"The Mad Tag Lady"

Gracious goody. My first tag. I am decidedly wet with foresight. In the wake of being dealt with like a licentious lice-plagued pariah for the whole of my hostile to social youth, I am currently beating 'em off with a retractable twirly doo. 

Don't take a gander at me in that manner of speaking, dammit. 

Props to Pippa and Witchy-charm. :-) 

The Bible. From this most sacred of writings, I discovered that ladies were second rate compared to men, that homosexuality was a plague and that rationally impaired individuals were controlled by evil presences. At that point I developed up.* 

One book you have perused more than once? 

The Female Eunuch; first of Germ's fighting. This was an alternate life-changer. I was a premenarche fourteen-year-old, clandestinely perusing a duplicate in my Religious Ed class when I should've been occupied with scriptural study. I was leafing through it, considering, "alright, ladies' bodies have been appropriated by men, I can burrow that, The Family hasn't been particularly kind to ladies, beyond any doubt, Taste your menstrual—Holy Fucking Hair Oil!" I committed the error of shouting something to that impact so everyone can hear. What's more the motherly old sheila showing that class cracked down on my cursing arse like a sack of stale fellowship wafers. 

At any rate, individuals can sack out Doctor G. all they like, yet in the event that it weren't for her artful culmination inspiring the young people of the world to get back to horse crap on deceptive misogyny then, we wouldn't have the rights we underestimate now, and I wouldn't be the professional lady, tree-embracing, strange content, child scorning carpet muncher I am today. 

One book you would need on a desert island? 

The most effective method to Survive When You're Marooned On A Desert Island, by Manne Overboard. 

One book that made you giggle? 

Poop. There's far beyond any reasonable amount to rundown. Alright Fear Of Flying, that 70's paean to Female Sexual Liberation by Erica Jong (horny courageous woman, humorous sexual moments, and a witty turn of expression that puts contemporary chick lit to disgrace), The Mozart Maulers by Dorian Mode ("Don't piss off your therapist. Affront his assistant and you're a sexist. Incidentally venture on his toe and you're a dormant sociopath with a foot interest. Scratch his auto and you're a curbed gay person with motoring issues"), Encyclopedia Neurotica by Jon Winokur ("Reality TV addicts may be experiencing telephilia, a term used to portray the neurotic yearning of Americans, regardless of how talentless, to be on TV") and Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth—I'm Kissing You Goodbye! By Cynthia Heimel (the title says everything). 

Growing up, I was once inclined toward the unreasonable potty silliness of writers like Paul Jennings, Morris Gleitzman and Roald Dahl, and I've kept all their books (I decline to dole them out. What would I be able to say—I'm an enormous child on a fundamental level!) 

One book that made you shout? 

Monstrous by Joyce Carol Oates, Lover by Joyce Carol Oates, Faithless by Joyce Carol Oates, I'll Take You There by Joyce Carol Oates, Tusk by… fuck it, everything by Joyce Carol Oates makes me shout! 

The genuine book Blood On The Wattle, by Bruce Elder, which diagrams the social and political battles of Indigenous Australians since white settlement, additionally made me shed a tear or two when I read it a few years back. 

One book you wish had been composed? 

I did think of it, it was called Mad Sheilas, and I attempted to have it distributed at the start of this current year. It was a gathering of what (I trusted) were humourous articles on the spot of ladies (or absence of spot, rather) in advanced Australia. I started deal with it in 2003, and sent it off to the distributers in January of 2006. I got a dismissal letter after two months… thus the reason the vast majority of my prior website passages are indeed papers. 

Bummer, eh? 

One book you wish had never had been composed? 

Mein Kampf. Malevolent, detestable, malicious. 

One book you are as of now perusing? 

As of now perusing a few. I never read one book at once. The books I'm perusing right now incorporate The Furies by Suzy Mckee Charnas, Valley of The Dolls by Jacqueline Sussan, and, on the grounds that I have women's activist hypothesis/purposeful anecdotes comin' out of my freakin' ears (excessively of a decent thing), The New Machiavelli by H.g. Wells. 

One book you have been intending to peruse? 

The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer. Yes, I know—a stunning wrongdoing against the group! 

