Wankers of the Week: Crappy Groundhog Day!

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Crappy weekend,everyone! Hope you like the sound of clock-radios going off and “I Got You, Babe” coming on, because you’re going to be hearing that a lot today. Yes, the groundhog has poked his sleepy head out of his hibernation hole and seen wankers enough to last until spring. And here they are, in no particular order:

1. Sean Fucking Hannity. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve listed the Baby Jesus, but hey…I’m pretty sure that getting the facts wrong, being forced to backpedal, and then vanishing mysteriously from the tweeter counts as a wank, no?

2. Courtland Fucking Sykes. Oh dude, who the hell do you think you’re kidding? Everyone knows that your idea of a “radical feminist” is any woman who’s not lying face-down in front of you with WELCOME tattooed across her back.

3. Piers Fucking Morgan. Donnie Drumpf is not a feminist? I’m shocked, SHOCKED. Why, next thing you know, you’ll be telling me that bears do things in the woods!

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4. Scott Fucking Baio. Chachi, Chachi, Chachi…I’m shocked at you! Well, actually…no, I’m not. I think this is par for the course, considering that your big break in showbiz was to play a smarmy little skirt-chasing molester. I’m only surprised that it’s taken this long for your own typecasting to finally catch up to you.

5. Bernie Fucking Marcus. Senile codger says what? Oh, I see…he’s just projecting. Lemme guess…he does this a lot? Uh-huh. Well, would someone please confiscate his cane, so he doesn’t end up hitting any nurses with it? Thanks awfully.

6. Rick Fucking Dykstra. Cue up that old Queen song, the one that starts with a riff: Ba da dump, bump, bump…yes, Another One Bites the Dust! Another pervert has been exposed. And given that the Ontario PCs knew what he was before they ran him as a candidate, they really have no excuses. Far’s I’m concerned, they broke this egg all over their own faces!

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7. Tomi Fucking Lahren. Oh girl, who do you think you’re kidding? Everyone knows you’ve been dying to eat a Tide pod yourself, if you haven’t done so already. I mean, you ARE always frothing at the mouth…

8. Mike Fucking Pence. Yo, “Mother”? Could you slap your boy upside the head again? He’s talking like HE just ate a Tide pod, too.

9. T.J. Fucking Berry. Meanwhile, in Missouri, a village has lost its idiot…at the statehouse. Where he was found trying to violate the First Amendment in the name of Jeebus. Who is no doubt smacking his forehead in dismay at all the dim-witted nerds in his fan club who keep trying to redefine marriage so that only fan-club nerds can get married.

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10. Matt Fucking Gaetz. Hey sparky, here’s a pro tip for you (not that you’re bright enough to actually USE it, but hey): If you don’t want people to think you’re a conspiracy kook, don’t have anything to do with InfoWars! Because that site is nothing but wall-to-wall conspiracy kookery. If any actual facts make it into there alive, trust me: it’s an accident.

11. Peter Fucking Beck. Launching a satellite that does absolutely nothing but sit up there giving off a glare? Yeah, that’s got a certain gosh-wow factor to it. Mostly of the “gosh, wow, that’s totally pointless and really fucking STUPID” kind, alas.

12. Taylor Fucking Weyeneth. So long, Donnie’s opioid “czar”, we barely knew ye. Don’t let the door hit ye where your mama done split ye.

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13. Doug Fucking Ford. Oh yippee yi yay, yippee yi yo. Dougie has decided to throw his hat in the ring of the Ontario PC leadership circus! Like it already wasn’t enough of one with all the sexual harassment and assault scandals currently making the rounds. Ha, ha.

14. Julian Fucking Assange. Yeah, I’d say we’re way beyond done considering this guy a journalist anymore. You hop in bed with the Baby Jesus at FUX Snooze, you ain’t nothin’ but a right-wing hack. And one who’s easily tricked by fake tweeters, too. Nice egg you got on your face there, whitey.

15. Gus Fucking Eli Fucking Reinhardt. Why the double Fucking? Because that’s how disgraceful you have to be to strike ANY comparison between getting religion and getting RAPED. Although, now that I think about it, maybe becoming a fundie IS like getting raped in some ways: it fills you with all kinds of fucked-up and downright shameful notions about who’s at fault for what happened to you and why.

