Longform Links – 2008-05-08- Melissa Bruen, “Slumpbusting”, Language, Veganism
Seeking Avalon – Walk the Line
I was originally not going to comment on Melissa Bruen. Then I learned that there was backlash.
[...]
A young woman on a college campus walking back to her dorm is assaulted. She fights back. OTHER random men in the area then group assault her in retribution for her fighting off the first asswipe.
When I first read the story last night, the moment I read her taking more than one swing at the first guy I knew what had happened. You see there is a line women are supposed to walk without ever falling over. Comic bloggers and other fiction bloggers (women) talk about it all the time. We say “Madonna/Whore Complex” until those who aren’t getting it, just get sick of seeing it and tune it out. [...]
During the first assault, Melissa Bruen was just a woman; faceless, without personality or autonomy of her own.. She was an ass to rub off on, an object that should just stand there and take it.
With the first swung blow of self defense she was MADONNA. She became a good girl who was suitably disgusted. The problem is, the MADONNA must be perfectly feminine and submissive while insisting that raw, unwanted sexuality not touch her. She must cajole and coax decent behavior for the sake of PURITY.
Women who’re trained in self-defense do so / can do so in order to give up having to play the MADONNA. Playing that role leaves you in the shower for hours trying to scrub away not just the touch of the invader, but something akin to self-hate, that you had to mollify an assaulter in order to survive. Survival is everything. It is the ONLY thing. But it can leave a film.
Melissa Bruen took a second swing and a third. She wanted this asswipe to know his advances were. not. welcome. And she fell, tumbling across the line to WHORE. The whore is not a good girl. She can be a virgin and she’s still not a good girl. Good girls know their place. Good girls don’t claim power. Good girls don’t say no and follow it up with pressure and physical hurt.
I realize this is Frank Miller logic, and you may think I’ve gone crazy. But please, try to hold on until the end. Cause I KNOW this. [...]
Except for WoC. We know those rules at a pretty young age. Why? Well most of the time we never hit MADONNA. Jungle fever, and jigaboo and Jezebel and more; White Men are often convinced they have a fucking right to just reach out and touch us however they want. The days of slavery (and dominating colonialism) are gone, however, so they’ll put a polite fiction over it:
* You’re so exotic.
* I’ve never seen hair like that before
* You have the loveliest complexion
Bitch Blogs – Read It and Weep: Sports Edition
The Chicago White Sox haven’t been doing so hot, so they initiated a little “slumpbuster” that involved taking two female blow-up dolls and arranging them in the team clubhouse with baseball bats jammed into various orifices. Surrounding the dolls with players’ bats, the team also stuck a sign on one encouraging players and clubhouse visitors to “push.”
The stunt was vigorously defended by team manager Ozzie Guillen, whose version of the old I’m-sorry-if-anyone-was-offended copout was a masterpiece of douchebaggery. Some highlights, via the Chicago Sun-Times:
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