The Wench was delighted at the recent henfest over Jane Fonda's casual dropping of the C-Bomb on The Today Show. Ms. Fonda's potty-mouth was cringe-worthy, although not half so cringe-worthy as Meredith Viera's lock-jawed, steely smile as she registered the gaffe.
The Wench professes confusion over the whole fiasco, however. In her humble opinion, the word "vagina" is equally, if not more offensive than the c-word; at the very least, "vagina" never fails to make The Wench shudder, as does "labial folds".
While "cunt" has the guttural punch of a good anglo-saxonism, "vagina" conjures full-color medical textbook illustrations of the whole banana, as it were. Combine "vagina" with "monologues", and The Wench cannot help but envision a disembodied female hooch, standing on a nightclub stage before a microphone, taking long drags on a cigarette (don't ask The Wench to explain the mechanics). Then the hooch growls into the microphone, sounding exactly like Tony Clifton (don't ask The Wench why the voice is male): "You hear the one about the rabbi, the priest and the mariachi band?"
What amazes The Wench is that neither Ms. Ensler, Ms. Fonda or any other actress associated with The Vagina Monologues seem to appreciate the utter ridiculousness of genitalia, male or female. Put the issue of desire aside. The Good Lord made our private bits goofy-looking for a reason: so that we would never, ever take them so seriously that we would construct an entire dramatic happening around them.
You doubt The Wench? Then try treating other sexual anatomy with the same artistic earnestness. How about The Vulva Confessions? Memoirs of a Scrotum? The Life of (a) Johnson?
Silly, no?
Why is it that the women who demand to be taken seriously are all too often the women begging to be mocked?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Marriage: The Sub-Text
Disclaimer: The Wench is positive that Daniel Jones and Cathi Hanauer are a lovely couple. They are both accomplished writers and editors, and no doubt loving and involved parents. They are just cute as a button, to boot.
Nevertheless, The Wench thinks that the Hanauer-Jones unit really should have given that article they co-wrote for this month's Real Simple another look. A good, long, hard one. Because unintentionally, the article reads like a passive-agressive laundry list of buried resentments and long-held grievances. It absolutely seethes with subtext.
You doubt The Wench?
Take a look for yourself. The Wench gives you excerpts from the piece, with the accompanying subtext:
Hanauer: "So there we were: house, novel, kids. . . I envisioned you donning an apron and serving a delicious stew to us all, then writing the holiday cards to the kids' teachers and babysitters while I worked brilliantly in the next room. OK, I'm exaggerating. But still."
Still. Would it have killed you to get the kids to bed by yourself every once in awhile, motherfucker? You really are the Bastard on the Couch.
Hanauer: "I had always been concerned with fairness, and I felt, as so many women with jobs and small children do, that more of the burden fell on me, even though you were working hard, too -- rigging up our computers, unsticking the windows."
So you know how to stick a plug in a socket and open a window! Nice work, genius. Bet you really broke a sweat on that one.
Hanauer: "And I sometimes got angry, which made you feel defensive and nagged."
Suck it up, big guy. That's how I roll.
Hanauer: "At our low point, we tried marital therapy, but that mostly provided comic relief. I'd yap nonstop about myself and the kids while you stared at the floor hoping she wouldn't "call on" you. She'd say, "Well, Cathi, I think that's something you'll want to bring up in individual therapy". Which I wasn't in, because who had the money, the time?"
But now I do, don't I sweetheart? Lots more money, for lots and lots of therapy. And you're going with me, too. You're going to sit there and listen to me describe in minute detail your shortcomings and failings and what a general dickhead you are: and you're gonna like it, bitch.
Jones: ". . . which is how our conversations have been ever since, your words outnumbering mine five to one. Not that I've minded. My mother claims I didn't talk until I was three. My older brother spoke for me. It seems I traded him for you."
Please, God, put a muzzle on her, already. She's like a yapping, high-strung Pekingnese in need of sedation. Christ, I haven't got a word in edgewise for the past twenty years. Why the hell do you think I lost all my hair????
Jones: "Yet this independence has sometimes been a double-edged sword, at odds with the caretaking and shared responsibility of marriage. You erected walls of self-sufficiency -- 'I can do it myself!' - then felt abandoned when I didn't come to your rescue.
Well, do you need my fucking help or not? Are you the big, strong independent woman or the needy, spoiled princess? Or are you just batshit crazy? Pick a side.
Jones: "We began our engagement by arguing over our wedding vows, which you wanted to amend with 'Ill try' (to stand by me in sickness and health, etc.)."
I should have seen it coming right then and there. And by the way: it's Jones-Hanauer, thanks.
Nevertheless, The Wench thinks that the Hanauer-Jones unit really should have given that article they co-wrote for this month's Real Simple another look. A good, long, hard one. Because unintentionally, the article reads like a passive-agressive laundry list of buried resentments and long-held grievances. It absolutely seethes with subtext.
You doubt The Wench?
Take a look for yourself. The Wench gives you excerpts from the piece, with the accompanying subtext:
Hanauer: "So there we were: house, novel, kids. . . I envisioned you donning an apron and serving a delicious stew to us all, then writing the holiday cards to the kids' teachers and babysitters while I worked brilliantly in the next room. OK, I'm exaggerating. But still."