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16. Raheem Fucking Kassam. He asks if the US is not a “mafia state” now, but he asks it not about Donnie, but OBAMA? Dude, Obama’s not in power anymore, and Donnie’s mobbed-up as fuck. For that matter, Breitbart too has ALWAYS been shady. And when even Frank Fucking Gaffney tells you it’s not, and he’s a racist who HATES Obama, doesn’t that tell you something? If you can’t say anything honest or intelligent (and you can’t), hold your damn tongue already.

17. Neil Fucking Portnow. “Women artists need to step up”? Um, they DID. HUGELY. And given that the top prize went to some schmuck who drones about how he’s totally superficially horny for some chick he saw at a club, I’d say it’s the other gender that needs to do some stepping. PS: What Pink said.

18. Tim Fucking Allen. Waaaa, snowflake, you sound triggered. Need a safe space? Well, I guess your right-wing echo chamber movie will provide THAT, all right.

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19. Paul Fucking Nehlen. And in other snowflake news, look who made a list of “Jews”! (Note the quotes, there for a reason…reason being, he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.)

20. Cory Fucking Carnley. New verse on the old song: If you’re a Nazi and you’re outed, it’s your fault! (clap clap) If you’re a Nazi and you’re outed, it’s your fault! (stomp stomp) If you’re fascist and a fool, they can kick you out of school. If you’re a Nazi and you’re outed, it’s your fault! (clap clap, stomp stomp, YEE-HAW!)

21. Spencer Fucking Brown. Kinda hard to play tennis in a KKK robe, innit? Ha, ha.

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22. Brenda Fucking Fitzgerald. Why no, buying tobacco stocks while working for the Centres for Disease Control doesn’t represent any conflict of interest at ALL!

23. Paul Fucking Gosar. Arresting undocumented immigrants attending the SOTU address as plus-ones? Way to uphold the First Amendment, bubba gump.

24. Diane Fucking Keaton. So, Woody Fucking Allen’s lying-ass old interview is more to be believed than the legions of women who are pointing out just how urpy, ooky, and downright rapey he’s been over the years? Welp. I guess somebody is now officially cancelled. Besides HIM, of course.

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25. Hillary Fucking Clinton. And speaking of cancelled, yup, SHE made the cut this week. Guess her feminism goes no deeper than the fabric of her pantsuit. Sorry, NOT sorry.

26. Michele Fucking Bachmann. On the other hand, THIS one is cancelled for all time. And God has already spoken. Just wait till she calls off her next run once the very negative polls start to roll on in. In 3…2…1…

27. Gloria Fucking Copeland. And further to the subject of pious frauds and idiots, how about HER? Yep, she’s still preaching antivaxxer bullshit, mixed with an unhealthy dose of fake-healing. You’d think a measles outbreak in her own congregation would have been enough of a wake-up call from God, but ohhhh noooooo.

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28. Alex Fucking Jones. Because he just can’t let a week go by without jerking off a gigantic wad of bullshit (awwww, he loves my list and just can’t resist!), heeeere’s Alex, proving once again just what a trashy trainwreck he and his right-wing conspiracy coffeehouse really are.

29. Jared Fucking Wyand. Because #19, who’s somewhere to the right of Mussolini, “isn’t going far enough” by calling for stochastic terrorism against (alleged) Jews. Yes, really.

30. Jerome Fucking Corsi. Yaaaaaay, more trashy trainwreck from the Swiftboat Right! Aaaand back under your rock you go, Jerry.

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And finally, to these fucking imbecilesses at Davos, who thought Donnie had somehow done something to merit their admiration. Mesdames, he has done nothing of the sort, unless you actually LIKE getting your pure, moralistic, evangelical, bible-thumpin’ pussies groped by some reeking vulgarian with stubby orange fingers covered in stale burger grease. Has all that blond hair dye eaten your brains? Well, I’ve got news for you: Jesus is not going to give your presidunce, or YOU, any “mulligans”. He’s going to give you all the same treatment he gave the moneychangers in the temple. For your collective sakes, I sure hope you like cats-o’-nine-tails!

Good night, and get fucked!

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Happy Birthday, Ahed Tamimi.

Palestine’s young freedom-fighter turned 17 in jail today. If you want to know just how much of an outrage that is, watch the video.

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Neo-Nazis: Can we finally start calling them TERRORISTS now, instead of “patriots”?

