Earlier today I did a sexist headline and didn't stop myself. The headline was I bet the girls are better-looking in the 'sphere of deviance.'" I'm phallocentric, I admit it. Adam Horowitz has wisely censored/edited me on a couple of occasions. This time Horowitz was traveling, and Sarah Anne Minkin, who generally likes this site, busted me:
I mean, talk about being within the sphere of consensus!
Was it offensive, Sarah Anne?
spheres of consensus, legitimate debate and deviance exist in multiple
worlds. What you wrote was well within the sphere of consensus, which is
as sexist as our society. So we've got sexist assessment happening here
on two levels: 1) women are judged according to a measure that is
narrow and pits them against each other (some are "better" looking,
whatever that is) and 2) women are used as symbols of the value of
structures or spaces and, as such, all women are objectified (the
better-looking women represent your sphere, showing that it's better
than the others; but who's in that sphere with you? Am I in there? And
as what – one of the symbols or one of the sphere participants?).
not saying that women and men's attractiveness is something we
shouldn't talk about. I'm all for attraction. But using women and their
looks in the casual way you did subtly limits the roles that women can
and do play in our public life, and it also reveals who (you) is in a
position to remind us of the rules that marginalize and delegitimize
women's contributions.
Articulate, forceful. Thanks. I've changed in many ways over the years in sexist and racist connections. I'm not sure I will change here because I'm not entirely sure I want to, at least when throwing off a joke. Also: while I'm in the "sphere of deviance" on Palestinian stuff, I might simply be too traditional/essentialist with respect to male/female differences. The sphere of consensus, as Minkin observes. But I've registered the affront. So: apologies to those who were offended, I'll try to keep it under wraps.
(Phil Weiss)
Good grief.
It was a joke. Screw political correctness.
(Are politically correct men sexier than politically incorrect ones? I doubt it.)
How many chicks read this blog anyway? My guess…about a 100 men : 1 woman.
How many chicks read this site anyway?
The ratio of men to women is about a 100:1…just a guess.
No real woman could stand phil's nauseating whine.
*PHIL: "I let my sexism show."
*ME: Yeah, you're real chauvinist pig! (levity intended) I have submitted your faux pas to the "Colbert Report" in the hope that you will get a much deserved 'Colbert Wag of the Finger'!
Putting good-looking women front-and-center has always been a useful political-propaganda ploy. Note how all those "color-coded" revolutions sponsored by the Neocons during the Bush admin always featured pictures of gorgeous, bright-eyed young women sitting on their boyfreinds' shoulders at massive political rallies. And of course, the Zionists often conspicously feature cute girls in uniform as well. What are you going to do? Counter with old babushkas?
Park it, Sarah. This site needs some levity. When the Missus (Phil's) registers a complaint, I'll bow.
HEY PHIL:
I just got off the phone with Stephen C. He was falling all over himself apologizing for not being able to give you a 'Colbert Wag of the Finger' on this evening's "Colbert Report". In lieu of same, he suggested that your wife (or her designee) give you a really, really good spanking!
"How many chicks read this blog anyway? My guess…about a 100 men : 1 woman."
True enough. This isn't a site that will appeal to all of the fairer sex or the faint-hearted. It takes real men to take on the Zionist beast, and the effete latents now running the two-party regime simply don't have the heart.
Sooner or later, the country is going to slap away the queers and hand the reins back to real men who understand the score, out of a sheer survival imperative.
HEY PHIL, AGAIN:
OMG, I'm so embarrassed. I think maybe Stephen 'put one over on me'. When I referred to your wife (or her designee) giving you "a really, really good spanking", I assure you that I was not alluding to any kind "deviance". I can't speak for Stephen C.
CORRECTION! (A GREAT WAY TO SPOIL A JOKE)
HEY PHIL, AGAIN:
OMG, I'm so embarrassed. I think maybe Stephen 'put one over on me'. When I referred to your wife (or her designee) giving you "a really, really good spanking", I assure you that I was not alluding to any kind of "deviance". I can't speak for Stephen C.
miserable PC limp humor doesn't cut it Phil.
Hah, 100 to 1 ratio of men to chicks? Then I guess Phil must have at least 200 readers, 'cause there's me and Sara Anne. 300 readers, because think of Suzanne!
I noted the comment, too. I think it's a question of your audience … do you want to speak only to frat boys and posturing, chest-beating male supremacists, or do you want your voice to reach a larger audience? Larger audience means blander prose.
