, here is what I left to this much more refreshing post of Steve H.’s:
Cindy She-hag needs to be driven out of town on a rail. People like her nearly destroyed our military by trying to make it into some sort of uniformed babysitter brigade. People like her have dragged the level of political discussion in this country not into the mud, but into the mentrual muck of the slop pail. People like her have set back the feminist cause 150 years — women are now revealed in all their glory as emotion-dominated, unreasonable, screeching nags that you wouldn’t trust to operate a toaster let alone elect into office or give the controls to a 747 to, all on live tv. I would gladly give up the vote if it got fevered hysterics like Cindy and her fans out of the public eye.
By the way, the full Virginia Woolf quote, part of which feminists are always quoting out of context, is “Give me five hundred pounds and a room of my own and you can keep the vote.”
Update: hahahahahaha!
August 15th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
Roman matrons used to say to their sons: ‘Come back with your shield, or on it.’ Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome. — Robert A. Heinlein
August 15th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
You go girl.
August 15th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
If there is anything of Casey Sheehan watching this debacle, he must be covering his ears and biting his tongue. I mean:
Dammit Mom, I’m not a three-year-old any more!
August 16th, 2005 at 12:14 am
On the other hand, hundreds of other women have lost sons in the Iraq war without going stark raving mad on national TV. Don’t sell your 23rd chromosome short, Andrea.
August 16th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Pixy has a point, Andrea. Unfortunately, it’s always the “five percenters” that make it hard for the rest of the good people.
But I agree with Sheehan’s impact on the feminist cause and the military. This person is as bad as Michael Moore.
August 16th, 2005 at 1:57 am
Reckless? Wanton? She’s doing something I never thought could be done: She’s making foreign policy sound sexy.
August 16th, 2005 at 4:08 am
Heinlein said Roman mothers, aelfheld? - Then he got the quote wrong …the saying is from the Roman historian Plutarch, in his work Moralia, in the section Sayings of Spartan Women …the original is “Another woman handed her son his shield, and exhorted him: ‘Son, either with this or on this,‘”.
The Spartan women were tough …it’s refreshing to contrast them with er, the focus of Andrea’s ire:
Sorry for the pedantic interlude; I’ve been re-reading Carnage & Culture (VDH), and he includes that “with your shield or on it” quote in there somewhere. And when I googled to check, the rest of the sayings seemed an apropos contrast to the ongoing “thread” of the last few days.August 16th, 2005 at 5:08 am
Heh. I was always told that “Bless your heart” was Southern for “oh you idiot.”
“You pulled a shelf full of junk down on your own head? Oh bless your heart.”
“You walked into a hornet’s nest? Oh bless your heart.”
“You stuck your finger in a light socket? Oh bless your heart.”
August 16th, 2005 at 6:02 am
I am willing to bet that she was an anti-war/anti-Jew moron before her son went to war. I am betting her son probably enlisted to get away from this harpie.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:37 am
brdavis, I was directly quoting Heinlein who, I am sure, was aware of the purported Lacedaemonic origin (Roman historians, even those of Greek origin, weren’t above invention). The sentiment was as applicable to Rome as to Sparta. I chose Heinlein’s version as Rome was once a republic.
August 16th, 2005 at 7:43 am
RHJunior, you’re right; “bless your heart” is Southern for “oh you idiot”, though “you poor fool” might be a more accurate rendering. The “intelligent, compassionate young [woman]” is misusing the idiom.
August 16th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Yes, both Aelfheld and RHJunior are correct.
When true Southern women think or say “Bless her heart” in reference to Sheehan, it’s because they’re too polite to roll their eyes over her.
August 16th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Also, I refuse to let my gender be defined by one particularly victim-mentality-addled example. I know a number of women who lost sons in wars (mostly Vietnam these days) and who accepted it - it was sad, they’d rather it hadn’t happened, but it did, and they realized that sitting around beating their breasts and ranting to everyone who would give them a moment’s time wouldn’t bring the boy back.
August 16th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Funny - when I think of women and children (in regards to war)- one of the FIRST thing that comes to mind are pictures of dead Kurdish women holding their dead babies. But - we’re not supposed to care about those mothers and babies, are we?
August 16th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Valid point. Since Plutarch’s Moralia was written to instruct young Romans upon characteristics that should inform and instruct them - that they should strive to emulate - I entirely agree, aelfheld …and the “correction” wasn’t really meant as a criticism of Heinlein (who I rank as an indispensable author of middle period sci-fi) or you …just an opportunity to include some of the lesser-known, equally powerful quotes of The Sayings of Spartan Women.
I mean, how often do you get to relevantly quote Plutarch in context these days?