Isn’t it funny how often these far-right groups style themselves as “patriots”, who only care about “preserving heritage” when they’re going out to protect the statues of seditious terrorists who fought for the right to own other humans on the grounds that those humans were black, and therefore, not really human?

Well. Now that they’re turning out to be increasingly responsible for murders (like those of Blaze Bernstein and the Kuhn-Frickers), and apparently also had their sights set on bombing nuclear power plants in Florida, can we FINALLY call them what they are? They are TERRORISTS. They have never been anything else.

And, oh yeah: They WORSHIP Charlie Manson. See, assholes, I was right: Charlie, that virulent racist from West Virginia, was always on the far right. He was always your boy.

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Quotable: Jade Hameister on sexist trolls

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Music for a Sunday: You want a tune? You GOT it.

Okay?

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Pope shames sexual abuse victims in Chile

This is so awful, it simply MUST be seen to be believed:

And yes, the entire incident was caught on tape.

So yeah, while Pope Frankie is a cool dude in some respects, he still has a long way to go when it comes to no longer covering the church’s ass. In fact, so does the whole damn Vatican hierarchy, and every diocese too. Because I guarantee you that every Catholic bishop has covered up a child sex abuse scandal SOMEWHERE. And they did so on orders from Rome. Watch this if you don’t believe me…

Yes, there actually IS an old papal encyclical that insists that child sex abusers (and sexual abusers in general) be not prosecuted according to the laws of the land, but moved about from parish to parish…and if they reoffend, they get retired to priestly rest homes to pray their “sins” away, rather than defrocked and handed over to police.

I don’t think you could call it anything other than sickening.

PS: And on a somewhat related note, I need to add Linden MacIntyre’s book that he mentions above, The Bishop’s Man, to my to-read list, because it deals with this on a not-entirely-fictional level.

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It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. Do you know where YOUR Nazis are?

In case you needed reminding, this is what they’re trying to deny, and hoping you’ve forgotten. Alain Resnais, however, made this ten years after the liberation of the death camps, and it puts the boot to all denials. And to all forgettance, too.

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Wankers of the Week: Girth of a Nation

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Crappy weekend, everyone! Well, it’s been just over a year now since Donnie took office like a kid with his fat little fingers in the candy jar, and the verdict is in: He can’t president for shit! He lies chronically and pathologically, he cheats, and before you know it, Robert Mueller will have all the hard evidence (required for impeachment) that he also steals. The government has shut down as I begin this list, and the women are uppity again. And that, I’m sure, was just the fun part. The not-so-fun part follows, in no particular order:

1. Mike Fucking Pence. Yeah, remember him? Donnie’s second-in-command? If you ever wanted to know just how good a Christian he is NOT, check out how he reacted when criticized (with every right) by a gay figure skater who hasn’t forgotten when Mikey used to be all about that anti-gay conversion “therapy” (note the quotes, there for a reason). And then remember how Mikey is also all about covering Donnie’s lying, cheating, thieving ass, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. PS: And this isn’t helping, either. PPS: And neither is this.

2. Patrick Fucking Meehan. Remember when the Repugs were all about those good ol’ family values, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, etc.? Yeah, I’m sure HE does, too. Why else use taxpayer money to pay off a sexual harassment settlement, i.e. HUSH MONEY? PS: Ew, ew, EW.

3. Diane Fucking Black. Blame Obama for something that happened a year after he left office, and more to the point, was done by the same band of obstructionist jackasses (including YOURSELF) who made his eight years in office so hellish? At long last, “lady”, find a new refrain to sing.

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4. John Fucking Gray. Single women are somehow lesser because of how we’re “walking”? Um, NO. How about teaching men to walk the husband walk, for a change, instead of the Perennial Bachelor Even When Married walk? (And no, Ciara, marrying is NOT “leveling up”. Because if, God forbid, your husband ever cheats on you…how is that “up”?)

5. Scott Fucking Simms. Once more, with feeling: CANADA IS NOT A THEOCRACY. YOU CAN HOLD ANY OPINION ON ABORTION YOU LIKE, BUT YOU DO NOT GET TAXPAYER FUNDING TO JAM YOUR OPINIONS DOWN OTHERS’ THROATS, OR FOR ANY SUMMER JOB WHERE YOU HAVE TO LIE TO OTHERS ABOUT A SAFE, LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE. (Sorry for the ALL FUCKING CAPS SHOUTING, but some people really are hard of hearing.)

