Behold, Ladies! The Enemy. →

I was on Facebook scrolling through my newsfeed of awkward vines, Buzzfeed articles, and videos with puppies & kids, when I stumbled across a post a friend jokingly put up that was a blatantly misogynistic list of things women need to do to appear more attractive to men. After realizing it wasn’t an Onion article, but something someone actually took time and energy to write in all seriousness-this listicle excrement.

I then did some digging and discovered the culprit who’s brain birthed this POS site, Return of Kings. It’s basically every feminists’ nightmare. The dude who created this insufferable garbage is named Roosh V., which sounds dangerously close to douche, which he invariably is. His Community Beliefs exude the horrifying ideology that plagues progress and makes you realize there are crazies out there among us, hidden behind computer screens intaking all of this nonsense, internalizing it, and later unleashing their vile harebrained ”knowledge” in all kinds of ways on unsuspecting women with a confusing confidence only a dolt with a small… mind can dole out without embarrassment. The Community Beliefs from the Return of Kings trash site themselves were more than enough to put me in a blind, raging frenzy.

The most painful “beliefs” include, 

“ A woman’s value is mainly determined by her fertility and beauty. A man’s value is mainly determined by his resources, intellect, and character.”

“Elimination of traditional gender roles and the promotion of unlimited mating choice in women unleashes their promiscuity and other negative behaviors that block family formation.”

And finally,

“Women are sluts if they sleep around, but men are not. This fact is due to the biological differences between men and women.”

Somebody get me a glass of water. i’m burning up! If I ever meet a guy and he mentions anything like this I’m giving myself permission to knee him in the balls. If I EVER meet the dudes who penned any of the articles on any of the sites including the “king of douche” himself, lord help them. I hope there will be police around because I’m going to need to be tazed or shot to loosen my chokehold.

Not to mention, the site bans women or gays from commenting. So, don’t worry, homophobia also has a place in this unbelievable realm of pitiful men. We’re probably banned because we can ruin their inherently faulty “logic” with one sentence, obliterating their prejudice, privileged little community where they can hide from reality like sad, pathetic cowards who probably wear crocs and shirts with flames on them. No, this is not a test.

“Women and homosexuals are prohibited from commenting here. They will be immediately banned, and anyone who replies to them will also be banned. This includes replying in any thread that they started." 

WHERE IS THAT GLASSS OF WATER?!

On top of that, the dude made books denoting the countries where it’s easy to hook up with women, though he puts it a lot less delicately, calling these anthropological gems, Bang Guides. 

KSDBJAKDNCKNAOFOWFIBIVIS;ek374y9u40owf0rg0t3

**BURSTS INTO FLAMES**

Cat Calling: Conversation Repellant

There was this one time I was watching Ugly Betty when I was going through an emotionally trying period. Ok, I was just bored. Anyway, I was watching this scene where Betty was walking through her neigborhood and some men started yelling profane things like, “Hey baby, where YOU goin’,” and whistling obscenely. Now, I know you’re probably like, but how the hell can you whistle obscenely? Think of this cartoon when you try to imagine the person from which this seemingly innocent sound is coming…

Super sexy.

The thing that disturbed me immensely about that scene was that when Betty discovered those Neanderthals weren’t directing their sexually frustrated attention toward her, but some other innocent woman, she looked disappointed. I understand what the scene was suppose to mean. Betty wanted the men to find her attractive because she doesn’t receive that kind of attention very often, if at all, but that opens the Pandora’s Box to a whole new horrible wave of thought that women need men to validate their looks and that it’s acceptable to cat call women as long as it’s a “compliment.”

Women love compliments, amiright?! Unsolicited, explicit comments about their bodies because it makes them feel good that men notice. Yeah, you keep thinking that.

There have been a flurry of wonderful pieces about how frustrated women are by this age-old occurrence, and there’s so much to be said about the people who respond with, “You women are overreacting.” No the f*ck we’re not. Women can’t complain about mistreatment because then we’re seen as crazy, emotional hysterics or, even better, the abominable F word, which leads me to another rant about the stigma attached to feminism.

