Tuesday, February 18, 2014

No matter how they crash and burn

No matter how they crash and burn
The feminists will never learn,
That girls are girls and boys are boys
And sluts are nothing but sex toys.
Self-respect can ne'er be gained
From female desire unrestrained.
What's driving this new crop of female antiheroes? Unsworth, 35, who drew on her own friendships for Animals, a gloriously over-the-top account of female friendship, says it's partially a desire for something new.

"There's room for books about getting the guy, and I enjoy reading the good ones, but there need to be alternatives," she says. "I felt as though there weren't many stories that featured women just dicking about, and I also wanted to address the idea that if you keep partying, you're an idiot or a failure – like there's just one way to live, which there isn't."

A similar desire to depict a woman happy to live outside of society's boundaries lay behind Pilger's Eat My Heart Out, with its furious young anti-heroine. "Some reviewers have said Ann-Marie is unlikeable, damaged and lost, but I see her as strong," says 29-year-old Pilger. "She's frustrated at the social facades that make up so much of daily life. If you're a man, you can be a disaffected antihero and have a proper existential crisis, but if your character is female, her concerns are dismissed as the petty stuff of personal life."
She sees her angry protagonist as strong, but everyone else sees her as "unlikeable, damaged and lost". Here's a hint: everyone else is right. It's actually rather remarkable that female novelists have managed to produce a new crop of protagonists that make Bridget Jones look sane and stable by comparison.

And our societal devolution continues....

17 comments:

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

There is ChickLit. And then there is BitchLit. Or, in many cases, SlutLit.

The girls these writers depict clearly have no purpose in life, having eschewed the traditional roles in marriage and family, other than drinking and fucking. Like dudes.

They can try to dress it up as being "strong", "angry", and "furious", but it's all rather sad.

swiftfoxmark2 said...

It is amazing how women who stay home, raise children, and take care of the household are not looked upon as having any value or worth by the entertainment industry.

Anonymous said...

It is amazing how women who stay home, raise children, and take care of the household are not looked upon as having any value or worth by the entertainment industry.

Well that is hollywood. The only woman my wife has stated she admires (outside her own mom) is my friend's wife. Who is a stay at home wife/mom but beyond that has had 3 rough pregnancies. She is now almost finishing her 4th. The doctors want to C-section 4 weeks early to minimize the risk of the uterus tearing. But that would mean the baby would spend 2-4 weeks in NICU. So my friend's wife is hell bent on giving the baby 2 more weeks in the womb to avoid that despite the real risk to her well being.

Haus frau said...

It is amazing how women who stay home, raise children, and take care of the household are not looked upon as having any value or worth by the entertainment industry.

There's no drama and instability in it. Too much normalcy.

Anonymous said...

Your friend's wife received bad information. A 36w planned c-section (even if the multipara's medical history is complex as you allude to) is not a guarantee of a multi-week NICU stay. It's not even a guarantee of a multi-day NICU stay.

This doesn't mean the woman shouldn't make her own decisions about risk, but a late preterm section, especially with modern NICUs, is no longer a situation where you have to wait weeks for your baby to come home.


Anonymous said...

Well I suppose that might depend on how the baby is progressing. We just get the summary over coffee/tea. There is a mutual OB/GYN acquaintance who is kind of shocked they didn't remove the uterus after the first or second child due to what happened with that one. I suppose the fact that it got used for 2-3 more babies should be humbling to such an OB, but I doubt it.

Revelation Means Hope said...

And that's modern medicine in capsule form- if it can't be treated with a pill, cut it out of the body.

After decades of tonsilectomies, they are finally, sort of, realizing that those tonsils MAY still have a role in your immune system (/sarc). I think most biology teachers are also still teaching that the appendix is a useless part of the body as well.

Anonymous said...

They are no longer allowed to do as many prophylactic hysterectomies as they'd like to. Also, a lot of women are recorded as "ruptures" when what happened is a milder thing entirely that doesn't interfere with the ability to carry several more pregnancies to term. Same for "fetal distress", unfortunately. I hate the way scare tactics are used to bully, it's very draining to argue with the guy/girl who's going to catch your baby while you're laboring, but that is currently the state of affairs in American obstetrics.

And don't say 'use a midwife', they are mostly unlettered hippies with more pride than sense. They aren't risky because birthing at home is so bad, but because the broken American system leaves the dregs practicing homebirth midwifery in many locales.