I'm on the fence. I do think it's good you have Adam editing you. I spout off online myself sometimes and wish I could delete such signs of my natural obnoxiousness. On the one hand, a sense of humor is a good thing (pace my troll whose name I've forgotten but epithets never: humorless c**t he called me, my husband and I are still laughing about that one). On the other hand, some humor is inappropriate for your growing public.
During the Lebanon 06 war I sometimes posted bitter, bitter satire. Oh boy did the hasbara trolls hate it. THey really hated it when I laughed at Israeli death-dealers as they rained down destruction upon my home town. I started a meme of repeating Lebanese jokes – a reporter for the Washington Post picked it up and spread it around. Oh did my trolls hate that. How could I call myself a dove while LAUGHING at Israelis? Don't I know about their guilt and pain and suffering? I must be an anti-Semite if I go around laughing at Semites who are killing my neighbors. (only a whining American would say this. I think most real Middle Easterners of whatever religion get black war humor. I have yet to meet an Israeli who was touchy about being teased. Sometimes they don't *know* I'm teasing them but they always handle it just fine, once they figure it out.)
I did, in fact, quiet down the bitter humor. It doesn't work for what I'm trying to do on my site, and invites nastiness and resentful trolls. (as I expect this comment will)
Racists, sexists and other haters who do not want to change their ways despise having their racism called to attention; they also can't stand being laughed at. I say Phil is a mensch because he examines himself, adjusts accordingly, and moves on.
I read… I am a woman…
I probably read more of this type of stuff than all of you men together.
I was just looking up "mishpocheh" cause my Jewish 2d cousin-in-law used it regarding me. On the way to Mishpocheh I found the original Yiddish meaning of kibbitz:
"# kibbitz
In Yiddish, it’s spelled kibets, and it’s related to the Hebrew “kibbutz” or “collective.” But it can also mean verbal joking, which after all is a collective activity. It didn’t originally mean giving unwanted advice about someone else’s game – that’s an American innovation."
I'm a pretty avid kibitzer, in both the verbal joking sense, and in the newer American sense of giving unwanted advice about someone else's game. I am trying to rein in my own advice-giving… but the original meaning of kibitz? I love it.
Phil, you're a kibitzer after my own heart.
Seven – you, me and Suzanne (if Suzanne is really the gender she claims to be – I believe so) that makes 300 readers at Mondoweiss!
I heard a rumor the site gets 10,000 hits a day, so that means there have to be 100 females hitting on Mondoweiss, or about 4 per hour.
All in good fun. Can't let those razzing guys scare us away from this place… Nyah nyah nyah fellas!
I think all the comments here so far make a good point, each according to their respective focus. I will only add if the joke
hadn't been made at the end of the post by Phil, more comments would have gone to the doughnut as a way of structurally symbolizing the dynamics of political speech in the USA.
Charity would give Phil the notion that pretty=his political POV on his pet subject, that is, his past statements on why he started up his blog. As in "she"-it is "pretty to me."
In the context of his post, as a way of summing it up, he spoke
poetically, not literally. (With no more malice than say, describing a ship as "she."
Let's not sink Phil's boat.
I don't want to look deeper into other people's contribution in this context.
For me the headline was amusing, since it was so obviously subjective and spontaneous. With all respect for Sarah Anne Minkin's complaint, do we really want to censor spontaneous subjectivity and walk around with rigid censor rules in our heads? Carefully calculating the risk of each sentence? Feels like a mental straight-jacket. Rules trumping life.
What about our ability to judge the world if all essentially suppress their spontaneity? Will it make you any wiser, or does it simply heighten suspicion? And yes, I am female too. Occasionally I feel sorry for "beautiful girls" parading in swimming suits in car shows as eye catchers. But strictly it is their choice not mine.
Ed: "Slap away the queers?" "The fairer sex?" "Real men?" Is this for real?
Maybe you need to take another look at Huwaida Arraf facing off with two armed Israeli soldiers and ask yourself whether you have that kind of balls.
Yet another chick who reads this blog
Leila, I met your mom at an event on Saturday Night (please don't identify location here). She seems like a very kind and sweet woman.
Are people really offended by Phil's comments? Am I crazy for not being offended? I always just assume that men are kind of lame and never really know what to say and tend to say dumb things, consistently. But not because they are necessarily sexist (well they all are a little bit) but mostly because they just don't know any better.
Phil on behalf of women, I pardon thee.
