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Don’t You Angry Feminists Have a Sense of Humor?
By Jeff Fecke | March 3, 2008
So remember Charlotte Allen’s epically horrible column from yesterday’s Washington Post? Sure you do! Because you’re a humorless feminist, and you just can’t take a joke. And it was totally a joke! Just ask WaPo Outlook Editor John Pomfret:
“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.”
Pomfret said that Allen pitched the idea to him as a riff on women fainting at Obama rallies, and similarities with the Beatles.
[...]
“She wanted to make fun of this issue,” Pomfret said. “A lot of people have taken it very seriously.”
See, it was a joke! Ha-ha, super-funny! And it wouldn’t have been as funny if it hadn’t included a litany of easily-disproven stereotypes about women and a closing argument that women are “kind of dim,” now, would it?
Besides, it’s not like Charlotte Allen has a history of attacking women for being…
*Knock knock*
Who’s there? Why, it’s Feministing editor Jessica Valenti! What’s that, Jessica? You have something to share?
Any quick search of Allen’s past writing shows just how seriously she takes her women-hate.
Whatever do you mean? Oh, you mean like when she wrote that she can’t get enough of Camille Paglia, or when she called Maureen Dowd a “scary spinster from the past,”, or where she just can’t understand how you can suggest sex discrimination in the New York Fire Department, or where she jumped in on Ann Althouse’s side during the Breastgate kerfuffle, or where she says that women who fear ending up destitute should just get married already, or where she states flatly that there are innate cognitive differences between men and women, or where she says women hate sensitive men, or where she attacks the idea of a vaccine for HPV, or where she attacks feminists for wanting their partners to do equal housework, or when she claims women don’t work as hard as men, or my personal favorite, when she blamed feminists for making stewardesses ugly? In that one, she said:
Frankly, even as a woman, I miss the old sexist days, when stewardesses were stewardesses: pretty young things in cute mini-suits and little heels who oozed attention onto everyone–because who knew? They might end up marrying one of the passengers … Why does feminism have to mean the triumph of the ugly and the surly?
Why indeed?
Anyhow, based on all this, either the International Women’s Forum is Charlotte Allen’s idea of the longest, least funny joke in the history of humor, or Charlotte Allen hates women. And I’m betting on the latter.
Now, maybe the Post still thought of this article as tongue-in-cheek; I suppose it’s possible. Given that they found this piece to be hilarious enough to publish, I’ve got a few ideas for some more pieces they can put up:
- Get Fred Phelps to write a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek post about how homosexuals are AIDS-ridden lepers.
- Get David Duke to write a funny, satirical piece about how African Americans are all a bunch of criminals.
- Get Tom Tancredo to write a gut-busting, jokey op-ed about how Mexicans are a bunch of lazy leeches.
- Get Louis Farrakahn to pen a laugh-a-minute, totally-kidding tome about how Jews are money-grubbing.
Yes, those all may seem like they’d be horribly offensive and not funny at all, but you’re just proving to be a humorless feminist. I mean, having well-known bigots write plainly bigoted articles is evidently the new knock-knock joke. Forgive me if I don’t chuckle.
Topics: Feminism, General Wingnuttery, Hacktackular! | 8 Comments »
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Well put, Jeff! With the pervasiveness of sexism, women are the only oppressed group that could be so poorly written about and yet it is still considered “funny” or “tongue-in-cheek.” I guess I am another humorless feminist!!
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Indeed. And after the Post gets a few hundred sternly-worded letters, we’ll get the report that feminists are “angry.” If only a man had written this — then you all could be “angry, humorless, man-hating feminists.” The trifecta!
March 4th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Thank you for that post. I appreciate the take-down and analysis.
That is all.
April 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
You’re arguing here from the same point of view as entitled white males who think not being able to say “nigger” is an unfair infringement of their free speech. Women are empowered. Serious sexists are ridiculed, frowned upon or considered unstable. This high horse modern feminism genuinely is needlessly angry and humourless. The fact is some women like being stupid and pretty and all that crap. Other women don’t. Why do modern feminists hate the former group when they don’t hurt or stop the latter group in any way, shape or form? This article should be as needless and impotent as me railing against conservatives for damaging my liberal agenda.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Will, what the fuck are you talking about? There are entire INDUSTRIES devoted to telling women they need to be stupid and pretty. That’s practically the universal message broadcast towards young girls and women. That women have made the forward progress they have in the past few decades is in spite of this fact.
As required reading I assign you “Backlash” by Susan Faludi. It’s good stuff, and you might learn a thing or two about the recent history of feminism, and why “high-horse” feminism is still necessary.
As to your second argument, I’m afraid you completely lost me there. Of course conservatives are damaging your liberal agenda, you idiot. They do not exist in separate universes. As conservatives advance their agenda, the liberal agenda (to the extent that it does not coincide) retreats. Similarly with feminists; as the Charlotte Allens of the world push women back into the mold of plastic, vapid dolls, suitable for making babies and cleaning house, the feminist ideal (of empowered women) vanishes.
Finally, inherent in your critique is the idea that public discourse doesn’t matter, and that people are fully capable of autonomous action, and we should just leave them to their own decisions. I find this absurd; of course discourse matters. If you go around broadcasting on cable news 24/7 that Iraq has WMDs, then people will believe they have WMDs, even though they COULD have reached the right conclusions through their reasoned examination of independent evidence. People are influenced by the opinions of others, and those with far-reaching voices (e.g., the Washington Post) will be able to affect more opinions than others. It behooves us, therefore, to make sure that the opinions that institutions like the Post broadcast are in line with our feminist perspectives.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I prefer my women to be good at cooking, sweet, even tempered, pretty, well taken care of and much more of those things that feminists would despise me for. Is that so bad?
November 3rd, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Aaron–
Given that you don’t seem to care whether “your women” have a brain…yes. Yes, it is so bad.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 am
the best cure for feminism known to man
http://www.angryharry.com
feminists pls avoid theres a risk you might get your soft heads traumatised !