When we last saw our hero, he was riding triumphantly over the shattered remains of the well-meaning but silly platform of the Green Party. It's ironic that they put so much emphasis on understanding nature and ecology but show little understanding of basic human behavior. Great example: their solution to "global warming" (which, according to Time magazine, will take 500 years to raise sea levels 6 feet even if the worst case scenario is true) is to force car companies to make electric cars in spite of the fact that no one will buy them. Sure, making laws to change people behaviors ALWAYS works. Prohibition sure got rid of alcohol. The DEA certainly has got drugs off our streets. Thanks to speed limit signs, everyone travels at safe speeds. It's like trying to cut down a tree by yanking at its leaves! That's a good quote, huh? You better not steal it!
So anyway, the thing that REALLY bothers me about the Green Party platform, more than the commie sympathies, more than the pure unreasoning stupidity of most of their points, was their take on feminism. I took the liberty of looking the word up in the dictionary. Feminism, it says, is a doctrine advocating social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. That's what I always thought it meant, and I'm perfectly happy with it, since I've said before that any system that judges people on anything other than individual merit is stupid at best, harmful to all humankind at worst.
The Greens disagree with both me and the dictionary over what "feminism" means. Instead of stopping at gender equity, the insist on complaining about the evils of a male-dominated world and insist on replacing them with the "feminine" qualities of cooperation, community, nonviolence, and impeccable holiness. Frankly I'm deeply offended by the grossly sexist implications for BOTH genders. Not to confuse anybody with facts, but to say that any qualities are "masculine" or "feminine" is demonstrating slavery to outmoded ideas of the rigid roles of men and women in society. God, I sound like a PC freak, but it's true!
Sure history is dominated by violent men, but if you'll be willing to dip your head into the sea of reality with me I'll tell you why that is. Yes, I know the beach is empty. Nobody ever comes here. The water's cold…cold and hard… Anyway, the truth of the matter is that up until the last couple of centuries, people were judged by how many heads they could bust. If you could crack some other guy's head like a walnut, odds are you'd get at least a paragraph in the history books. The relatively few women to rise to historical prominence were likewise exceptionally talented at cracking craniums, such as Queen Mary (Elizabeth's mom), Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, Bodicea… Ironically, I credit the advent of firearms with the eventual acceptance of chicks as equals, since you could kill somebody without being strong, and you had to be smart to batter brains. Since guy brains and chick brains are pretty much the same, it was only a matter of time before things began to even up.
OK, so guys can be warlike and aggressive, that's for sure. They can also be pacifists, too, though, dammit! Ghandi, as I recall, was a GUY! So was Martin Luther King! So was that other big pacifist guy who inspired a bunch of other pacifists who were fanatically nonviolent. What was his name again? Oh yeah, JESUS! (NOTE: This is not a religious endorsement of any kind, but a mere referral to public record.)
Guys cooperate, too! The best example I can come up with is war. Guys risk their lives ostensibly to protect their homes and families and also for each other. Victory depends on them working together under the most dire of circumstances! They cooperate to build stuff and create stuff! How can any crackhead say that cooperation is the sole domain of any gender?
According to Discover Magazine, high levels of testosterone make men mellow and non-aggressive. Chew on that hippies.
Now let's talk about "feminine" qualities. Keep in mind that I don't base my statements on idealism and delusion, but on 1st-hand observation. I have been told by women that other women are excessively catty and competitive. Many of my female acquaintances claim that they have NO female friends because of that. That surprised me, but what do I know? Fortunately, I don't rely on anecdotes. I have seen chicks getting hypercompetitive fairly frequently, while we guys hang out and wonder what the hell is up with our female colleagues. Sure men are competitive, but there are easily just as many knives in the back with nailpolish on them as without. I should know. I have a couple.
All that I've seen leads me to one conclusion: men and women are identical in all but a few physical aspects (and thank God for those). What truly annoys me about the Greens' and similar groups' definition of what "feminism" is and implicitly what a woman should be is that it perpetuates the old stereotypes. It buttresses the old "Oh, I'm a dainty little girl who's too little and weak to stand up for myself" mentality that drives me out of my friggin' mind. As long as nutcases like these run around convincing chicks that wussiness is some kind of feminine virtue, I'm never going to score.
"But wait," slurs the drunken jock in the aisle, "I like those kind of chicks! They're easy to screw!"
Yeah, well, the God of My Trousers, the mythical One-Eyed Albino Pennsylvania Pants Python demands a higher grade of sacrifice. If faced with an intellectually flaccid wussy-girl, the great manifestation of this sacred serpent will flee from this realm. Where the snake goes, whither goes his Avatar (ME). By golly, I DEMAND a chick who's intellectually aggressive! I DEMAND an assertive chick! I DEMAND a chick I can stand toe-to-toe with! I DEMAND a chick who gives good head! Oops, scratch that last one. That's in the "Nice to have but I can live without it" section. I WON'T tolerate less! If that means that I'll never score again, then I guess I'm par for the course.
And these friggin' Greens want to take that one slim hope away from me! GM Chrysler! As if it's not already hard enough to find a chick with a shred of personality, AND one who's interested in a GUY with personality! I can LIVE with the communism and political idiocy, but by GOD if they brainwash chicks into thinking they're supposed to be a bunch of spineless sissies, I will bitch-slap each and every one of those Green Party leaders until they cry! It won't take long. Christ almighty. They'd have you think that estrogen causes one's guts to dissolve. That's another thing the Greens and the Religious Right have in common.
GASP! I had a thought! What if the Green Party is secretly run by a conspiracy to reinstitute the rigid Victorian gender roles thing! How clever! They SEEM all cool and hip to snag the kids, then they reprogram them, and before you know it we're back to corsets and courtship and crap like that!
Last night I dreamed I was in a car crash due to a sudden onset of rain and a reckless guardrail that jumped right out in front of me. I was OK, but I remember being upset that my airbag didn't go off. It was a bad crash, though. The whole engine of my car flew out. I had a big scratch across my back, and I wondered if I needed stitches. SO what's this have to do with Greens? Nuthin'. I was making sure you were paying attention.
To any person of the female persuasion who is reading this, it is your moral DUTY to write to the Green party and inform them that you're not a bunch of helpless little whiners! You have to tell them that you're just as bloodthirsty as the rest of humanity, and that you'll be damned if you let them roll back your hard-earned right to think for yourself! Environmentalism is one thing, but to dictate to you what "feminism" means is ludicrous! Then call me. My calendar is pretty open.
In my experience, women are a hell of a lot like regular people, and to say otherwise is thoroughly imbecilic. It looks to those old historical stereotypes about what men and women are supposed to be and tries to keep them alive. I'd be plenty gleeful if those stereotypes died forever, but numbnuts on both ends of the political spectrum seem determined to keep them alive.
Well I blew my whole evening on this. Not only to the Greens annoy me, but they destroy my Sunday night! Bastards!
