In Defense of the Barfly

When women cease to be defined by our sexual behavior and our appeal to men and can fully participate in public discourse without our gender being dismissively scrutinized, and when our experiences are considered human instead of strictly female and outside of the norm, there will be no such thing as a barfly. Until then…

Women who frequent bars by themselves do it for a number of reasons. (Just like men! Imagine that!)  Sometimes it’s to get shitfaced drunk and forget about everything that stresses her out.  Sometimes it’s as simple as wanting to be alone in public, or to be with those wacky bar friends who don’t judge her as harshly as everyone else does and don’t  pretend to know her well enough to explain all the ways in which she’s not living up to her potential.

She does it to not be home alone.  To not be home with someone she doesn’t want to be at home with.  To feel attractive for the first time since the last time.  She does it because dusk always reminds her of her mother and she doesn’t want to think about her mother.   Or because she has a physical craving that she has to satisfy despite not really wanting to, sorta like taking a 1-minute smoke break by the dumpster in the rain with no coat on only because your body is demanding that you do so.

Imagine:  Broken-hearted dude goes to the local tavern where everyone knows his name, sits at the bar for many hours chatting up the bartender, drinking whisky shots with PBR backs.  Says stupid shit, accidentally cries a little, drunkenly sings along too loudly to Tiny Dancer, goes to a lady’s house late night, has stupid semi-hard drunk sex, does the 2-mile walk of shame home in the morning, passes out.  Repeat. Goes on 3-year-long bender of public drunkenness and sleepovers in strange places.

You know what that is? A song with gravelly vocals and elementary guitar chords.  Americana.  The human experience. Crazy Heart.

Imagine: the broken-hearted is a woman who does all of those things.  You think: So sad!  Why isn’t she at home making dinner for someone, or painstakingly scrutinizing her appearance?   Where does she get the ludicrous notion that she has the right to be in a bar by herself?  Doesn’t she have ladylike things to do somewhere?  Does she not know what people think of her?  Why doesn’t she care what everyone thinks?  For fuck’s sake!

According to Urban Dictionary, and seemingly the general public, a barfly is a woman whose purpose is debauchery and destruction.  She has no motivation for being in that bar other than to manipulate and eventually destroy the men that are stupid or drunk enough to pay attention to her.  She does not exist in and of herself and has no self-awareness or integrity. She’s a slut, a drunk, a terrible mother, a washed-up spinster, a ruined woman.  She deserves to be treated like shit, and in fact expects and seeks it out.

The hours she spends on the bar stool would be tragic if anyone actually cared about her well-being.  But they don’t, because she’s just a barfly.

The truth is, a barfly is nothing more than someone who, like everyone else, tries to create her own brand of temporary happiness in the way she knows works.  She just happens to do it in a bar – which, if she were a man, would be hardly notable.  Cheers was full of ’em.

That woman that sits at the bar by herself is not who we think she is.  Let’s stop being deafened by the standard-issue patriarchal white noise that makes us think we  know her and get over our rickety judgments about her worthiness and tragedy level before my freaking brain explodes.

And really, feeling so sorry for that woman who sits alone because you just can’t imagine how horrible her life must be, simply because she’s there, at the bar, drinking and maybe flirting?  That’s not a whole lot better than judging her according to her fuckability score and next-day-embarassment index. We don’t know shit about her life and thinking that her mere presence in that place is enough to understand her… well, that’s plain fucked up.

Ma Nature, why do you let these fools define you?

Good Mothers are nurturing. They suckle, groom, and protect. Bad Mothers lose interest in satisfying the demands of their children and go off and do their own thing.

Yeah yeah, nothing we haven’t heard before.

But now Science! has proof that Bad Mothers have something seriously wrong with them. They’re not just weird and self-absorbed, they’ve actually got a mental illness, for chrissakes.

By comparing the good mothers to their less attentive relatives, the group has found that negligent parenting seems to have both genetic and non-genetic influences, and may be linked to dysregulation of the brain signaling chemical dopamine…

Child neglect has devastating consequences, Auger says, and the natural occurrence of maternal neglect within this mouse strain offers a powerful opportunity to investigate the biological and behavioral bases of maternal neglect…

Next, Auger says, “We hope to understand in greater detail the basis of naturally occurring neglect and provide treatment paradigms to these animals to restore natural maternal care of offspring.”

Let’s hope that shit’s treatable! Cuz lowered knows there’s nothing worse than a mother who refuses to suckle and groom her own damn kids while babydaddy is out re-planting his seed/being listened to/drinking Pabst with the boys.