Obviously if none of you in the aforementioned pregnancy tale are American, you can cheerfully ignore my irritations at the medical system I have to live with and interact with during pregnancies.

Bob said...

"After decades of tonsillectomies, they are finally, sort of, realizing that those tonsils MAY still have a role in your immune system (/sarc). I think most biology teachers are also still teaching that the appendix is a useless part of the body as well."

Heh in England it took me 20 fucking years to get my tonsils removed. Doctor refused every time until one day it was so bad I just refused to leave until he referred me to a specialist. The specialist took one look and said "yep, those need to come out." I had one that was quite swollen, and the other which was so big it literally took up over half my throat (permanently). With frequent bouts of tonsillitis making them swell even more, it was rough. Got sick of having to take antibiotics multiple times a year too.

Had them out a year ago, recovery was rough but I've never felt better now! Had a minor cold 2-3 times since then maybe, no other illness.

Of course I'm an outlier here and your point about taking them out for the sake of it still stands (they used to do that here years ago), I just think it's amusing (and previously frustrating) at how they typical swing right to the other end of the spectrum and now refuse even when there is a medical need.

Tongue-in-cheek but with a slight bit of truth, I bet it's due to all the bloody women going to the docs constantly demanding meds or surgery for the slightest lil thing. Even more amusing is that they naturally have stronger immune systems, but as with everything, it all ends up as a massive drama.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

I had my appendix out when I was a teenager. Excruciating pain, almost died.

Interestingly, I never experienced that "phantom limb" phenomenon that some people who've had a limb amputated report. I never noticed my appendix when it was there, so I'm not sure how I would have detected its absence.

I asked the hospital to save it in a jar, but they threw it away.

Doom said...

Yeah, but... in a grotesque even for me way... the notion brings a little joy. Like watching a butterfly crawl onto the needle that will eventually put it into a collection of dry, dusty, dead beautiful creatures. Oh, that gives my dark-side a woody. I doubt if her little unlady has any clue just how deep that pool she dips her toe in really is. Women just don't work as anti-heroes because they all have limits. Boobs and a fat ass just can't sink to the highs of lows? Is it estrogen blocking the depth of imagination needed to go so off the rails? Don't care. Such women are just targets, and poor ones. Willing targets just end up, slit, in ditches because they have outlived any other usefulness if they continue to play that game and try to dig deeper.

I wasn't the slitter sort. But let women live their dirty little lives on such a path, letting them know where the next lower level of hell was along their path, without flinching, in my day. I'm sure some of the toasters I released due to boredom made it to that ditch though. Yum!

Glen Filthie said...

There is far too much of this crap going on and it is spilling out into other genres. It is so bad that when I am cruising for new books on the Kobo e-reader...if I see a book is written by a female author I give it a pass. The stats I am seeing are saying men are falling out of the marketplace because it is so bad now. I am quite happy with the way I view women; reading the works of some angry and disturbed femncunt is not going to force me to review my moral compass or my views on sexuality.

I am a fair man and don't want to hurt good women in the field. I suppose my question is this: given this article - and hundreds of others just like it - are there any GOOD female authors these days?

Ron said...

@swiftfox

Who do you think is more likely to buy the worthless crap advertised on TV?

The industrious, modest, wise mother with the loving family and the strong man she is obsessed with, or the post wall skank with a job at Starbucks and 100k in student loans for a phd in vagina studies who can't figure out why all the hawt guys have stopped validating her used up ass?

Black Poison Soul said...

Angry, defensive women really aren't that interesting. Can't be bothered hanging around them, wouldn't bother reading books about them. Change the name from Ann-Marie to Michael and it'd probably make more sense and be interesting.

Bridget Jones, sane and stable, heheheh!

George said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
George said...

I got a good laugh out of the poem at the start of the post. Is it original? I tried a "bing" search on it and only got links to folks that linked back here.

En-sigma said...

Where are the strong independent women of the Ukraine? I don't see them on the front lines - neither on the police force nor on the opposition? Why was not the leader of the opposition a feminist instead of this former pro boxer? All of the pictures do not show topless women throwing paint, or kissing helmets...it is so odd...How about the infamous picture of the college aged women lined up with air horns blaring at the single man in the picture? Surely they are strong enough to fight for freedom?

Seems like they would be eager to jump on such a misogynist movement like this.

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