6. This fucking coward in the Pepe the Frog hoodie, who thought it was a cute idea to put up white-supremacist stickers during the Women’s March, but somehow his White Pride™ failed him when it came time to stand up and let his pudgy white face be identified. Sorry I couldn’t name him, but I can still shame him!

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7. Ryan Fucking Zinke. Is it too soon to start calling him Crooked Ryan and chanting “Lock Him Up”? No? Oh good, because from now on, that’s what we all should do.

8. Elle Fucking Darby. Yes, I’m aware that it’s the Age of Influencers™, that PR is king, and that paying is for peons. Nevertheless, your social media reach (which is really below mediocre) isn’t going to be paying anyone’s bills, as the hotelier you tried to hit up pointed out rather eloquently (along with his own social media reach, which somehow outstrips yours). You’re not entitled to anything free, other than maybe a kick in the ass. And no one cares if you’re young and just wanna have fun at someone else’s expense before you get all old and boring like the rest of the universe. Your schtick’s old already. And you might want to do your homework before deciding that someone else “needs” you to promote their place on your insipid Instagram.

9. Sue Fucking Peterson. Excuse me, but what part of the First Amendment do you not understand? Start again with the part about Congress making no laws respecting religion, and work from there. You are an elected official, and you have no excuses.

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10. Mark Fucking Neuhoff. Hey Virginia Tech, you gonna do something about this turd? Because he’s really starting to stink the joint up with his Nazified fumings. Flush the damn toilet already, and don’t forget to wash your hands! Nazism is not just gross, it’s fucking contagious.

11. Roger Fucking Wicker. The US gummint shutdown may be over now, but I bet the teenage girl pages of the House were not exactly happy to hear that news…not least of all because now they’d have to be dodging THIS guy all over again.

12. Kevin Fucking Swanson. If a fictional romance between a woman and a sea creature spells “the end of civilization as we know it”, your civilization is built upon SAND. Just sayin’.

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13. Tom Fucking Kawczynski. “Pro-white” is not racist? Au contraire, mon frère, it has never been anything BUT racist. And if you’re against bringing in people from other cultures to the US of Amnesia, you might want to go the fuck back to Poland, where YOUR ancestors came from. I mean, if you’re gonna be insular, be really fucking insular. Go big AND go home. Capisce? PS: Aaaand buhbye! Ha, ha.

14. Tony Fucking Perkins. When the hell were you ever “kicked around” by Barack Obama and his so-called leftists? Other than at the ballot box, which is fair and square in a democracy? I think you’re giving Donnie a lot of leeway because he caters to all your bigotries, including the racist one that dares not squeak its name. Otherwise, why forgive him for fucking a porn star and paying her hush money?

15. Lamar Fucking Alexander. Throwing a talking stick across the Senate chamber because you don’t like being told to wait your turn? What are you in, kindergarten?

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16. Terrie Fucking Butcher. Look, I get it…not everybody likes Tupac Shakur. I’m not a fan either. But I don’t whip out any racist slurs at him, or his music. Then again, I don’t live in Alabama, where shit like this is apparently still considered normal.

17. Sarah Fucking Huckabee Fucking Sanders. Why the double Fucking? Because that’s how awful you have to be to make Rosie O’Donnell’s list of the damned. Congrats, Sarah, and keep up the (cough) good work.

18. Natalia Fucking Martinez. Oh look, another cute little white girl saying “nigger-nigger-nigger” on her fake Instagram account. And she thought no one would find out, or exact any consequences, like, oh, say, ostracizing her at school. That’s so cute, Nat! You’re out, Nat! Don’t let the door hit your little white ass, Nat!

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19. Credell Fucking Calhoun. And again, as with #9: What part of the First Amendment don’t you understand? Yeah, I know it’s Mississippi, and sometimes a black Democrat’s gotta go along to get along, but this is fucking ridiculous. And UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

20. Lara Fucking Drumpf. Honey, you’re a fine one to go calling other women dumb. You married a hideous idiot for his old man’s money. Don’t go throwing rocks at what you don’t understand. Remember, pussy grabs back. And you are just one small part of what they’re marching against.

21. Larry Fucking Nassar, AGAIN. No, dude, those young women who denounced you aren’t “scorned”. And they’re not after any “attention” OR “rewards”. They don’t want you, and they don’t care if you wanted them or not. All they care about is seeing your lying, molesting, rapey ass go to jail and stay there, where it fucking belongs. Capisce?