Indeed. A much more fitting and honourable epitaph for a young warrior who received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for the act of heroism that ended his life: Casey Sheehan. And a much better example for his mother to have chosen to emulate …one that could have earned her private admiration and quiet respect.…pedantic to the very core, sigh.
August 17th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Hear me roar
When I was tipping my hat to all the strident snarky bloggers out there who make me look like a puddy-tat, I forgot Andrea Harris. Meryl may be the Master of Juvenile Scorn, but Andrea is the Queen Bitch of…
August 17th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
You guys suck. Andrea’s trying to start a perfectly nice flamewar and you’re arguing about Plutarch?
August 17th, 2005 at 8:04 pm
Re:
. With me, just delete “By Accident”, it’s a long, painful and thoroughly planned process.But I’m still a RWDB, a NeoCon who has an aversion to dictators who keep prisons for kids, use mustard gas on civilians etc etc. Someone who’s anti-Fascist, be it the Islamo- or any other kind.
I’ve managed to show a very few lefties that their nice, cosy, tight, snug world-view of NeoCons as violent, thuggish and reactionary oafs whose masculinity is threatened is maybe just a little at variance with reality. But most don’t let themselves be “oppressed by NeoCon Zionazi Facts”, they go back to carrying crystals and peering at their Horoscopes. Or reading Chomsky. The Horoscopes are more accurate.
August 17th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
In case you thought…
…that female circumcision was largely restricted to Africa, think again. A German aid group finds the first solid proof of the practice, thought to be prevalent in the Middle East. They’re estimating 60% of the women in parts of Kurdish…
August 17th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Sign me up sister. I’ve been ranting about this for days. This woman is a complete loon and people keep saying that we MUST respect her because she’s a grieving mother. To paraphrase Tina Turner, “What’s a uterus got to do with it?” Absolutely nothing. Losing a child does not make you a liar or a raving nutcase. All that useless drivel, “we must respect her for her loss.” No we don’t. You respect people because of how they HANDLE their loss. I respect grace under pressure, not the ravings of a loon. Grief, like alcohol, only enhances what you already are. Sheehan’s loss has shown the world that she is a liar and a lunatic who doesn’t mind using her son’s death to push a radical, anti-American, anti-Israel agenda. I’m so sick of these so-called feminist who screech that women are no different than men and yet get the vapors any time someone challenges them (i.e. Larry Summers fiasco). Giving a pass to her horrific behavior because she is a “grieving mother” is patronizing and insulting to women everywhere.
August 17th, 2005 at 10:34 pm
Count me in, as a hardcore supporter of both equal rights and equal responsibilities for we women. Can’t have one without the other.
And I’m so sick of the notion that identity always trumps ideas. The mother (woman, by definition) is beyond reproach because of what she is?
Nonsense. Achieving the level playing field of intellect was the original basis of the feminist movement. You’re absolutely right that the emotion-centric Sheehan and her supporters have done more to set us back than anything in recent memory.
Thank you for pointing it out so well.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:54 am
“Bless her heart” is what a Southern woman says when she’s getting ready to insult someone.
“Bless her heart, she’d be so pretty if she could just lose that extra weight.”
“Bless his heart, he might be able to get a date if it weren’t for those ears of his.”
Etc., etc.
Some might say this passive-aggressive style is bad enough. But to see the Cindy-defenders using it seriously is worse. If it’s going to be applied to Mother Sheehan at all, it should be:
“Bless her heart, she’s just not smart enough to understand this whole ‘war on terror’ concept.”
August 18th, 2005 at 7:20 am
Holy crap, Andrea, that’s gonna leave a mark.
I am oddly compelled to prostrate myself and leave you burnt offerings.
August 19th, 2005 at 1:44 am
A Feminist that His Majesty Loves
Yeah, who needs sleep? Anyway, LC & IB Andrea Harris once again knocks our socks off with just about the most eloquent missives on Joan of Crawford. Our only issue with Andrea is that she seems to get all the…
August 19th, 2005 at 10:02 am
[…] You know it’s a good rant when the ‘Hawk shows up to say he’s not worthy and an argument about Plutarch breaks out in the comments. Posted by Ian S. in […]
August 19th, 2005 at 12:23 pm
That was wonderful.
Be careful - you’ll get booted out of The BarbEhrian’s uterus-as-conscience club. We women are all supposed to stick together and ovulate sychronistically in solidarity as we ponder our uniquely shared sense of grievance.
Or something like that. I keep forgetting…
August 19th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
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August 19th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
Not only was your entry great, the link to the grilled cheese thing was absolutely hilarious! Thanks to the Rott, I’ve got a new blog in my favorites folder!