Friday phallus blogging

Yahoo! News: Delegate wearing a hat inspired by the Republican Party mascot.

A sad lack of creativity

I'm pretty sure no Republican said these words to Jesse. What they are really saying would be far more interesting than Jesse's limited and sexist vocabulary.

Jesse says:

"The delegates, the entire convention, are much more hostile to Democrats than the DNC was to the Republicans. In Boston, it was 'Bush has done a bad job.' In New York, it's 'John Kerry is a scumsucking bitch.'"

A good day for some pussy

Do I have this straight? It's a good thing to get some pussy, a bad thing to be one, and absolutely loathsome to have one.

Atrios says:

"Suck it up if you're unemployed. Pussies."

Giblets says:

"And all this on compassion night! Man, I thought all these speeches were gonna be for pussies."

[UPDATE - thanks, Roxanne!] Kevin Drum says:

"Overwhelmingly, liberal bloggers seem to feel that if they watch the Republican convention speakers any longer they will explode. So they aren't. Even the ones who are specifically in New York to cover the convention can't stand it and are mostly hanging out and just chatting with each other.

Pussies."

Political correctness, my foot

Some responses to Matt Stoller's The Woman Blogging Thing caught my eye.

Ellen Dana Nagler said:

"Feminism was for a time reduced to fighting the political correctness wars (which I see from Matt's link that Desfemmes is still doing), and that's when it would have lost me, if it had found me or I it in the first place."

Camille Roy said:

"I started with the usenet groups back in the eighties because I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years. Back then I was capable of hurt feelings as a result of rough language. I guess I just got over it in the intervening years. (You can too!) You pay to play - with a hardened skin."

I'm going to repeat it until my tongue swells up and turns black: "Political correctness" is a term used to devalue civility and give excuse for insulting others under the guise of being plain-spoken.

Rough language isn't the fucking issue. Using "pussy" for "coward" is far more than rough language: it's language that intentionally marks a class of people--women--as weak, inferior, and bad.

These "liberal" people whose posts anger me don't use raghead, kike, nigger, chink, wop, faggot--words that might apply to men. They use words that specifically target women, and their name-calling is a standard technique of establishing psychological control. If they won't even pretend to be nonsexist, you can kiss wage equity goodbye.

The dog blogging thing

Forget the talk about whether women and black people blog, I want to know where the dogs are. Cat blogging this, cat blogging that, and not a single dog blogging. Heck, one sharp-clawed feline has her own blog, and there's even an otter blogger.

Where the bark are all the dogs?

Spreading the hate meme, liberal style

According to both BlogStreet and the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, Atrios is the third most influential blogger; his blog, Eschaton, is the ninth most popular link at Blogroller.[1]

That's scary. I try to convince myself he's not hypocritical, just ignorant and oblivious, when he rails at Republican moral bankruptcy or the the First Lady spitting on veterans for sport even as he thinks it's funny to play at being a pimp.

Yeah, yeah, the "Mars, my bitches" line comes from a skit by Dave Chapelle. Amazing, isn't it? A thousand different faces of black people, and Chapelle chose a pimp to represent "Black Bush." Black Bush, nigger Bush. 'Cause pimps and ho's are comical, good old-fashioned entertainment, like dancing on stage in blackface. Ho--not whore, to make sure we all understand we're talking about nigger pimps, even while we pretend to believe in equality.

The bitches, now, we want them in a variety of colors, and ages too--the younger the better. Like that thirteen-year-old teamed up with her mother, and that runaway whose father raped her.

Tell me the conservative elite aren't pleased by how well we do their job for them. Conflate "black man" with "pimp" and "woman" with "bitch" and "ho," and mock them. Keep that wedge between them and white men. Too bad Atrios can't figure this out for himself.

But no, he justifies his disparagement, "Tough times demand a little tough language."

No.

Tough times demand working together, and being smarter than the people who are trying to screw you over. Getting suckered into slurring the people who should be your allies isn't being tough--it's being stupid.

And it goes against the values of liberalism.

Or maybe I've been wrong all these years when I believed that to be liberal meant respecting the rights of others regardless of sex, age, color, religion, sexual preference, physical condition, or income level; meant working toward a common good; meant treating each other with the respect due every human being.

1 Rankings from Aug. 30, 2004

Comments, posts, and blogrolling

Thank you to everyone who has posted comments. I have responded to most of them now.

I have several posts planned, in addition to responses to slurs, but it takes me a long time to get my thoughts straightened out enough to write coherently. In the meantime, Amanda at XX has a thought-provoking post about gay rights and feminism, Matt worries about the woman blogging thing and Shaula looks for creative solutions, and Wicked Muse quotes a man who appears to be far angrier than I am.

I've added a blogroll of women (90 active and current links so far) who address politics in their blogs, whether constantly or interspersed with other events in their lives. Not all are "liberal," and even the liberal ones disagree in many ways.