"Occasionally I feel sorry for "beautiful girls" parading in swimming suits"
Come on, LeaNder, last I looked you were quite comfortable inside our venerable olympic bikini thread. Not so much for Leila, that burqa-wearing shelob.
So much for sphere of deviance girls with some devious spherical topologies. Mondoweiss never recovered it's sex appeal after spicy antizionist Brenda was revealed to be a guy long years ago.
Hey look at it this way, guys and gals are getting more equal every day, with the help of the little blue pill guys can now fake arousal
too. Recent testing shows that both men and woman favor the one
most attractive to them, and they try to match up with somebody at least physically attractive as they are. The other motives are socially, economically, or psychologically derived, as in Freud, etc.
Trust your gut feeling when you see a 10 girl with a 2 guy, or
a young girl with an old man, or visa versa. And so on.
I was actually complimenting the women who participate here as NOT faint-hearted.
But the point I was trying to make is that those currently in control of the two-party-regime present themselves as macho studs and tough old broads (who so courageously zap "Islamofascist" women and children with laser guided missiles from 3,000 miles away), but when it comes to confronting the Israel lobby right under their noses, they run and hide in the closet.
The attempted sub text of my point is that political correctness is the poisonous context by which such a dysfunctional state of affairs has taken root. If people could speak openly about organized Jewry, for example, we never be in the situation that we are now. Part of a constructive public dialogue is forcing different powerful special interest groups behaving in a stereotypical manner to publicly defend their stereotypical behavior, be it Jews, WASPS, banksters, the war profiteering complex, whatever.
Political correctness shuts down debate, as it was designed to do; it doesn't enhance it.
Also, why is it that when Jews make blunt, politically incorrect observations about other groups, they're simply being "tough" or "honest" or "plain spoken," but when others make politically incorrect observations about Jews, suddenly they are "haters," and "allies of David Duke" and "antisemites."?
How is it that fascist Zionists are allowed to perpetually play the victim card, and those speaking out against them are the bad guys?
What kind of twisted, diseased Establishment would construct and impose such sick status quo?
Ed,
I was just reading about how some dude in the UK got arrested for saying, "fukn Jews/Israel" at the gym while watching the news about the massacres in Gaza. I don't condone "fukn Jews" but I totally condone saying, "fukn Israel" but what I want to know is how you can get arrested for saying that about Jews, meanwhile, the Israeli leaders go on television and advocate genocide against Arabs 24/7. I guess there is no danger in that…
Count me as another woman who reads Phil's commentary. And yes, I was slightly annoyed at Phil's off-handed sexist comment. And I'm glad Sarah said something and also glad that Phil took the time to respond to her concerns.
And, really, … "How many chicks read this blog?"
Chicks??? I thought that idiocy went out of favor two decades ago. Or was that an attempt at subtle humor?
The Statist planned and engineered emasculation of the Western Christian male has crucial to the success of Zionism. No authentic Christian (ie the Mel Gibson vein) would have put up with their perpetual welfare, warmongering crap for even five minutes, which is why they had to go.
I don't want to offend you Ed… but I don't necessarily think that Western Christian men were so enlightened and then had their little gig disrupted by Zionists. I personally think that the White Christian men (the ones who are so gung-ho about being identified as such) are just as nuts as Zionists. That White Christian Man demographic has been wreaking havoc all over the world, for a really long time, before the Zionist lobby started coercing them to do so. They're just a match made in hell.
"Chicks??? I thought that idiocy went out of favor two decades ago. Or was that an attempt at subtle humor?"
Meh. It doesn't bother me.
White Christian males have always been a scapegoated for money-grubbing imperialists, many of them working with Jews.
Look at George W. Bush. Is he a white Christian male in the Mel Gibson vein, or is he a money-grubbing imperialist working with Jews?
The money-worshippers/self-worshipping “elites” will happily throw anyone and everyone under the bus who gets in the way of their megalomaniacal schemes. It really doesn’t matter what race they are, from Arab royals to guys like Robert Mugabe to ambitious lawyer like Barack Obama himself. Or sex either. Just look at how many female members of Congress are chugging right along on the Zionist bus with big fat grins on their plastic faces. I mean, have you ever seen Nancy Pelosi’s smile?
These people are Satanic. There is really no other word for it.
Yeah, yeah those people ARE satanic (if satan even exists…) but Jews didn't make those White Christians drag slaves over here from Africa or slaughter the Native Americans or burn women at the stake cause they thought they were witches… I just don't get it, why are Libertarians so lame?