***extra Categories included by me*** 

One book you wish YOU had composed 

Instructions to Win Friends And Influence People—that Dale Carnegie fucker got rich from spilling a pack of feelgood prosaisms into a solitary educational tome. She-yit, wish I'd considered it. 

Books you read however wouldn't need your family to realize that you read 

Not books, however a class. (*blushes*) Slash fiction. 

That being said, that is all that could possibly be needed gum-flappin' from me. Onto you all! I tag: 

Jen, Maia, Erika, Michelle, and Sazz (I would've likewise labeled the Mean Feminists, Edith and Vicky, yet V got there before me. Bugger!) 

Upbeat sub

Sheila

Sheila is a common given name for a female, derived from the Gaelic name Síle/Sìle, which is believed to be a Gaelic form of Cecilia. Like "Cecil" or "Cecilia", the name means "blind", from the Latin word caecus. There is also an etymologically-unrelated Indian name (alternatively spelled "Sheela"), which is rooted in the Sanskrit word Sheela, meaning "character" or "good conduct" and is a common name across the country.

Leftist Men Say The Darnedest Things

Don’t they just? From little nuggets of wisdom such as, “The feminist movement is too exclusive—where’s the focus on men?”, to parochial pearls of prickspeak like, “My girl’s so liberal, she dusts my porn collection!”, there’s simply no end to the verbal diarrhoea to which Leftie boys suffering from testosterone poisoning are periodically afflicted.

But any left-wing dude who wants to make a request that I give men more respect, or that I understand beauty pageants aren’t the hideous patriarchal exploitation-fest my feminist conditioning has led me to believe they are, or that I not over-simplify the convolutedly complex issue of pornography which, when subject to semiotic analysis by a white dude with three letters after his name, suddenly becomes open to interpretation as to whether or not the “sluts” in “Teenage Sluts Finger Fuck At Slumber Party” are really abused kids or liberated free agents, can go exfoliate his dick with a barnacle loofah. It’s bad enough that I’ve got MRAs crapping in my ear without having to listen to the incessant whining of Wounded White Men suffering from spotlight deprivation.

A random sampling from selected parts of e-mails from male “allies” that have made their way into my (intermittently de-fumigated) inbox:

[From a putative “Nice Guy”]:“I accidentally came across your blog and was blown away by the sheer anger of it all. You are indeed an angry woman. I am in no position to wonder why.” [Unsurprisingly, he goes on to wonder why later in the email, saying]: "Does a woman like yourself though, only concentrate on her angry work? Abusing men work?”

[Same guy, on my Anzac Day entry]: “I suppose you think that such a slaughter of imbecile men would be good for your world? Considering we are all mindless creatures devoid of feeling, obsessed with our cocks, and on a par with the murderers of Anita Cobby.”

[Different guy, on my How To Insult An Australian Yob post]: “Kid, look, don’t get me wrong, I’m about as pink as they come—in favour of drug legalisation, freeing asylum seekers, abortion and woman’s [sic] rights. But this man-bashing isn’t going to get you anywhere. If you’ve had bad past experiences with us then I empathise, but your experiences can’t be that bad that you’re unable to put them behind you and learn that men aren’t the enemy. ”

[Dork who compared a woman having an affair with her personal trainer to a man paying a woman for sex, after his dumb-arse analogy caused me to lose it]: “I must say it would have been unthinkable for a male blogger to rant at me for using a prostitute.”

[Thimble-knob Whitey guilt-trips me for “being apathetic” re. Indigenous Rights]:“Don’t know why a privileged middle-class young woman would choose to sit around and bitch when she could be out helping the* real* socially marginalised—Aboriginal people.”

[Random Wanker wanks into my ear]: “I’m all for feminism, but feminism really doesn’t focus on men enough. if equality is the guiding principle, then should equal time not be given to both women’s *and* men’s issues? Why don’t you put your personal shit aside and try to focus on how power structures hurt men, too?”

[Most Recent]: “You seem the perfect cliché of a leftist. Not very poor. Not very in pain (…) I write [to] you because you're cute. I looked over a lot of feminist blogs. Always this old ‘fight for the woman freedom.’ You're all really wrong. The problem is the whole system not a specific one as feminity [sic] stuff.
Feminism is really a joke. It's only one small part of the rotten apple. Fight the entire system..”

