Monthly Archives: October 2009

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Bloggity Blogity Blog Blog Blog Note

Categories: why i blog

O HAI! Like, remember me? I used to post–sometimes more than once a week–on this here blog!

Sorry, ducks, I know I promised you more vitriol–I did try to deliver with tonight’s offering–but getting caught up with things out here on the west coast has been demanding. Also, my main client is playing the “we’re not going to pay you, nyah nyah nyah” game, which is awful fun–nothing like being far from home with two months income being held in hock.

HOWEVER, I am slowly regaining equilibrium–or, since this blog is about anything but that–massive amounts of rage, and will be writing more and more often. I promise–and I’ve never let you down before, except for all those other times. Ahem.

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Monster Rat: A Gallery of the Rape Culture

Categories: douchebaggery, hiram monserrate watch, media tool kit, politicians have penises, your rda of misogyny, Your RDA of Outrage

Hiram Monserrate is a douchebag.

Need proof? Consider the lovely legislative record of the freshman NYS senator: he not once, but twice threatened to caucus against his own party–which for the first time in over 40 years was in control of the upper house of the New York State legislature and had an ambitious progressive and reform agenda, including legalizing gay marriage–making good on his threat the second time and throwing the entire state government into chaos (and costing the taxpayers billions of dollars.) And both times, he couldn’t even stand steadfast to his own dirtbag principles (well, except the most important: look out for Hiram first)–he turned coat on his turncoat companions and slunk back to the Democrats.

And that’s not even what earned him his nickname: Monster Rat.

That comes as a result of the “incident” of December 19th, 2009. Monserrate brought his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo, to an emergency room over a half hour from his apartment. She had been slashed down to the bone by a broken glass. Monserrate claimed he had tripped in a darkened room and accidentally smashed the glass into her face. Giraldo disagreed, although she would later recant and say that his version was correct. But that night she called him “crazy” and said, “I can’t believe he did this to me!”

It seems that he had been driven into a jealous rage by finding another man’s business card in her purse. A security camera would later show images of him beating her in the hallway, dragging her by her hair. She tried to get away from him but nobody opened their door.

He was indicted, but once Giraldo changed her story, it proved impossible to convict him of anything but misdemeanor assault.

Now, I can leave it there: yet another case of a powerful man using his privilege to abuse a woman and get away with it–as Joanna Molloy did in the New York Daily News:

In the hallway after the verdict, women in jeans and lawyers’ suits clustered in groups and shook their heads. “This sets women’s rights back a long time,” said one female court officer.

Forgive us if we find the couple’s story the most incredible coincidence since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same Fourth of July.

Erlbaum did find Monserrate – who courthouse wags have been calling Monster Rat – guilty of reckless assault, for forcibly dragging Giraldo out of the apartment in a scene caught on videotape.

It’s a misdemeanor, so Monserrate gets to keep his job in Albany.

So for your enjoyment (read: rage), here is a gallery of Bramhall’s cartoons, which are disturbing and triggering enough that (in a Second Awakening first) I present them after the jump.


A Gallery of the Damned

Politics
Most often, Bramhall used Monserrate’s image as a commentary on politics, albeit one divorced completely from anything having to do with women’s politics:

Don’t you just love the terrified woman in that last cartoon? Way to exhibit sensitivity as well as your usual perspicacity, Bill!

The Cartoonist’s Chore

A few times, Bramhall includes an image of Monserrate in cartoons commenting about how hard/easy it is for him to do his job, i.e. come up with cartoons:

Almost, But Not Quite

Once or twice, Bramhall almost shows some sensitivity to the underlying issue of violence towards women–but then as usual completely smothers that in a smug blanket of privileged fuckery that uses images of that violence to make a crude joke:

The Big Finish

This last cartoon ran during the height of the Senate leadership crisis. It is so full of douchebaggery and misogynistic imagery that it practically makes up its own genre: douchedy, maybe, or WTF-tire.

For those uninitiated into New York State politics: in addition to Senator Douche, you can see former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (presumably with a prostitute) at upper center, and in a nice homophobic touch former Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith dressed in the little Lord Faunteleroy outfit. The horse’s ass at lower right is Assembly leader Shel Silver (and an assessment of his character I tend to agree with.)

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Blog Note

Categories: Uncategorized

I know I’ve been away. Thank you for all your concern about my mental health: it is improving as my withdrawal stabilizes. Also, I’m currently on a transcontinental sojourn, which means that I have nice weather (I am typing this from a patio in California) and that can’t but help my mood.

And that means more yummy vitriol, coming your way now!