No, seriously, this is a real question. I do not understand women against feminism. I understand women who maybe don’t agree with a lot of feminist thought, but being actively AGAINST feminism? I imagine this demographic as being very young impressionable girls who have not yet seen the harsh reality of gender inequality and have not ever watched an episode of *insert CW show here* where women are basically mindless objects that are strictly obsessed with male characters on the show instead of, well, anything else. Sigh, I digress. Back to cat calling.

I can go through my plethora of highly irritating, creepster stories of men old enough to be my father “paying me compliments” while I begrudgingly walk pass, repeating in my head, “Please don’t say anything to me. Please don’t say anything to me. Please don’t say anything to me. Please don’t say anything to me.” I can share with you the sinking feeling when I am disappointed time after time by the effortless nonsense that flows out of these “gentlemen’s” mouths and their genuine bewilderment when they don’t get the reaction they believe they deserve. What do they expect?! "Oh, you like how my butt looks in my dress? Here’s my phone number.“

NOT GONNA HAPPEN, BUDDY. However, what I really want to share is the feeling I get when someone is telling me to "Smile,” or “I can eat you up,” or “Where’re you goin?” It’s not necessarily a feeling of fear or discomfort, but those are most definitely present. It’s disbelief. Because these men feel they can talk to me however they want, it makes me feel devalued, insignificant, unimportant, powerless. I cannot control someone else’s actions, but I would hope that in this world there is an understood undercurrent of respect we give each other, but when I’m cat called that respect is lost. It feels dehumanizing. When I just want to walk to the train to get to work early in the morning, I don’t want to have to walk by another human and pray they don’t ruin the next 10/15 minutes of my day with a disrespectful statement about my body. No, it’s not fair, and it’s not acceptable. It has got to stop.

 

Women do like compliments, hell everybody likes compliments, but there is a place and time that is appropriate for doling out these intimate observations, and that time is ON A DATE with the person or at least having spoken to them for some time. It’s not a conversation starter. In fact, it is the opposite of a conversation starter. It is conversation repellant. 

Why I Had To Stop Reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

I had to put down One Few Over The Cuckoo’s Nest yesterday because of the off-putting way Kesey refers to women and the black characters in his story. Calling the black guys in the book, “the black boys,” and portraying them as these hellish perpetrators of despicable things to helpless patients, using sodomy as a violent act to subdue and torture was appalling. Not only that, but the way the head nurse is described as a “ball cutter,” basically representing a wily feminine force whose only job was to dehumanize and demasculinize every man she came across. It made me wonder about his past and what kind of message he thought he was spreading when he wrote this book. Then it made me think of other authors and whether or not their past or beliefs should weigh heavily on whether or not people appreciate their works. Personally, I usually don’t mind reading books I know unapologetic racists write, because, well, that’s the nature of this damn American Literature canon. A lot of the writers whose prose I respect and admire were downright degenerates and heathens, slaveholders and misogynists but what they wrote was beautiful and devoid of overt tones of bigotry. However, if that shit does decide to pop up and become an unavoidable recurring theme, that’s where I draw the line. 

I have a threshold for bigotry, though it really should be incredibly unacceptable, but I love words. I really do. I love the way writers use words, divorced of their messed up beliefs, in spite of their unsavory lifestyles. I try not to judge people in general so why judge the writers I like, because in the end, you never really know anyone. All you know is what is written about them or what they say fleetingly in an interview or heresy. I get that. But I will be damned if I’m going to sit there and read about a set of “charcoal black boys… shining onyx”  or whatever. I can almost here how much he hates the skin color of my race and it makes my skin crawl. It makes me nauseous to think that this book is taught with such vigor and he’s held in such high regard. It makes me angry, because I actually like the book. I really wanted to read it, but the physical illness and fury that welled up inside of me as I read was something I just could not ignore. So, ef you Kesey. I will not fall into your clutches. Maybe I’ll watch the movie… I do love Jackie.

Instead, I will read Hunter S. Thompson a drunk man I can get behind…. for now.