And it’s like: Way to pass judgement on the life of someone you know nothing about, arseholes! If there’s some kind of magical software that enables people to deign my socio-economic status, skin pigmentation and past sexual relationships, then for the love of Gaia, please let me know about it, because I yearn to have the same depth of insight into the inner workings of my psyche as you obviously do. If not, then sit back, shut up, cram your hoof in your gob and actually listen to what female and feminist bloggers are saying for a change, instead of sauntering in all big-cocked and demanding they entertain your self-obsessed delusions.

One guy (another so-called “progressive”) actually wrote to me claming that, since I rarely talk about my personal life on this blog and because I adopt a joking tone in my writing instead of the customary “feminist victim whine”, that I must have it pretty good and should quit this “man-blaming” and focus on more important issues: Like The War on Terrorism.

Firstly, I was going to make mention of the real war on terrorism in this post, but decided against it because there are already so many fine bloggers writing about it.

Secondly, on the subject of the many incorrect inferences you guys feel entitled to make, I have to ask: How do you know I’m not (or have never been) poor? How do you know I’m “middleclass”? How do you know that all I do is “bitch” about “issues of little relevance” (to you) ? How the fuck do you know that my past experiences have been all Sunshine and Rainbows, just because I don’t talk about them or make vague allusions to them in a light-hearted manner?

Could my use of sardonic humour possibly be an attempt to cover up an excess of pain that I struggle to deal with in the day-to-day, that I don’t want to talk about to people who’d likely not understand and for whom the life of a woman is worth less than the life of a fucking gerbil anyway?

This whole thing has been rather enlightening, however. The Blogging Experience has caused me to realise that many leftist men aren’t entirely different in how they view women as their right-wing counterparts. The exchange I’ve had with MRAs vs. Left-wing dudes follow a strangely similar trajectory: I point out Hideous Patriarchal Practice. Bloke cries that I’m “maligning men.” I calmly write back to Bloke and inform him I’m simply stating a fact, sorry if you misread me. Bloke then writes a sewage-farm worth of erroneous speculations about my personal life, my hang-ups, my repressed prudery, my latent lesbianism (why “latent”?), my food allergies, my medusa-like appearance, my closet capitalism, my sexual proclivities, and on and on.

Why are feminist bloggers subject to this idiocy? Why is outrage at the staggering degree of violence perpetrated against women viewed as a personal chip on the shoulder of the feminist, and not a massively haemorrhaging wound dealt against all women by the male-dominated society? Lastly, why do so many left-wing men sound so suspiciously like their right-wing enemies when it comes to telling us whiny privileged bitches to put a sock in it and focus on their politics and needs?

If you’re one of the guys I’ve written about above, don’t bother writing back. Any e-mails you send me will be swiftly directed to my junk basket, where they belong. Before dialoguing with any feminist blogger, consider listening first, and try not to interrupt with your protestations that “I’m one of the Good Guys!” and other such outbursts. Next time you’ve got your dick, your Vaseline and five free minutes, consider not beating off to Barely Legal Hotties before going to a (haloscan and sitemeter equipped!) feminist blog to argue that progressive women aren’t accommodating enough of your needs. 'Cuz mate, we've accommodated your "needs" for long enough, and are sick to the back teeth of it. Now fuck off before I you introduce to the barnacle loofah.

"Well, That's A Nice-Looking Blog You've Got There, Young Lady!"

Thanks. :-) But don't call me a lady.

The snazzier blog you're currently viewing was borne of a boredom so extreme, it made Question Time look like Disneyworld . Unfunny analogies aside, hope you like it. Don't know about you, but that puke-green template was making me feel nauseous. This one is much cooler (and strangely oriental-looking). I'll continue to tweak it and add more aesthetically-appealing stuff over time.

Genius that I am, I forgot to save the links. So I had to re-do them all over. So fun! And such a productive use of time, too! That's 2 hours I could've spent watching Married With Children re-runs, or someting equally life-enhancing.

An-ee-way: More non-blog-design-related, patriarchy-blamin' crap to follow. Stay tuned!