I'd vote for Ted Bundy, too!!

Wandering the Internets on my way back to New York City the other day (Sidenote: Greyhound buses offer free wi-fi!), I stumbled upon a super-edgy fellow going by the name of Dick Masterson.

As I browsed his blog, Men Are Better Than Women, I found posts titled "Women Would Vote for Hitler" and "Every Women Is A Cheating Whore."

Because I'm a woman, I was naturally cheating even as I typed those very words. Or was I? After all, Masterson says, men have integrity and women don't, so men tell the truth while women lie. So I must be lying about cheating. Right?

Anyway, it's tempting to believe that Dickie boy was seriously burned by a woman at some point in his life. Or maybe burned by several women at multiple points in his life.

Or maybe he wasn't breastfed long enough as an infant.

Or maybe he's just mad that one of those lying, cheating whores won't cheat with him.

But most likely, he's just figured out that the quickest route to fame is to be a public asshole and to say outrageous things that he understands will upset the majority of the population.

Sure, it could be satire, but if it is, it's satire of the "Woman! Get back in the kitchen!" variety. That is to say, it doesn't make fun of existing power structures and really only serves to make privileged white guys like Masterson feel "edgy" for repeating tired old tropes that were passé by the 1960s.

And if he's serious? If he really, truly feels that way about women? Well, I honestly feel a little bit sorry for him. It must be pretty miserable to carry around that much angst and hatred for people different than yourself, be they women, handicapped people, racial minorities, or queer folks.

Or maybe I'm just too lazy to expend that kind of energy necessary to expel that much vitriol against other people. After all, I am a woman, so besides being whorish, I must be slothful, too.

p.s. He may be a bit of a dick, but at least Roissy's blog is somewhat entertaining.

p.p.s. Hitler was not "raised by a single mother." Hitler had a troubled relationship with his father and purportedly turned to German Nationalism as a way to rebel against his father, who died when Hitler was nearly 14 years old. Yeah, and male sheep are called rams (if they're intact) or wethers (if they're castrated). But since I hail from Stafford, I have an unfair advantage in knowing that.

Ugh. Twilight.

The wonderfully intelligent Erin Alyssa has a post up about the recent vampire craze (see True Blood and Twilight for notable examples) and her own personal distaste for it. She compares the vampire craze to 19th-century Orientalism.

An excerpt...

I taught Orientalism twice as a teaching assistant, and it was one of my favorite social and artistic movements to discuss. Orientalism was a trend in the 19th century when cultural producers, particularly artists and writers, created an “imaginary orient,” if I can borrow from Linda Nochlin, a sort of screen onto which they could convey Western desires. Because the subject matter of these pieces of art and literature were of the Middle East, it was okay for the women to be nude, fine for the men to be violent, and more than okay for there to be lascivious sexual acts. This Western constructed view of the Orient as sexually free, lavish, and idle was detrimental to the Western world’s opinion of the inhabitants of the Middle East.

Though I do not worry about what will happen to people’s opinions of fictional vampires, I find parallels between Orientalism, and the exoticizing of the “other” (in this case, Eastern inhabitant) and the recent vampire phenomenon. The values that these vampire phenoms represent, even as constructs, are problematic, as they appear to be the opposite of what we claim we’d like for our own society.

Though there has been a push in recent years for equal rights between the sexes, and some people even think feminism is outdated and no longer necessary (which cannot be further from the truth) in vampire land (in this case, Twilightvampire land) Edward can emotionally abuse and borderline stalk his defenseless girlfriend and instead of this behavior being creepy and inappropriate… it’s considered romantic… because he’s a vampire. Does this make sense? No, and it’s even more disturbing when young girls quote passages of this garbage to defend and rationalize staying in their own abusive relationships. Good for you, Stephanie Meyer.

Personally, Twilight annoys me because I cut my teeth on Anne Rice novels as an adolescent, and her vampires certainly don't sparkle, but Erin makes some very excellent points. Go read!

Creepy man at the Halsey Street J last night...

"So are we going to your apartment or mine?"

Me: "You're going back to your apartment, and I'm going back to mine. Separately."

Man: "What if I pay you?"

Me: "Especially not if you pay me!"