I am rarely ever able to take advice. And, despite what you may be thinking, this isn’t a roundabout way for me to say that I listen to Papa Roach and fasten my pants with a belt buckle shaped like a gun. Instead, it’s a way to express that sometimes I am just a different kind of moron.
When I was in middle school, I made myself look like Eddie Munster’s twin, only with more hair product and eyeliner. My dad, as delicately as could be, suggested I go the more natural route. However, that only caused me to increase the amount of hair spray I used, which curiously seemed to have a direct relationship with the number of people who would be willing to see my boobs.
When I was in high school, my parents pleaded with me to take driver’s ed so I could get my license and have a life outside of watching Shipmates and fashioning dildos out of tampons. I refused, mostly because I was too busy taking Latin online. As a result, I got my license at the age of 21.
When I was in college, I was urged to major in anything other than Art History in order to ensure that my degree would mean more than my ability to offer up the history of the paper it was printed on.
But, I own my mistakes. I would even go so far as to say that I cuddle my mistakes at night and seductively whisper in their ear that they’re not mistakes in my eyes and they’ll be all like ‘You’re just saying that’ and I’ll just kind of smile since they have no idea. Because for me, my mistakes comprise a chain of the happiest accidents I could ever hope for. I was hideous for years, which meant that it didn’t matter that I had no life in high school, which then led to me majoring in Art History because really, the only thing more tailored for losers would’ve been ‘Anime’, and here I am – grateful for all of it.
This is why I think Steven Ward should be hung by his scrotum from a meat hook and forced to drink Clamato while watching re-runs of Night Court. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, I don’t blame you. But, Steven Ward is a self-proclaimed matchmaker who asserts that he is, “on a mission to bring love into peoples’ lives one soul at a time.” Since bringing love into peoples’ lives goes hand in hand with having a reality show on VH1, guess how I know about this poor man’s Matt LeBlanc?
They're totally fucking.
He, along with his mother JoAnn, host Tough Love – a show full of so much bullshit, it makes Dick Cheney look like the kind of guy you’d go out drinking with and trust to drive your car back at the end of the night. The premise is simple – assemble a group of women who can’t find men because of commitment issues, career obsession, body image or all of the above. Then, he fixes them by instructing that they all stop being such sluts. With its assumption that women need to take it upon themselves to keep a relationship or risk being thrown away like an old pair of underwear because the elastic has broken, Tough Love is a feminist’s worst nightmare. Luckily, I’m not a feminist. I’m just kind of irked in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The differences may be negligible, I understand, but I don’t want to harp about slut shame or how this show, along with Tucker Max, hurts society.
My issue is that choice is stripped of these women all so they can find a man with just the right amount of tribal tattoos as to be bad ass, but at the same time employable. They are advised on how to conduct themselves in the company of men (usually this means that they don’t say anything at all) and since most of these women are both dependent on alcohol and estranged from their child’s father, it is not pessimistic of me to assume that they will make mistakes along the way. The biggest one most likely being that they signed up to be on a VH1 reality show. But they’re Steve Ward’s mistakes as delivered to him by the umbilical cord he undoubtedly still shares with his mother.
Point is – never take anyone’s advice seriously. Unless of course it’s coming from a 20-something who just ate a sleeve of Oreos in her Snuggie. Only then does it make sense.
The other day, I was at Red Robin for what was at least the fifth time this month because I can’t just kill myself in one afternoon like everyone else, I have to do it as slowly and with as much ranch dressing as possible. While trying to pretend my turkey burger was something more than a feeble attempt to offer the illusion that I’m health conscious as long as there’s cheese, I was told that I should start writing about gender misconceptions but…in a way that’s funny.
I chewed on it, but couldn’t get excited about it. Mostly because repeating patriarchy over and over again or spelling ‘woman’ with a ‘y’ is never funny or even remotely enlightening. The last time I boarded that ship, I tried convincing my ex’s best friend that women are equal to men, but the response I got was something along the lines of, “Yeah, but that doesn’t apply in the real world.” I shrugged it off, because since this was coming from someone in their fourth year of community college, their concept of the real world was not one I was concerned with. But then I started thinking about what I could get excited about, and that, of course, is uncircumcised cock.
Continue reading…
I know I’m probably alienating a lot of people here, but this will just make my “America sucks and it’s your fault” post go down a little easier so…count your blessings?
I’m not a feminist, and while we’re at it, I’m clearly not a Christian. I minored in Women’s Studies in college, which is just another thing defensive white people say, along with “Some of my best friends are black” in order to prove to everyone that they’re socially aware and not like all those other white people who are in the KKK. I don’t regret it, since I learned a lot of what I should’ve already known, because while it’s cool that history focuses solely on how George Washington was a fucking badass, it would be nice if Nancy Reagan saying “No” to drugs wasn’t the only example of women making a difference.
I wouldn’t say that I’m scared to write this post, even though I know I’m putting myself at risk of being attacked by droves of 20- something grad students marching to Ani DiFranco’s Not A Pretty Girl as they hold me down and make me wear reusable pads, I just don’t want to be misunderstood. The thing is, choosing to opt out of calling myself a feminist somehow means that I don’t support women’s rights and am part of the “You can’t rape a slut” group, which is not much different than assuming that I would illegally purchase methamphetamines or use an escort service while touting family values because I’m not a Christian.