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Yet Another Below The Belt Post

Categories: below the belt, i get around

That time of the month again:

The first person I knew who told me they weren’t transgendered was a crossdresser I’ll call Gene. He (and he did later come to insist on male pronouns, and stopped calling himself Gina on the message board we met on), decided that he really was in it for the clothes, and didn’t find himself aligned with the other crossdressers on the board, who all thought of themselves as transgendered.

It was a little jarring to me at first; I had naively assumed that crossdressing=transgendered, so having someone overturn that conviction was surprising. But as I reflected on it, I could see his point. And since that time, I’ve met other people like Gene, some crossdressers, some genderqueer, and even some transsexuals who identify completely as their post-transition gender and have no desire to continue with any kind of transgender identity.

There exists, however, a group of trans women–at least, they seem to be exclusively trans women–who resist being placed under the transgender umbrella. Some refuse to even call themselves transsexuals, preferring the term Harry Benjamin Syndrome instead. They claim that transsexualism is a case of being “neurologically nteresexed” by which they mean that they have a “female brain,” and therefore a medical, not a psychological condition.

Finish up over here.

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Allow me to introduce myself…

Categories: all about me

Greetings, Ducks!

I seem to have taken an inadvertent week off from the blog there–sorry about that. Much of this is because my free time currently is being swallowed by some intense computer programming work; there’s a lot to get done, and I’m trying to get it done and over with already, and I’ve had to teach myself a bunch of things I didn’t know how to do before. (Today, I grabbed a static Google maps image and dumped onto my server! Yatta!)

The other truth, though, is that I’ve been struggling lately with my anti-depression meds. I went off of them over the summer–you may have noticed the intense, burning rage from that period–and went on a completely different med right before I left for Paris. It’s an SSRI, a kind of AD that I have a real love-hate relationship with: on the one hand, they seem to work really well for me; on the other, I get all the side-effects. (I now think that my caffeine-withdrawal insomnia the first few days in Paris was heavily exacerbated by the new meds, which have been giving me insomnia of late.) And while the meds definitely kept me from crashing into the slough of despond, I wasn’t exactly scaling the heights of ecstasy of late: in fact, my motivation has completely vanished. I haven’t done aikido since that night I trained in Paris, I’ve only posted once in the last week here, and in general I lack any willpower to get things done. (Let’s not even talk about my rapidly ballooning weight.)

So I’m going off them again, and maybe I’ll find a new psychopharmacologist to get me on something new, or maybe I’ll try to find another way to control my mood swings. But I can’t keep on going the way I was, with a head lightly wrapped in what felt like fabric softener sheets. And I can’t give up my writing, not after I finally began to reclaim it.

This, by the way, is pretty much par for the course with me–I’ve had a long battle against my depression ever since I finally began to seriously treat it almost a decade and a half ago (there’s a fascinating story about how that all came about, which I will save for another day.) The first time I took AD meds, I thought I had locked my depression in a cell deep in my soul and it would never bother me again. The second time, I realized I was locked up in that same cell, but my depression was safely chained up and couldn’t get me.

After the third time, I realized that my depression was chained up to me. And if I ever took my eyes off of, that fucker would kill me.

Don’t worry, I have an excellent support system and I’m not in any danger right now. And I’m sure I’ll get through this and cope–one of the reasons it took me so long to finally start working on my depression is that I’m so damn high-functioning. But it’s frustrating to keep ping-ponging around like this.

Also, withdrawal sucks, even with my tapering off regime.

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Today in Tales From the Douchoisie

Categories: douchebaggery, media tool kit, your rda of misogyny

Hello, Ducks! Can you guess what Google Reader threw up in my lap today? Did you guess Tucker Max? I didn’t, which I guess is what makes it sexy…or something; I’m not up on my fratire. But let’s check in, courtesy of The Frisky…

Oh, what? The fratire thing?

The Frisky: Gawker deemed you a “ham-fisted frat s***.” The feminist bloggers hate you. You’ve been called a “professional sexist,” “anti-feminist,” and a “promoter of rape culture.” The New York Times labeled your prose “fratire.”

TM: Hold on now. The New York Times was not insulting me when they called my writing “fratire.” In fact, they said I invented a new literary genre, one that defines a whole new generation of writers and readers. How is that an insult?

Yes, the brave new world of Two and a Half Men, Maxim, and Ketel One ads:

I think that this isn’t exactly a new genre…unless you think that the needs, feelings, and emotions of young white dudes has been an underserved artistic destination for these last, um, 2,000 years.

Sigh. On y va…

The Frisky: Are you a “misogynist”?

TM: Complete bulls**t. A misogynist is someone who hates women. I love women. Everything I do is to impress women. Without women, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. Plus, half my fans are women. The people who call me misogynist are the ones who haven’t read or engaged my writing, and are just looking for a bogeyman to attack.