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22. Jack Fucking Posobiec. Oh surprise, Nazi Jacky Boy is also looking to cheat on his wife! These far-right-wingers and their wholesome Family Values are, as always, the biggest hypocrites. As for what’s smallest about them, it’s a toss-up between their hearts, their brains, and in the case of the cis males, their gonads.

23. Trey Fucking Gowdy. Oh lord. Remember how, last week, I jokingly wondered what he was doing for an encore since “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi” is now over, over, OVER? Well, it appears we have an answer, and that answer is: He found a whole ’nother way to make an ass of himself. Figures, figures, FIGURES!

24. Michael Fucking Oren. You think Ahed Tamimi is an actress? And you think we’ll think she’s an actress, too? Oh dude, you’ve been eating Tide-pod sammitches, haven’t you?

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25. Courtland Fucking Sykes. You want to come home to a home-cooked dinner every night, eh? Well, dude, instead of expecting women to do it for you, how’s about you learn to work a crockpot and a bread machine? That’s home cookin’ too. Oh, and do us all a favor while you’re at it, and DON’T FUCKING BREED. The last thing any girl child needs is an oaf like you for a father.

26. Ron Fucking Johnson. Sir, please put on this conical cap and go join #23 in Dumbass Corner. Thanks.

27. Jason Fucking Kenney. Oh, so you say you’ve learned from your mistakes as a member of Harpo’s government? Funny, but all those anti-choicers circling around your UCP table for scraps and bones would put the lie to THAT contention.

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28. Patrick Fucking Brown. Meanwhile, in Ontario, THIS happened. And just think, he can’t even use the old “I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing” excuse! Who says there’s no God?

29. Kent Fucking Hehr. And while we’re at it, score one more for #MeToo on a federal level…and strike one major douchebag from Cabinet. (Jesus, he even looks like the kind of guy who you’d most suspect WOULD do that.)

30. Gavin Fucking McInnes. Racist said a racist thing, referring to a racist book? And the conservative channel he said it on tried to cover it up for him because it would make THEM look bad, too? BUSTED! The Internets never forget. Ha, ha.

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And finally, to dear ol’ Donnie himself. Does anyone seriously believe he’s all of six-three and only 239 pounds? Does anyone seriously believe he’s not a racist, not a Nazi, not stupid, or not a cheater, not a crook, or really not anything that he’s gone out of his way, time and again, to show that he is? If you believe a word that comes out of his mouth, you are complicit in what he’s doing. And there’s just one thing I have to say to you:

Good night, and get fucked!

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French “feminists” don’t get #MeToo, apparently.

So it wasn’t bad enough, last week, that 100 prominent French women, some of them soi-disantes feminists, got their expensive lingerie in a bunch over the whole #MeToo movement and decided to write an atrocious letter about it. Now, we get another one, defending said letter. Yes, Agnès Poirier has taken it upon herself to school us impertinent foreigners about the ins and outs of French feminism, and why 100 French women (presumably, representatives of every femme in the land) have expressed (in language shocking even to one who can read French, as I can) their fear that calling out bad men in Hollywood and elsewhere is in danger of turning into a witch-hunt, while simultaneously ignoring the very real problems created by the sexism that they are defending as a “right to importune”.

But I’m getting just a soupçon ahead of myself here. Agnès, s’il vous plaît…take it away:

They spoke their mind in a Gallic manner: straightforwardly, to the point of appearing blunt. The letter was also strikingly badly edited, with clumsy chunks unworthy of their authors. But, in short, they think the campaign by the #MeToo movement to tackle sexual harassment represents a “puritanical … wave of purification”; that “rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cackhandedly, is not, nor is being gentlemanly a macho attack”.

They went on to proclaim that “what began as freeing women up to speak has today turned into the opposite – we intimidate people into speaking ‘correctly’, shout down those who don’t fall into line, and those women who refused to bend [to the new realities] are regarded as complicit and traitors”.

In other words, these 100 French women, representing many more in France, argue that this new puritanism reeks of Stalinism and its “thought police”, not of true democracy. What they refuse to countenance is an image of women “as poor little things, this Victorian idea that women are mere children who have to be protected”, the same one extolled by religious fundamentalists and reactionaries.