Why I’m so pissed off about this article right now;

1) The immediate editorial judgment of what is good and what is bad when referring to the behavior of mice.

2) The glaring lack of comparison data on father mice, despite repeated use of the word “parent” and “parenting”.

3) The inference that mice behavior is completely transferable to human behavior without question, even though humans, ya know, use verbal language and have complex political and cultural structures and stuff.

4) The assumption that Bad mothering may benefit from “treatment paradigms,” which will inevitably be offered by ginormous pharmaceutical companies as a solution to the problem of women who work and women who date women and any woman who doesn’t feel up to providing constant, unappreciated care to another human being entirely dependent on her for survival and the ability to form healthy relationships as an adult.

5) The not-so-inferred-but-totally-stated idea that “good” mothering is what is natural and deviations are unnatural, as in fully against the irrefutable laws of nature that humans have no choice but to abide by.

Okay, any Science! project that tells me what Mother Nature herself has decided for me based on some assumed but yet to be proven ability to make babies simply REEKS of patriarchy ball sack. These kinds of seemingly innocuous and supposedly well-intentioned studies about women (let’s save the children!) are what make up the substantial body of work that keeps us out of the way so that men can carry on with the business of being fully realized human beings.

Women in public places

I had a conversation with a guy friend recently in which he told me that my friend Pam’s intelligence, humor, friendliness, beauty, and kick-ass pool playing skills were not enough to make her attractive because she was “just a barfly.” Another good friend told me that he would never have a relationship with a woman he met in a bar because he wouldn’t want to be with a woman “like that.” I challenged them both on their sexist double standards and I’ve been mildly obsessed with the idea of The Barfly ever since.

(Okay, before you go questioning my choice of friends, let me just say that I live in a small town. If I didn’t begrudgingly tolerate feminist ignorance among my friends I would have exactly zero of them)

So I decided to do a little investigation into this whole Barfly thing. The official definition is a person who spends a lot of time drinking in bars. However, the slang definition, according to the oft-cited Urban Dictionary, is as follows:

Bar Fly

1. A bar fly is a sleezy woman that hangs out at bars with no other intent but to hook up with a man for the night. Bar flies normally leave a wet stain or mark on bar stools. They are disgusting whores.

2. A heavy drinking woman with a mom face but milf-like qualities such as a nice rack and a small ass. Can be surprisingly tight in the vagina. Will deny being a bar fly.

Apparently there are several synonyms and spin-offs to the Barfly. Yay!

Bar Hag

A chick who hangs at the bar on a daily basis, fucks whover buys her drinks/drugs and thinks she’s hip to the scene.

Bar Nasties

Horribly skanky girls that regularly occupy the local bars trying to hit on bartenders in the attempt to integrate their alcoholic or otherly abused life with someone who is trying to earn money to get through college by holding a part-time job because they want their futures to be stable enough to avoid people like this.

Bar Ho

A stupid drunk ass bitch who goes to the bar strictly to spread her taco.

Bar Slut

A loser whore who tramps around the bar looking for anything that has anything between its legs.

Bar Leech

A woman that takes a man’s offer to buy her a drink with no intentions of dancing or going home with him. After the girl gets the drink she will usually “recieve a phone call that her brothers in the hospital and she has to go”

Bar Troll

Similar to Barfly but a MUCH Nastier Uglier Version, that not even all the alcohol in the world could get you to sleep with her.

Bar Rag

Ugly drunk women who always seems to be at the end of the bar. Will go home with anyone who has at least 5 dollars in pocket.

Ah, there’s nothing quite like the sneak-up reminder of how despised women are. Especially the ones who go out into public.

I have many things to say about the Barfly, but I’ll have to say them in another post because for now, the Urban Dictionary has gotten me all kinds of riled up.

The tagline: “A slang dictionary with your definitions. Define your world.”

My world. Funny.

Under the current reviewing system, newly submitted definitions are entered into the editing queue before appearing on the site. Volunteer editors vote to accept or reject definitions in the queue…Each submission is reviewed by a number of volunteers (the exact number varies, but lies between two and nine), with controversial definitions being viewed by more people. Definitions with more accept votes than reject votes appear on the site.

The quality control issues with that site are obviously enormous and I realize that the bulk of entries are being written by teenage boys (but wait – is the fact that the guys writing this crap are young supposed to make me feel better about the world?), but I’m still quite unnerved by the fact that entries are actually reviewed before being posted and this kind of shit still gets up there. Hot damn, the hate is palpable. These entries were approved, for chrissake.