I actually used to be an avid feminist, because I was in a shitty relationship and I figured that feminists don’t have shitty relationships. So, somehow claiming a label without context meant that I would suddenly stop trying to escape by watching Roots and thinking, “That could be nice.” Of course, I was wrong, and instead of getting myself out of the situation, I just felt ashamed every time I sacrificed my own happiness for convenience because it felt like Lucretia Mott herself was looking down on me with disgust and all I could come back with was, “nice beard.”
Eventually, I packed my suitcase of feminist platitudes and hauled it into my current relationship, only to discover that he didn’t refer to himself as a feminist. From this, a conflict sprouted in which I flew off the handle because although our beliefs paralleled one another, he chose not to assign an innocuous term to the bundle of truths he subscribed to, and that made me uncomfortable. We went through the usual play list–female genital mutilation, Purity Balls, and sex trafficking. We both agreed on their collective ability to provoke both rage and nausea, only difference being that he didn’t find it necessary to refer to this visceral reaction as “feminism” and that pissed me off.
For years, I cultivated my defensiveness–always ready to blame everything on patriarchy and Miss America Pageants, so when he said that these were human issues, not women’s issues, I lost it because it sounded like, once again, women’s issues were being put into an empty room labeled, “People who care.” I fervently tried to defend my position but in doing so, I realized that feminism, like everything else, is composed of numerous pockets of self interest that are ultimately exclusionary and contradictory. While I never would’ve admitted it then, I was having a hard time finding the reasons why feminism should even exist as an entity because when it came down to it, I was only defending a word, and that’s certainly not a business I want to be a part of. Being an R Kelly fan or two-time winner of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest are both interchangeable with “feminist” because ultimately, none of it changes the chemistry of what I believe.
I know that there are people out there who legitimately believe that women are inferior or that equality has been reached so we should all sew up our mouths, open our cunts, and shut the fuck up. But those people also fall into a unique Venn diagram in which “People who will die of Rabies” and “People who own the Fast and the Furious Franchise Collection on DVD” intersect, so I feel safe in knowing that life has punished them enough without me quoting The Feminine Mystique. Sure, those people are assholes, but assholes come in all different shapes and sizes, some of them just happen to wear sweatshop free “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts made of organic cotton.
I get a lot of questions about the name “Vagina Drum”. When I say “questions”, I mean that people are like, “What the fuck is Vagina Drum and why are you so gross?”. This is the kind of question that I file under “rhetorical” and so I just shrug and maybe try to hit on them since they already have such low expectations of me.
I am still, however, taken aback when this happens, because Vagina Drum has been a fact of life for quite some time now. I wish I could tell a story about its origins that involves me finding out about some modern day Ted Bundy who kills women to use their vaginas as drum skins to play in his Guns N’ Roses cover band, and how I single-handedly shut him down minutes before my swearing-in ceremony, but I cannot. Although, it would be kind of fucked up if that really was the story, and then I went and appropriated a name from the twisted happenings, but it does sound like something I would do.
Instead, I plopped my ass on some kitchen counters, spread my legs, and just started beating away. I called it my “vagina drum” and it took me nearly four years to realize that it could me more than something I do for a cheap laugh. If you want my hippie Tommy Chong analysis, Vagina Drum is what you play when you are proud of your pussy or (for men) the fact that they exist. It is also about getting pissed off at rape as a war tactic, honor killings, and the fact that Warren Jeffs is alive and well.
I don’t think of myself as Vagina Drum, and I’m not hiding behind some ridiculous moniker. My identity is easily found online, I just think this one is much cooler.
In high school, I had no friends.
Don’t get turned off yet–this isn’t going to turn into a sob story about how I was too fat to go to prom. Simply put, I found my time better invested in books, learning languages that no one speaks, and watching 10 Things I Hate About You. In other words, I had a giant stick up my ass. Or sphincter, as Kat Stratford would say.
In case it has taken you 10 years to see 10 Things I Hate About You, Kat Stratford is the “heinous bitch” starring opposite Heath Ledger and Larisa Oleynik (or Alex Mack, as I’m sure she prefers) in a modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. I’m no Harold Bloom, so I will spare you the Shakespearean analysis.
However, what I won’t spare you is the fact that Kat Stratford was my Raison d’être in high school (and secretly, kind of still is). I started listening to Bikini Kill and The Raincoats. I bought The Feminine Mystique. I used words like “patriarchy”. Without knowing it at the time, I was laying the foundation to one day realize that I was a feminist. The F-Word isn’t actually uttered in 10 Things…, but there are plenty of lines that allude to it, or at least a caricature of it. Kat is described by her nemesis, Joey “eat me” Donner, as a “bitter self righteous hag who has no friends”, and is suspected of being a “K.D. Lang fan”.
Essentially, there is an implication that Kat, as a feminist–or minimally someone who recognizes misogyny–is a raging man-hating lesbian. This a prime piece of pop culture real estate that is speared by many feminists for falling into a trope that negatively stereotypes feminism. That’s ok. I get it.
There’s no argument that Kat Stratford’s brand of feminism is rudimentary at best. But we all have to start somewhere, and for me, Kat Stratford will always have a special place in my heart for kicking Bobby Ridgeway in the balls because he tried to grope her in the lunch line.
