The Jaundiced Tumblr

Advice for Young Girls from The Little Mermaid 

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• feminism
• disney
• YouTubery
• parody

The Male Privilege Checklist

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• feminism

Chelsea Clinton's big fat leaked wedding

When Bill told People magazine that Chelsea’s wedding would be “the biggest day in her life, probably,” I’m sure he meant well, but I kind of wanted to throttle him. What about the days on which she might pick up her master’s degree, run a company, have a child, win the presidency? What about the day, already past, on which she fell in love with her betrothed, surely as life-changing as the one on which they will make it legal?

There are a lot of people who don’t get married. There are a lot of people who can’t get married. If Chelsea Clinton, by chance or design, had fallen into one of these two categories, would it mean that her parents had not done what they were supposed to do, that they would feel less pride in her, that her life would lack its most important moment? I wonder if those focusing so hard on her wedding would think it meant she was any less well-adjusted, or any less beautiful.

The fevered fetishization of the marital day is not just irritating, it’s destructive. It reproduces attitudes about personal — and especially female — achievement that are far past their sell date: that marrying is the goal toward which all of us strive, that our weddings are somehow the most exalted expressions of our accomplishments and of ourselves.

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• feminism
• media
• Chelsea Clinton

Sacrificing Women for Peace / What’s Shocking?: The Cover of TIME Magazine

Yes, of course, sacrifices will have to be made.  By whom?  Women’s rights = “some concessions”?  Being realistic means that we should we realistically get over the fact that women’s rights in Afghanistan are expendable if the issue of their rights gets in the way of us getting out of there?

Now, I am not advocating that we stay in Afghanistan forever.  I’m not even saying that we should stay in Afghanistan through the end of the year.  But I am advocating that whatever deal gets struck to bring this fucked up war to an end, I hope that women are part of that conversation and actually have a voice backed up by some sort of protection.  I doubt it, though.  I am (sadly) rather confident that they will be sacrificed, that “peace” will be trafficked through them instead of for them.  There’s a long history of that all over the world.

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• feminism
• war
• Afghanistan
• politics

Horrors! President Obama decides to talk to adult women instead of male children.

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• feminism
• media
• politics
• obama

Just perfect. Not to get all boys-vs-girls, but when you think about what the dooz in the original fight club were reacting to, then compare to what women in the Jane Austen era (and eras before, and, actually, eras after) and… yeah. So. Whatever, Tyler Durden.

Jane Austen’s Fight Club 

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• feminism
• parody
• satire
• YouTubery

The ad is a perfect example of the way in which entirely-unrelated messages get inexplicably translated into half-naked women looking uncomfortable… Why in heaven’s name slather a perfectly clean woman in goop that looks like oil and make her crawl in a marsh? Because half-naked women who are dirty, disgusting, and uncomfortable are high-fashion. Because we love to see women on their knees in the mud. To a great extent, elite fashion imagery involves putting women in gross situations and pretending that it’s cool. These images assault their bodies and their dignity. So how else would an elite salon advertise its good-doing? Female punishment is the language of fashion. Fluid just speaks it fluently.

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• feminism
• advertising

He inserted his male attachment into the female adapter, and watched his progress bar creep across the screen. The green line’s smooth rationality was undercut by the capricious time estimates that were careening wildly across the spectrum of likely endpoints. Five hours. Three minutes. Twelve minutes. A day. He thought of organized sports, for some reason.

Then, at last, the apex! The timer was counting down reliably from thirty seconds, the bar was filled with vigor. He hastened to his appointed destination, only to be distracted by a notification window (ERROR 739: FEMALE ORGASM NOT FOUND.) He felt his baud rate begin to slip. In a panic, he closed the window and pushed it from his mind. And then there it was: le petit écran bleu de la mort. He defragmented into a million bits of solitary pleasure.

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• parody
• feminism
• teh internets
• literature

Are Male Characters More Likable Than Female Characters?

For some time now, I’ve held the hypothesis that, to the majority of the American population, if not the majority of the population of Earth, male characters are automatically more likable than female characters. It seemed to me, based on my experience on the Interwebs, that many male characters were given a pass for deplorable behavior while female characters tended to be hated for the vague sin of being “a bitch…”

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• feminism
• media
• popculture

So when I first tried Hey Baby, a new Web game that takes aim at catcalling and its practitioners, I thought it was not meant for me. Developed by the New York artist and producer Suyin Looui, Hey Baby at first appears to be a self-consciously ridiculous revenge fantasy for women who have felt oppressed or threatened by sexual attention or commentary from men. Think of “Death Wish” with a woman walking home from work in the role of Charles Bronson.

Yet over several hours my initial alienation and annoyance gave way to a swelling appreciation of Hey Baby, not as a game but as a provocative, important work of interactive art as social commentary. The people who should really play Hey Baby are men, even if you have never said a word to a woman you didn’t know on the street.

…And that is the point of Hey Baby. The men cannot ever actually hurt you, but no matter what you do, they keep on coming, forever. The game never ends. I found myself throwing up my hands and thinking, “Well what am I supposed to do?” Which is, of course, what countless women think every day.

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• art
• satire
• teh internets
• feminism