Ever read the forums at the bottom of movie pages on IMDB? Or the comments on any girl’s YouTube video? Or spam subject lines? My inbox terrorizes me daily. The internet has made it possible to spew hate before unsuspecting and oddly captive readers, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Online public spaces are so often dominated by proud misogyny. Boys write for boys as the default audience and women are intruders, lucky to be let in and laughed at and threatened when they try to point out that they’re actual people and not sex dolls or cartoon characters or ideas. Websites where anyone can say anything inevitably and tragically become places for men to alienate and degrade women; to remind us that we exist on the margins of humanity. Anonymity + no rules = the truth comes out. The gloves are off. No reason to pretend. And it feels fucking awful.

Please, dear feminist readers, start a blog if you haven’t already and write in it if you have. We need more places where we can go to escape the hate.

Nipple licking in America

Okay so I know it’s hot out and everything, but where the hell did guys get the idea that it’s perfectly okay to saunter around the 7-11 without a shirt on? I get the no shirt thing when you’re putting a new roof on a house or maybe installing an irrigation system, but out in public, walking down the street, in chilly air-conditioned convenience stores? What’s the deal?

Yeah okay, you have a nice chest. Your celtic tattoos make you an intimidating sexpot. Your nipple piercings make us all quiver with desire. Your well-defined pecs haunt my dreams. Whatever. Put a fucking shirt on.

Here’s the root of my problem with male shirtlessness: It’s profoundly unfair. As you probably know by now, I’m not a huge fan of patriarchical injustice, and this one just reeks of it. Not only is it unacceptable for women to walk around topless, it’s plain illegal. It’s called indecent. Immoral. In too many places it’s still illegal to breastfeed in public, and in the Bible Belt you can be arrested for not wearing a bra.

Actually, I made that last part up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true.

Why? Because it is unfair to tempt straight men this way. See, it’s also illegal to go around feeling women up, and if women could go topless in public it might make it more difficult for the tempted men to not break that particular law. Can’t count on men to control themselves, or course. It’s gotta be up to women to make sure men don’t violate them. Men are not responsible for their own impure thoughts and compulsions to act on them, women are. Fancy that. Classic boys-will-be-boys, women-are-responsible scenario.

Now let’s say I got a strong desire to go lick the pierced nipples of celtic tattoo man. Which, for the record, I most certainly did not. Pretty much. Anyway, it’s fairly clear that no one’s too worried about my impure thoughts and desires, otherwise male shirtlessness would be similarly outside of conventional moral boundaries. Either this is because the world thinks that women don’t have such desires or it’s just not concerned about our inability to control ourselves.

It’s a bit of both, I suspect. Most (American) women have been taught to maintain pretty strict control over our desires and sexual compulsions ever since about the 3rd grade. Such enduring lessons include: Make them want you regardless of if you want them back, and don’t give in to your own want unless it will get you something more meaningful in return. Approach their desire with caution and in a proper ladylike fashion while maintaining your sexual attractiveness at all times. If you express or give in to your own desire, we will call you a slut. If you don’t give in at the appropriate time, when they really need it, we will call you a tease, especially if you dare tempt them with revealing clothes.

Them, them, them, them, them. Blah. What a bunch of horseshit. Too bad so many of us still abide by this stuff. This is the stuff that keeps us fighting with each other over developmentally disabled frat boys, questioning our worth and value in the world because the dude that we’re not even that into doesn’t call us back, and trying to find clothes that reveal just enough to make them wish they could touch us but not so much that they’ll actually try.

Basically, this is the stuff that patriarchies are made of. It’s a very useful tool for male domination: keep the women repressed with concern over how to get men to want them while still keeping their dignity intact, as well as how to prevent men from hitting them, raping them, leering at them, ignoring them, or just generally treating them like shit, and the men are free to walk around town with their shirts off enjoying all the perks of male privilege that are so ingrained they don’t even know they have them.

Oh calm down, I wasn’t talking about you.

The Context

I was recently informed by a friend, via a note passed to me at a party after I had reacted negatively (or, as he explained, like a chihuahua) to some sexist comment he made, that feminists are “bored and abused” chauvinists who have nothing better to do than to attack men and that I should not let anti-woman words have any kind of power over me. To be offended by misogyny is my choice and to do so makes me weak, apparently. (Now there’s a topic for another day).

And because I did not want to hear the same defensive, woman-hating bullshit that I’ve heard a thousand times by yet another man who claims absolute wisdom and righteousness in all matters human, I stopped reading about halfway through and gave the note back to him. I was then told that, by not being open to his opinions about feminism, I am essentially unwilling to grow and evolve and that I will tragically fail to achieve in my life the full and rich human experience because I refused to give credence to and appreciate his anti-feminist viewpoint.