Oh, mon Dieu! So the famous letter was merely “strikingly badly edited”, now, and not just ill-thought-out and full of caca from start to finish? That women (outside of enlightened France, naturellement) are now being made out to be “poor little things” and “Victorian children” who have to be “protected” from evil men by “Stalinist puritans” and “thought police” who are long on political correctness and short on freedom of speech? Because from where I sit, here in North America, nothing of the sort that they describe has, in fact, happened. Writing for the selfsame Guardian that published this tas de merde, Van Badham offers a truly useful corrective:

These “things” reported by women and men across the world have included acts of sexual violence, abuse, assault, entrapment, harassment, coercion, blackmail, public sexual humiliation. The accusations include Louis CK masturbating in front of non-consenting women. Harvey Weinstein ejaculating on to a woman’s nightclothes after raping her. “Things” done by men who lied, insulted, threatened, cornered, touched up, fingered, groped, squeezed and penetrated those whose power and status were less than their own, as a reminder that it was. As a delectable indulgence not of sex, but of advantage.

Now Deneuve’s name is among 100 female signatories in a letter to Le Monde, protesting the campaigns with the spurious insistence that exposing abuse and naming abusers “helps the enemies of sexual liberty”. They claim men have been punished merely for “sending sexually charged messages to women who did not return their attentions”. “We are clear-eyed enough,” the group pronounces, “not to confuse an awkward attempt to pick someone up with a sexual attack.”

OMG, ladies: me, too! Me, and all the other women who have exposed the damaged tissues of the shame inflicted on us by our predators are quite “clear-eyed” on the distinction.

That’s why we are so angry – not because we are “puritanical”, as the letter claims, but because we are seeking joy from sexual contact on our own terms, not abuse or exploitation on someone else’s.

Oui! I, too, like my Australian comrade, would like to know just where the depredations of Louis CK, Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, et tous les autres fit into “cack-handed” seduction, or “awkward attempts to pick someone up”. Because from where I sit, being forced to watch someone else masturbate, or having my leg humped, is not exactly emblematic of my own sexual liberté. It is also not a bit seductive. I too am clear-eyed enough to know the difference between a nauseously blatant power-grab by way of the genitalia, versus an actual awkward approach to l’amour. Shit, even here, in the uncivilized wilds of North America, we’ve known the difference for years, and some men have even been addressing it for decades. Here, for example, is a handful of Berkeley Breathed’s ‘toons from the mid-1980s:



As you can see, Binkley’s whole interaction with Blondie is very “cack-handed”, but not once does he take his cack in hand and jack its contents into a potted plant. Vive la différence!

But back to the Mme. Poirier’s touching defence of the letter, which seems to be based on a number of thoughts lost in translation, somewhere over the Atlantic:

As women, we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism, which beyond denouncing the abuse of power takes on a hatred of men and of sexuality.”

This is an example of what has always distinguished French feminism from the American and British versions: the attitude towards sex and towards men.

Ah oui, le chauvinisme français. That charming Gallic trait that assumes a natural Gallic superiority over tout le monde, constantly and oh-so-charmingly forgetting that égalité and fraternité are also in the national motto, and for reasons good. I know it all too well, having seen examples of it (which I’ll get to in a bit). Continuez, s’il vous plaît…

Partly lost in translation, the letter was vilified on social networks, its authors accused by some of being “lobotomised” by their “internalised misogyny” (according to Asia Argento), and more generally for being “rape apologists”, “too old and decrepit to understand women’s issues today”, for being “over-privileged”, for being “stuck in the 1960s and 1970s”.

Deneuve and Catherine Millet, the art critic famous for The Sexual Life of Catherine M, suddenly became the faces of what was seen by many younger feminists in France and abroad as a retrograde bunch of over-privileged celebrities and intellectuals both totally unconcerned by the plight of all those anonymous victims of rape and sexual harassment and too preoccupied by their sexual freedom and defending the French way of gallivanting about.

The letter’s authors did not do themselves any favours by writing of men’s “right to pester” women. This clumsy and unacceptable line poured more oil on the fire and reinforced prejudices and cliches about French women. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in 1947: “American women have only contempt for French women always too happy to please their men and too accepting of their whims.”

This is a real shame: the letter puts forward strong arguments. And it does so by being overtly French; in other words, by sounding authoritative – and rude. Heated debate is a passion, considered healthy in France. As the highly regarded 89-year-old French historian and feminist Michelle Perrot, partly critical of the Deneuve letter, wrote: “They are triumphant free women who show a certain lack of solidarity with the #MeToo victims … But they say what they think, and many people share their point of view. The debate is real and must be recognised.”

