Posts by Danielle
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(And by 'mention', I mean 'agree with you thoroughly about the fantasticness'.)
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Without addressing your larger story really at all (except to say that all that running around after flour sounds like a waste of good drinking time, and that I am completely unsurprised by the authorities' freakout), I would just like to mention the joy of IKEA duvet covers. I was in the US for three days on the way home from Europe earlier this year, and dedicated one precious afternoon in Houston to an IKEA duvet cover quest. 100% cotton! Cool patterns! Cheap! (And probably: sweatshops! Sigh.)
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I always heard they used pina colada mix! Another illusion shattered.
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IO, I just checked, because I am a dork. It's called 'A Bitch Iz A Bitch', so I had a letter (but not the spirit) wrong. It's from a pre-Straight Outta Compton album, though.
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Oh. I also meant to say 'word' to Russell about how things have changed attitudes-wise. You were thinking of Blerta, and I always think of some of those early 70s American films like Five Easy Pieces. Some of the women in those movies are so... weird. They're not really even characters, just erratic, incomprehensible bundles of neuroses. We, as the audience, are definitely not meant to identify with them or find their positions defensible. The underlying message is always 'these women are hot, but they're so needy and crazy, and they're cramping my counter-cultural style, maaaaan!' I love those movies, but you have to identify with Jack Nicholson et al, or you can't enjoy them.
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Sorry, but I'm not going to continue arguing with someone who can't actually comprehend what I'm saying. (Or what Deborah is saying either, for that matter.) And, um, 'agree to disagree' about the historical facts of women's rights in the 20th century? OK, sure. I suppose it all comes down to 'truthiness' with you anyway, right?
I despair. :)
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The vast majority of what you've attributed to the '70s can be attributed to the suffrajets.
No, it can't. The suffragettes concentrated on exactly what their name implies: suffrage. The vote. In fact, suffragettes often had what we would consider quite reactionary ideas about what the vote would mean: 'ladylike' women would stop men acting like 'animals' in the body politic, for example. If you're talking about things like equal pay for equal work, the ability to own your own property without your husband's interference, more equitable distribution of unpaid labour like housework or child-rearing, or less restrictive concepts of gender and sexuality for both men and women, then that's our second-wave friends from the 1960s and 1970s. (There were some pretty awesome Marxist feminists in the early twentieth century who dealt with some of those issues, but they were by no means the majority of first-wave feminist thinkers.)
What I find quite irritating about your argument is that I'm meant to 'acknowledge'... what? That second-wave feminism made some people uncomfortable, and still does? Of course it did: it challenged things that most people accepted unquestioningly. What are the 'crimes' for which second-wave feminism can be held responsible, exactly? Because I think that what you've come up with so far can be attributed not to feminists, but to poorly argued second-hand analysis of feminist ideas.
(I like the idea of 'suffrajets': they sound space-age!)
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'Be-Bop-A-Lula' isn't misogynistic: it's about how Lula is really attractive to him, and how she's really good at having sex. I'm thinking those kinds of lyrics weren't misogyny, but rather compliments to his girlfriend.
I'm not really interested in answering for the 'crimes' of 1970s feminism, since that movement gave me the freedom to own property, have my own career, and have control over my own body. Those feminists also gave me the right not to be raped or beaten by my own husband. Second-wave feminists also gave us all a wonderful body of complex, nuanced thought which people seem determined to oversimplify without having read any of it. I salute those feminists, dammit.
I am also on a download quest for the 'Voodoo Problems' mash-up, Russell. :)
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(Oh, it's 'warrant', isn't it. I'm correcting my Jay-Z quote, post-post.)
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Now once upon a time not too long ago
A nigga like myself had to strong arm a ho
This is not a ho in the sense of havin a pussy
But a pussy havin no God Damn sense, try and push meSo the ho he's talking about is a man.
Yeah, I know. I've analysed that song every which way but loose. But there's a larger point there, which is that a 'pussy' is a bad, weak thing, and a pussy is what women have. It's not what men have. So that guy he's talking about is bad because he's weak, *like a woman*. Which is still pretty offensive, no?
(The verse with the cop exchange is genius, though. 'My glove compartment is locked and so's the trunk in the back, and I know my rights, so you gon' need a lawyer for that.' Heh.)
And it's not as though I don't understand the historical context from which that kind of hip hop springs (black men weren't seen as real men, and they were poor, so they act hyper-manly and hugely materialistic): a lot of it is just rhetorical grandstanding, and a lot of it is pretty hilarious. Ludacris' 'You's a Ho' is just plain funny any way you slice it, and the final verse gives him an out: 'us niggas is hoes too!' Going further back, even NWA's 'A Bitch is a Bitch' or whatever it's called, tends to make things a lot more complex in the verses than you might expect. But then the Notorious B.I.G.'s 'Hypnotize', which I also love, has that whole verse about tying the woman up in the basement, and it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Ehhhhh. I am truly conflicted, but I can't live without that chorus hook. And hell, dude is dead anyway.
(I'm actually less offended by the booty-clap as a dance than I probably should be. That's one great ass-maneuvre!)