Super! Not only does being a woman make me less-than, but being unwilling to listen to the defensive voice of male privilege tell me how wrong my beliefs are makes me even more less-than.

The thing is: From the minute I leave my house in the morning I am inundated by misogynistic messages, from the things I hear people say to the images I see all around me. For every one time that I make any sort of comment on these messages there are approximately 1,172 times that I’ve recognized something as sexist and not said anything. There are about 5,249 messages that I didn’t even pick up on.

Once I first really understood what the patriarchy was, it became the Framework. The Context. Everything fell into place and finally began to make sense. Once I was at that place, there was no going back to when I didn’t see and hear and feel a seething hatred of femaleness all around me. Feminism became the lens through which I viewed the world. And that’s that.

I am happy, or at the very least willing, to debate whether or not a certain act, behavior, word, or belief is inherently sexist or misogynistic. I am not, however, willing to debate the importance or necessity of feminism. Honestly, if you really truly think feminism is wrong, or that women just have it made these days and that we should suck it up and be grateful for the rights men have already granted us, then you’re a complete fucking tool. Period. No discussion necessary. I won’t ever entertain the notion, no matter how passionately you argue or how solid you think your points are. To try and argue with me about this would be like trying convince Neo that there is no Matrix.

I know it must be hard to fathom that a girl doesn’t care what a smart man thinks about the thing that she cares most about in the world, or that there’s a movement that exists that doesn’t much take into consideration what men have to say on the topic. I know I’m supposed to 1) nod thoughtfully as I process your wisdom, asking clarifying questions about your points just in case I don’t immediately understand something you say, and then 2) offer up some powerful and intelligent argument on why feminism is important, and then 3) try to prove my point with examples from women in politics and a few stories about my grandmother, but of course, in the end, 4) concede that yes, you have some very good points that I will certainly think about, and thank you for educating me about feminism and correcting me on those things I didn’t fully understand about women and the world.

Well, that conversation has been had before and is a bullshit boring ass waste of time that does absolutely nothing for anyone. Pretending to be open to the possibility that I’m a fool for believing what I do is wrong, dishonest, and disrespectful to everyone involved. Being polite and feigning interest, when I’m really thinking “Holy crap, what an indoctrinated, privileged prick he is. Where’s my beer?” is simply no good. Watching an ESPN poker game that I’ve already seen 3 times would be a far more productive, enjoyable, and and honest thing to do.

Patriarchy, among other things, needs to encourage the abuse and mistreatment of women on a heartbreakingly tragic scale and then make them entirely responsible for it in order to maintain the male-dominated status quo. The words, ideas, behaviors, and images that support the misogynistic gender roles that keep the patriarchy thriving must be acknowledged as such and then eliminated if we ever want to live in a world where women’s bodies and souls aren’t abused to such a horrifying extent.

That’s my entire motivation and the broad context to every feminist argument I make. I really don’t see a whole lot to argue about there.

And the list goes on

I never really thought of obscene phone calls as anything more than the childish antics of ill-behaved boys. But after today, I’m gonna have to put them on the rapidly growing list of things I consider misogynistic harassment.

I’m at work, in an office, talking on the phone at the reception desk. I’m half paying attention to what random salesmen dude is saying to me and half trying to map an image in Photoshop. “The copier toner is about to be shipped, ma’am. I just need to confirm your address. I didn’t take the order. I’m just at the warehouse and I need to ship it.”

“Okay, again, I didn’t order the toner and I don’t want it sent to me. Please don’t send it.”

“How about if I send a heat-activated jumbo size vibrator instead?” he asks.

Silence. Me trying to figure out if he just said what I think he said.

“It’s the size of a white man’s penis in the package, but it becomes the size of a black man’s penis once it’s inside you.”

Click.

What the hell was that? Why did he say that? What was he trying to do? Why am I shaking? Why do I feel like throwing up and taking a shower and sobbing uncontrollably?

Because I was violated, that’s why. Innocuous and entertaining at it may seem to some people, his words very much threatened me. They made me feel vulnerable and unsafe. They sexualized me in my workplace against my will.

I guess that I’m supposed to think it was funny and laugh it off, and no doubt someone will think of me as an uptight humorless bitch for not doing so, but I’m finding it pretty impossible these days to laugh off this kind of bullshit.

Any guys out there ever get an obscene phone call? Ever? Prolly not. Why do you think that is?

I got my first call when I was about 9 or 10 years old and home alone. Strange man with gravelly voice asked me a bunch of personal questions about my body and then jerked off, demanding that I not hang up until he was done. I was too scared of what would happen if I did, so I didn’t.