Duly noted, mesdames. And I’ll grant you this, the US-Americans ARE a puritanical lot; their first English-speaking settlers brought over some seriously backward notions about women and sex in general. We much more liberal, progressive Canadians are constantly rolling our eyes at them, believe me.

But this is not just some prudish younger Americans bashing their French elders for their retrograde attitudes; even in France, younger feminists have, as Mme. Poirier notes all too fleetingly, begun to criticize their compatriotes’ clinging to outmoded (and frankly, male-centred) notions of what constitutes sexual freedom. Somehow, though, the French equivalent of #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc (“call out your pig”) was not deemed worth mentioning here. Even though it matters, and matters intensely, to a great many jeunes françaises… Inquiring minds are wondering pourquoi, Mme. Poirier…

In France today, different feminist groups coexist: the main one is a feminism following the steps of De Beauvoir, one that is not at war with men but rather with machismo culture, gender inequality and the inherent misogyny of religions.

And there is a rather recent American import of feminism, one that often comes across as opportunistic and “man-hating”, one that turns a blind eye to religious misogyny, for instance defending the wearing of the hijab. They present themselves as the new vanguard of French feminism, the new blood, except they can sound to some like Stalinist commissars, or Robespierre in culottes, passing edicts about what is acceptable conduct. We would be wrong, however, to think that the current debate shows a generational fight. Many millennials have signed the Deneuve letter. The divide is political, ideological even.

And again, le chauvinisme rears its head, and claims to be speaking for all the French féministes, including the much more critical-minded younger generations thereof. Worse, it taps into a false strain of “feminism” (note the quotes, there for a reason) that attacks the “religious misogyny” supposedly inherent in Islam, while doing no such thing about that of Roman Catholicism, France’s still-dominant main religion. Do I have to dredge up, once more, the hypocrisies of those who scream about the evils of the burkini and try to tear hijabs off French Muslim women’s heads, while leaving similarly-clad nuns to frolic unmolested in the same surf on the same beaches? Do I have to point out how very strange it is that those who purport to defend secularism keep turning a blind eye to their own favoritism when it comes to Catholicism? And do I have to point out, once again, how far from feminism it is to force women to (un-)dress in ways that make them feel uncomfortably exposed, just so they blend in with what is deemed chic and pleasing to the eyes of (some very chauvinistic) men?

But wait, we haven’t even gotten to the most ridiculous part yet. Don’t worry, we’re getting to it…

According to Perrot, “the authors of the letter fear that the #MeToo movement dents creative, artistic and sexual freedom, that a moralist backlash comes and destroys what libertarian thinking has fought hard to obtain, that women’s bodies and sex become again this forbidden territory and that a new moral order introduces a new censorship against the free movement of desire”, and concludes: “There is indeed reason to share their fear.”

Except that nothing exists to confirm that this fear is even remotely reasonable. So far, the perpetrators of the worst have merely been censured, and their works interrogated, but left untouched. Nobody has been jailed for life on the mere say-so of one outraged woman. Nor have their movies been pulled from circulation to face the censor’s scissors. What has happened is that women have finally felt free enough, despite American and all other puritanism, to come forward and talk about their abuse at the hands of men in power. Nothing more.

Meanwhile, though, we see just what a strange notion of “censorship” passes for definitive among certain soi-disantes féministes in France:

This is probably the most interesting and sharpest argument made in the Deneuve letter. As Sarah Chiche, a 41- year-old psychoanalyst and author who signed the Deneuve letter, explained: “The #MeToo victims’ personal stories have proved a powerful magnet and very popular with the public. It has almost become a new norm in public discourse. Unfortunately, this is becoming insidious: now books need to be rewritten, films reshot.”

Last week an opera director in Florence decided to change the end of Bizet’s Carmen so that Carmen now kills her murderer. Ridley Scott edited out Kevin Spacey from his latest film and reshot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World. Art critics questioned on the BBC whether to boycott the Gauguin exhibition in London because the painter slept with under-age Tahitians. Others want to rewrite Sleeping Beauty so that the final kiss is a consented one.

Since Deneuve signed the letter, Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour has suddenly been described as a rape apologist film, to be banned from cinemas. “This new feminism is now serving the interests of cultural revisionism and doesn’t know when or where to stop,” says Chiche.