The Frisky: In your stories, women throw themselves at you. How many women have you slept with, and what advice do you give men on women?

TM: I have no idea how many women I’ve slept with. Probably more than 300, probably less than 600? I don’t keep count, because that would be super creepy.

Some women absolutely do throw themselves at me. I think part of it is that there are always some women that are into rich, famous, and powerful men. Then there is the artist aspect. Half my fans are women, and they are fans because they love my writing. There is the masculine thing; I am one of the few people in media who is unapologetically masculine, and that’s very attractive to some women.

You know? He’s not a misogynist. Just a narcissist living in his own, private world where women flock to him to give him blowjobs, sexy girls (the only real girls: see Amanda Hess’ brilliant “Anatomy of a Tucker Max Joke“) never think he’s being insulting to him, and “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” is…

…an awesome and groundbreaking movie, and great art always finds its way.

Box Office total, after two weeks: $960,425.

But wait! Ol’ Tuck has an excuse for that!

It may not hit at the theater, but it will hit on DVD, and hit big.

Yeah, you and Joe Francis, amigo. Funny the company you keep.

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You Win Some, But You Lose Many, Many Others…

Categories: bitterness, i heart oppression, media tool kit, rape is hy-larious, your rda of misogyny

Double header of media mayhem!

First, the good news:

Roman Polanski lost the first round yesterday in his battle to avoid extradition to the US for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Already locked in a Zurich cell for the last dozen days, Polanski learned that he will remain incarcerated for an extended period after the Swiss Justice Ministry rejected his plea to be released from custody.

Swiss authorities said they feared he might leave the country if released. The director of film classics such as Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown has been wanted by US authorities since fleeing sentencing 31 years ago.

“We continue to be of the opinion that there is a high risk of flight,” said the ministry spokesman Folco Galli.

He said the threat was too great for the government to accept bail or other security measures in exchange for the release.

Oh, and by the way? If you had any doubt remaining that this guy wasn’t a megadouche? Or that he had somehow made some recompense? Feast your eyes on this:

Roman Polanskiwas to pay at least $500,000 to Samantha Geimer, the victim in his 1977 child-sex case, under a settlement in a civil suit Ms. Geimer later filed against him, The Los Angeles Times reported over the weekend. Mr. Polanski, right, agreed to the settlement in 1993, but as of 1996 had not made the payment, according to court records provided to the news media in response to requests for access to the old case. It remained unclear whether the settlement was ever paid, though Ms. Geimer was still trying to collect as of 1996, by which time accrued interest had pushed the amount to more than $600,000, according to the court records.

Sheesh.

But don’t worry, the news can always get worse…especially when it’s the NY Daily News:

A shocked judge demanded prosecutors explain why they asked him to allow a prominent Manhattan therapist to return to the home where she’s accused of
slashing her husband Tuesday.

“I’m going to send her home to a 79-year-old husband when it’s alleged she stabbed him with knives?” Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Anthony Ferrara asked prosecutors.

“You’re assuring me he’s going to be safe, that this piece of paper is going to protect him from knives?” he said, after granting a “limited” order of protection allowing Joyce Poster-Lederman, 64, to return home.

Funny how people never seem to worry that it’s “just a piece of paper” when it’s a woman who’s being covered by it. Don’t believe me? Check out this site about orders of protection in New York:

You have been arrested because you got into a fight with your girlfriend or wife. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation or your girlfriend does not want to “press charges.” Unfortunately, at this stage it doesn’t matter. You are now before a judge and whether or not you are released, you must completely stay away from the complainant.
[…]
A “full” order of protection or “restraining order” is a an order by the court preventing you from having any contact at all with the complainant or alleged victim of a crime. This could mean that if you live together you may not enter the home. Alternatively, the police will arrange a time for you to enter and get some of your things. You will not be able to call the complainant or talk to the complainant even if she calls you. The burden placed upon you is quite severe.

Yeah. Imagine, not being able to see the woman–please note, it was assumed to be a woman who was the victim–because you beat her up! Oh, the humanity!

Which is kind what the order is trying to protect, ya know?

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Below The Belt: The Umbrellas of Transburg

Categories: below the belt, i get around

My latest post for Below The Belt is now up:

I invariably use trans as short for transgendered, and transgendered in its so-called “umbrella sense”: embracing anyone with a variance with the gender assigned to them because of their biological sex. (When referring to a transsexual’s gender, however, I use trans as an adjective modifying that gender: trans man, trans woman. Although this is slightly confusing, I agree with Julia Serano and helen boyd that the space is vital in avoiding “othering” or invalidating a transsexual’s gender–something that transwoman doesn’t do, since it implies that transsexual women aren’t women but something else entirely).

You can read the rest here.

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