http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/olympics-or-gay-porn

Just goes to show our heteronormative bias in terms of the male gaze…..

Back in the old days, I mean really old, like when laws said shit like married women couldn’t own property and, even worse, were kinda their husbands’ property, dudez got off on putting down women in big boring books like ‘The Romance of the Rose’. Fancy-pants jerks called this the ‘querelle des femmes’ which is French for ‘the woman question’ but it didn’t seem like anyone was actually questioning anything about women except how much worse they were then men.

Things didn’t get better in the Renaissance and after. Douches like Martin Luther were all ‘guys are better and smarter because their shoulders are all wider than their hips so that means their brains are totally the biggest while girls are just useless in the brain ways because they carry a lot of junk in the trunk’ and a Scots jerk named John Knox put out a book he titled ‘The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.’ They were totally blown away when women kicked ass as rulers, like Queen Elizabeth in England, or as writers, such as Marie Dentière, who totally pissed off the leaders of Geneva with what she wrote.

Yeah, some women were ballsy enough to sass back to these douchey dudez in print. Not just Marie, but lots of other women like Jane Anger (which was totally a stage name like P!nk or Madonna!) who published a book in which she called out all those lies about women being weak and stupid and so hot to trot for any guy that they had to be pretty well locked away just for their own good, really! Anger said that women weren’t below men or even equal to men, she said women were better than men. And she was funny, too, ripping these guys a new one, like when she wrote that dudez would totally disintegrate without women to take care of them: “Without our care they lie in their beds as dogs in litter, & goe like lowsie Mackarell swimming in the heat of sommer.”

But Jane Anger was, like, mostly ignored, because she was a woman and everybody knew that women didn’t matter because they couldn’t go to university or do anything really important (except for being queen in some countries and that was still so second-rate). No, dudez just kept at it, whining to each other about how those ladiez were totally dumb and should be so much more grateful for how their menz put up with them! And that really, wouldn’t it be better if they weren’t educated at all? (No, seriously, that was what a cardinal, you know those church guys who wear red dresses?, said about his own nieces because teaching girls to read and write would totally mess them up.)

I used to resent Vidal, but I guess I decided he was more amusing than irritating. I found his memoir, Palimpsest, strikingly moving and hilarious. (His comments about Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill are hilarious.) It reminded me a bit of the Education of Henry Adams, but with more fistfights (Mailer) and bitchiness. Vidal lived a kind of Zelig-like life, and always retained his powers of observation and his trenchant wit. Who else could write convincingly about being on the fringes of Camelot, at the center of the New York literati of the mid- and late 20th century, a would-be politician, and Hollywood as both a writer and an actor as well? It’s an amazing life any way you slice it, with a bonus of being called a faggot by William F. Buckley on live teevee.

His novels were never to my taste, esp. the historical ones. Too ponderous and too much about presidents, in my view. He was a terrific screenwriter, and not a bad actor. He was perfect in Bob Roberts, but I guess he was playing a version of himself had he been successful in politics.

I never took his condescending comments about “the Assistant Professors” personally. I took it as a manifestation of the intellectual insecurity of a man who never went to college, for all of his intelligence and family money. The guy served in the Deuce as a teenager, so I can forgive him his latter-day condescention. Some of his literary criticism was brilliant.

If you read nothing else, read “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star,” an essay he published more than 30 years ago but which presages so much about the conflicts over sexuality and gay rights vis-a-vis the New Right. Brilliant, and hilarious too.

Interesting point about the “women” competing in Olympic sports being, in fact, girls. There’s also the case of women on the US cycling team being referred to “girls” even though they’re in their 20s and 30s. I think this may be part of the larger move toward women in their 20s calling themselves “girls” which frustrates me almost as much as, “I’m not a feminist, but…” comments. Do we really need to accept the way that we’ve been infantilized by referring to ourselves as “girls” as if “women” can only be old, humorless hags?

In my view, Vidal represents the corruption of progressives. He was also a negligible author.

Chavez was a fighter for the poor while today’s Democrats forgot the poor, went to wars that killed the poor and help the rich that abuse the poor. They fight for nothing.

Historiann, I admire you as reflected by this blog. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

As for the gymnastics: LouMac, I’m sure you have more to say on this than I do. Yes to everything you say–it’s the women’s ice skating of the summer Olympics. I also find it deeply troubling that the highest profile “women’s” sports are usually performed by girls. This year, it’s even happening in the swimming. I wonder if this is one of the things that keeps the “women’s” sports acceptable–it’s OK for them to succeed at that level because they’re just girls, and for the most part there’s no future in the sport professionally in a way that will make them any serious coin.

Imagine a world in which the highest profile “men’s” sports were actually most successfully performed by pubescent or teenaged boys. It’s literally unimaginable, isn’t it? I find ntbw’s comment so interesting, as she is the parent of a male gymnast. It sounds like she wouldn’t permit her daughter to do the same sport.

It’s amazing because other bigotries people have dropped — e.g. Catholic-Protestant, slavery, serfdom, caste systems — have always resulted in richer, happier societies for everybody. (Correct me if I’m wrong, historians!)

But somehow, if we stop trying to crush half the human race, all we have to look forward to is a grim, joyless future in which men can do nothing but dishwashing.

Some people need to stop staring at the mirror long enough to take a look outside.

What do you mean by Chavez democrat, koshembos? Chavez had his moments of brilliance but his success with white supporters depended largely on portraying farm workers as weak and downtrodden, not strong and empowered by the union. Is that what you mean, a benevolent elite lending a helping hand to the colored folk and the ladies while leaving the structures responsible for inequality and oppression unchallenged? No thanks.