My growing list of misogynistic harassment is all these kinds of hateful, spiteful words and behaviors, typically dismissed as silly and meaningless, that nonetheless attempt to remind women and girls that they are weak, dumb, trivial, totally powerless against the sexual force of masculinity and worth nothing more than what they can do for men. Or, as Twisty puts it, a “subclass of passive sex minions for male use and abuse.” Sounds about right.

God, it’s just so not funny.

What it’s all about

I’m sure lots of folks have seen this, but for those of you who don’t daily peruse the fem blogs, here’s an excellent primer on the concept of male privilege and on what feminists like myself are up against.

The Male Privilege Checklist
An Unabashed Imitation of an article by Peggy McIntosh

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.

2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex – even though that might be true.

3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.

4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.

5. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are.

6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are relatively low.

8. On average, I am taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces much less than my female counterparts are.

9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.

10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.

11. If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.

12. If I have children and a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.

13. If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.

14. My elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true.

15. When I ask to see “the person in charge,” odds are I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.

16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.

17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male protagonists were (and are) the default.

18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.

19. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or not it has sexist overtones.

20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.

21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.

22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.

23. I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.

24. Even if I sleep with a lot of women, there is no chance that I will be seriously labeled a “slut,” nor is there any male counterpart to “slut-bashing.”

25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability or my gender conformity.

26. My clothing is typically less expensive and better-constructed than women’s clothing for the same social status. While I have fewer options, my clothes will probably fit better than a woman’s without tailoring.

27. The grooming regimen expected of me is relatively cheap and consumes little time.

28. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car.

29. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.

30. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.

31. I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called “crime” and is a general social concern. (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.)

32. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.

33. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.

34. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.

35. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.

36. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is pictured as male.

37. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.

38. If I have a wife or live-in girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.

39. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.

40. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.

41. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are rarer.

42. In general, I am under much less pressure to be thin than my female counterparts are. If I am fat, I probably suffer fewer social and economic consequences for being fat than fat women do.

43. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.

44. Complete strangers generally do not walk up to me on the street and tell me to “smile.”

45. On average, I am not interrupted by women as often as women are interrupted by men.

46. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.

————————————————————-

Click here for details and discussion on this list.

 

Ok, I’ll tell you

The answer* to the question previously posed is this:

A bunch of skeevy old men whack off to an underage girl’s MySpace page and then harass her in public. Somehow, this is entirely her fault. It’s up to her to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Like I’ve said before, women are entirely responsible for both causing and changing mens’ bad behavior. God I hate that message, and I sure wish it weren’t EVERYWHERE, including these goddammed Public Service Announcements.

This poor little girl gets verbally assaulted by a number of men in public and is expected to take full responsibility for it. As if having an internet presence automatically makes a girl fair game for whatever kind of hateful shit gets thrown at her by pedophiles. As if she asked for it! by simply existing in a virtual space shared with anonymous men. Please. Nevermind that the old football coach is checking out a 14 year old girl’s photos and then yelling at her across the field about her tattoo – the only problem with that, apparently, is that she should never have let that happen.

Imagine a campaign that addressed physical and verbal violence against women by actually targeting the men who commit the violence! What a freaking concept.

Oh wait, there is one. (And only one, far as I can tell)

(If you can’t read the bottom, it says: If you have sex without consent you could end up going to prison, for rape. If you don’t get a yes, don’t have sex.)

Okay, so here we are talking to men instead of to women about preventing rape. How novel!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Why’s that? According to this message:

1. A woman is a body, her body is a place, and her vagina is something to be entered.
2. Men need to protect themselves against rape allegations, because going to prison is a bad thing.
3. Sex without consent may not be rape, but you could go to jail for rape anyway.

This ad doesn’t suggest that women are real live people with feelings that suffer serious trauma when their ‘No’ isn’t taken seriously and who really don’t want you to rape them. It doesn’t even imply that rape is wrong.

So this is what I get for demanding a PSA geared toward men – something that effectively issues a tidy, patriarchy-approved warning to the Dudes of the world: These hot chicks you sleep with are dangerous little bitches, so be careful.

—————————————————–

*Kudos to the boyfriend – you got it right baby! Of course you had to follow it up with “but you can’t control boys, so…” which completely negated all the feminist goodwill you had acquired.

**Little of what I said in this post hasn’t been said before by Twisty and the insightful commenters at IPTB.

Tell me what’s wrong with this PSA

Or, more appropriately, what you think I think is wrong with this PSA:

I’ll give you 10 bucks, a cookie, and an ERA sticker if you get it right.