Why are you so angry?
This is a variation of “You swear so I don’t have to listen to you.” “You’re angry so I don’t have to listen to you.”
Of course I’m angry. What’s that quote, “If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention?”
There’s nothing wrong with being angry. NOR does it mean you automatically lose the argument. If my angry ass is burying you in citations and statistics from reputable sources, and you remain calm but your only defense is, “Nuh uh!” I’m not the one who loses. Seriously.
Not to mention, that even when I do remain calm and polite, I still get labeled a hysterical, angry woman if I say anything people (not necessarily men) don’t like.
Rebecca West, (Journalist and historian) 1913:* I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
BINGO.
This really hasn’t changed. Seriously. Whenever I write “Hey, human being, here! How about you treat me as such?” I’m a bitch, or a feminazi, or hate men…
I was once chided for writing about rape, someone told me I was really taking a “real controversial stance there” saying rape was bad. To which I directed him to the comments on that piece and several others, many of which talked about how women deserved it for drinking or wearing tight clothing, I don’t know, having a vagina in the presence of a man… I pointed him at all the guys announcing, in spite of links to the DOJ’s statistics on it, that women lied about rape all the time to be mean to poor men. Ok, guys, the DOJ is not exactly a feminist organization. It has no dog in this fight. And it says you’re wrong. Not just wrong. Really wrong.
If I step up and say, “You know what, I know you don’t find me fuckable, but I’m still a human being and you should, you know, treat me as such,” I get a raft of concern troll bullshit about my weight, and how, in spite of never having met me, they know that I’m going to die from TEH DETHFATZ any second now, regardless of what I say, because I obviously have no idea what’s going on with this body I LIVE IN EVERY FUCKING DAY, poor deluded soul that I am. I can’t possibly know when I feel good, or when I don’t. I can’t possibly know that my knee injuries pre-date my DETHFATZ and were caused by over-exercising. I can’t possibly be telling the truth about what I eat, when and how much. As well as a chorus of, “You can’t help who you’re attracted to.”
And I’ll say it again: If you treat only the people you want to fuck with courtesy, and no one else, you are an asshole. Period. Full stop.
I hate the “Well, if you food journal, then you can see exactly how many calories you eat. Most people don’t realize…” Not realizing how much and what I eat, and its approximate caloric count is not a luxury fat girls have, folks. Seriously. No longer can I recite caloric counts for you, but I could at one point. And it took effort to quit doing that, or even thinking them really loudly. If I’m frowning at food, it’s generally because one of those lovely little ED leftovers has made its continued presence in my brain known, and I’m trying to beat it back with a stick.
Not to mention, I can’t food journal. It triggers ED relapses, severe ones. Because I am so fucking afraid that I really am eating too much, that I really am as big an idiot as everyone thinks I am, so I quit eating.** I don’t lie in food journals, because I don’t. I suppose I could, but I don’t. So, I just quit eating.
And will then be told I’m lying, even as I’m shaking and having severe mood swings, can’t think or focus and have a screaming headache because I’m not eating enough. You wanna know why women are “over emotional?” There you go.
If I write about queer issues, I will invariably get at least one person who will tell me I’m not really queer because I’m bi. Thankfully, these are rarer than they used to be. And people telling me that wanting myself and other queer folk to be treated just like the rest of you equals “special rights.”
Fortunately, my vehemently anti-religious bullshit stance seems to have scared off all the “Bible says so” crowd. For which I am thankful. Because counter-quoting Leviticus at them gets tiresome real quick.
In spite of everything, I haven’t done a lot of writing on abortion, but it’s coming. I should, I just haven’t.
Although, health care… Hooo boy. That brings out the humdingers, don’t it? I have news for you guys, I may be a Marxist scholar, but I am not a Marxist. As I’ve said before about systems that rely on people not to suck largely through their own devices, people are poo-flinging monkeys, and any system that fails to take that into account is doomed to failure.
There’s a whole lot else to be angry at as well: Women still make 75 cents to every dollar made by men in equitable positions. Women are still blamed for being raped. Girls are still told their only worth lies between their legs. We went into the war in Iraq under false pretenses. Afghanistan. Abortion rights, the refusal of most people to call the guy who shot Dr. Tiller what he is, a fucking terrorist. The continued, really expensive, war on drugs. The mistreatment of animals, the environment, everything else. Everything I wrote about here and much, much more.
Yes, I’m angry.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_West
**Which demonstrates I’m still an idiot, just a different kind of idiot.
Polimicks 
it pisses me right the hell off too.
And I am more than happy to put the bible smackdown on all the “bible says so” morons because I was a fucking bible scholar once upon a time and have read more than one translation (okay, a LOT more than one), which most of these bible-basher’s haven’t bothered to do (which is one of my own personal rants).
Grr Argh.
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OK then – is Leviticus the one that sets forth all this that good Jews can and cannot do (what they can eat, clipping toenails, etc.)?
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I believe so, with the no mixed fibers, and no shellfish…
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http://badgods.com/anykind.html
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I’ll check that out. Thanks for the link!
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oh, this is a comic that references what you are asking about.
A good link for Bibles:
http://www.biblegateway.com/
compare, contrast, search. 😀
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All I have to say is…amen.
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they know that I’m going to die from TEH DETHFATZ
GodDAMN, I hate you. I’m trying to get over this bronchial sputtering cough as it is. (In other news, I am now going to try to use DETHFATZ in a sentence at least once a week in the real world.)
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you need this icon.
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I love that icon!
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That sentiment is why I absolutely LOATHE the term ‘feminazi.’
It gets my hackles up every damn time.
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It never fails to amaze me how much courage we fatties have. You put yourself forward, expecting to be ripped to shreds by trolls, so that you can say the things we need to hear. Thank you.
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Honestly, I’ve gotten to the point where the trolls don’t bug me so much.
It’s the unthinking bullshit comments by people I know, like in meat space, who apparently spend all the time they aren’t with me thinking I eat bags of sugar, washed down with warm HFCS.
Seriously, the most disturbing thing about writing about this, or rape, is when your friends out themselves as jerks about it.
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The “your anger nullifies your argument” fail always boggles my mind.
In an Educational Psych class a couple of years ago, we did some activity (I wish I could remember the exact details) that basically came down to categorizing personality traits like “rational,” “assertive,” “emotional,” etc. Then they showed us which traits were, on average, considered more desirable. And THEN they showed us which traits were correlated with gender. Lo and behold, pretty much all the more valuable traits were considered “male.”
That blew my mind.
The point I wanted to make is that “rational” was on that list of both male and valuable, and every single time some jerk pulls that “your feelings invalidate your argument” bit I remember that assignment.
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And want to punch the person who make the comment.
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