It is a French tradition to disturb, to question, to critique, to set ablaze the conflict between two freedoms, that which protects and that which disturbs. Sexuality has become the new battlefield. “Today, in 2018, Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses and Nabokov’s Lolita would never see daylight because of both reactionaries and self-proclaimed progressives who invoke the fate of real victims to shut us all up,” says Chiche.

Did you catch that? Sarah Chiche opposes “censorship”…by supporting actual censorship. And she maintains the French tradition of tearing things up…by opposing anyone trying to actually tear things up. What else can you call it when someone decries “cultural revisionism” by calling for the stifling of reimagined cultural icons before they can even be created?

Écoutez bien, mes soeurs: There is nothing wrong with rewriting old fairy tales with new endings. Popular stories are constantly being rewritten or recast from new angles, and have been since time immemorial. Shakespeare was a notable rewriter of Plutarch, for example. Even the the most “classic” of fairy tales is but a revision of some older story that has grown unpalatable to its current admirers. It’s only slightly newer to have them revised from the underside to show the point of view of those oppressed, but trust me, it’s been going on. Lolita, for instance, has been reimagined from the viewpoint of the sexually abused titular heroine. (And was unsuccessfully “defended” by a stab at censorship, too.)

It’s even happening in France. Kamel Daoud’s marvelous reimagination of Albert Camus, for example, in which he gives names and voices to the Algerian victims of the pieds-noirs Meursault’s murderous foray into forbidden freedoms. He didn’t insist on butchering Camus, he just wrote a whole new book to show what Camus left out of L’Étranger. Would you rather he be silenced in the name of preventing “cultural revisionism”?

Oh wait, I suppose you would. C’est typique…

For all the talk about Deneuve, little has been said of the initiator of this public letter. Her name is Abnousse Shalmani. She is a 41-year-old French-Iranian, born in Tehran. She grew up under Ayatollah Khomeini until her parents fled to Paris in 1985. In a book she published in 2014, Khomeini, Sade et Moi, she revealed that she was the victim of a rape, but also said French authors such as Colette, Victor Hugo and Marquis de Sade taught her how to be free, as a woman and a sexual being, far from the Islamic veil she was forced to wear as a girl in Tehran.

Perhaps we should listen to her when, amid the furore, she tried to make herself heard on French radio: “We do not dismiss the many women who had the courage to speak up against [Harvey] Weinstein. We do not dismiss either the legitimacy of their fight. We do, however, add our voice, a different voice, to the debate.”

One should always listen to the French difference.

Well, madame, consider the “difference” duly heard and noted, along with the above-mentioned chauvinism and hypocrisy that underpins it. (We’ll leave out just how far from libertarian the Mad Marquis was, eh?)

It’s clear that the French way is superior to that of les Américaines, and that’s why French women have a certain je ne sais quoi, and also why they never get fat. But I still think this embarrassing letter is unworthy of them. And even Catherine Deneuve has since apologized for it.

Funnily, though, I don’t hear anyone saying we should listen to that part of French feminism.

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Posted in Artsy-Fartsy Culture Stuff, Canadian Counterpunch, Deepest Darkest Africa, Do As I Say..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Freeze Peach!, Human Rights FAIL, If You REALLY Care, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Racist?, Morticia! You Spoke French!, The United States of Amnesia | Comments Off on French “feminists” don’t get #MeToo, apparently.

Saudi camels get WHAT???

No, seriously…they get Botox. And that’s not all:

The annual contest has been moved from its previous venue in the desert to the outskirts of the capital Riyadh, where a jury rates tens of thousands of camels based on their appearance. The event is part of a big festival that celebrates the animal, which symbolizes Bedouin life in the desert.

“The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia,” the chief judge of the show, Fawzan al-Madi, said as news that twelve camels were kicked out of the competition broke, Reuters reported. “We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”

With a prize money total of around $57 million, it is no surprise that around 30,000 camels have been entered in the show, but the month-long event has already run into controversy.

Mo’ money, mo’ problems, amirite?

But seriously: $57 million, US, in prizes. For CAMELS. The world has truly lost perspective. And in light of that, I guess camels with artificially big heads and botoxed, flubbery lips are just something to be expected.

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Posted in Barreling Right Along, Drrrrruuuugs, Filthy Stinking Rich, The WTF? Files | Comments Off on Saudi camels get WHAT???