Still. Would it have killed you to get the kids to bed by yourself every once in awhile, motherfucker? You really are the Bastard on the Couch.
Hanauer: "I had always been concerned with fairness, and I felt, as so many women with jobs and small children do, that more of the burden fell on me, even though you were working hard, too -- rigging up our computers, unsticking the windows."
So you know how to stick a plug in a socket and open a window! Nice work, genius. Bet you really broke a sweat on that one.
Hanauer: "And I sometimes got angry, which made you feel defensive and nagged."
Suck it up, big guy. That's how I roll.
Hanauer: "At our low point, we tried marital therapy, but that mostly provided comic relief. I'd yap nonstop about myself and the kids while you stared at the floor hoping she wouldn't "call on" you. She'd say, "Well, Cathi, I think that's something you'll want to bring up in individual therapy". Which I wasn't in, because who had the money, the time?"
But now I do, don't I sweetheart? Lots more money, for lots and lots of therapy. And you're going with me, too. You're going to sit there and listen to me describe in minute detail your shortcomings and failings and what a general dickhead you are: and you're gonna like it, bitch.
Jones: ". . . which is how our conversations have been ever since, your words outnumbering mine five to one. Not that I've minded. My mother claims I didn't talk until I was three. My older brother spoke for me. It seems I traded him for you."
Please, God, put a muzzle on her, already. She's like a yapping, high-strung Pekingnese in need of sedation. Christ, I haven't got a word in edgewise for the past twenty years. Why the hell do you think I lost all my hair????
Jones: "Yet this independence has sometimes been a double-edged sword, at odds with the caretaking and shared responsibility of marriage. You erected walls of self-sufficiency -- 'I can do it myself!' - then felt abandoned when I didn't come to your rescue.
Well, do you need my fucking help or not? Are you the big, strong independent woman or the needy, spoiled princess? Or are you just batshit crazy? Pick a side.
Jones: "We began our engagement by arguing over our wedding vows, which you wanted to amend with 'Ill try' (to stand by me in sickness and health, etc.)."
I should have seen it coming right then and there. And by the way: it's Jones-Hanauer, thanks.
Asperger's and Women: A Match Made In Hell
The Wench recently finished reading Look Me In The Eye by John Elder Robison, and hereby recommends it to anyone wanting a funny and poignant first-hand account of growing up with Asperger's, before there was an awareness of Asperger's.
Robison had tremendous difficulties forging relationships with others, and suffered much rejection and abuse as a young man. Things seemed to turn for him when he began working in the music industry (among other things, creating cutting-edge guitars for KISS) and in engineering.
Certainly, these fields are populated with a fair share of eccentrics and "misfits". But more importantly, in The Wench's view, these fields are populated with men.
The Wench firmly believes that on the whole, men are more willing to accommodate and tolerate differences in other men than women are willing to accommodate and tolerate differences in other women.
And if you're a female and you disagree, your junior high experience was obviously much nicer than The Wench's.
Case in point: The Wench's husband once worked with a very bright, very successful patent attorney with an engineering background. This man possessed an amazing rational mind -- as well as an array of strange facial gestures and other social tics. His voice was never modulated quite right. He failed to meet you in the eye. He sometimes burst out in laughter at inappropriate moments.
And yet: the male attorneys in the office frequently took him out for a beer. Perhaps they made a few jokes at his expense. But they rather thought his eccentricities were endearing.
Contrast this with a female teacher at the nursery school where The Wench sent her spawn. She was a financial whiz who formerly worked in the stock market. She also failed to meet you in the eye, and was rarely seen smiling. Her speech often seemed stilted and she was incapable of exchanging small talk. She would greet a simple "How are you?" with a non-sequitur, like "You need to fill out the permission slip for the field trip."
She worked solely with female teachers, and all of them made no attempt to hide their dislike and disdain for her. Likewise, the nursery school mothers professed to "hate" her -- especially her flat, affectless face. They gossiped that she was in clear need of medication: "massive amounts of Prozac."
(Interestingly, the three-year-olds which she assisted seemed to like her well enough, perhaps because they had not yet learned to judge others as mercilessly as adults.)
The Wench believes it's no accident that the patent attorney fared better than the teacher in terms of colleagues and peers. And gender had everything to do with it. Not one woman accepted the teacher as "eccentric" or a "bit of an oddball." Not one woman accommodated her behavior or tried to understand it. Some of these women had their stomachs tied up in knots with fear that their boys were autistic because they enjoyed machines. Yet amazingly, the possibility that this teacher -- who exhibited some classic Asperger's tendencies -- was on the autistic spectrum never once occured to them.
Sigh. For all our much-vaunted nurturing abilities, for all our much-lauded capacity to protect the weak and spread the love, women can be a vicious, vicious bunch.
Robison had tremendous difficulties forging relationships with others, and suffered much rejection and abuse as a young man. Things seemed to turn for him when he began working in the music industry (among other things, creating cutting-edge guitars for KISS) and in engineering.
Certainly, these fields are populated with a fair share of eccentrics and "misfits". But more importantly, in The Wench's view, these fields are populated with men.
The Wench firmly believes that on the whole, men are more willing to accommodate and tolerate differences in other men than women are willing to accommodate and tolerate differences in other women.
And if you're a female and you disagree, your junior high experience was obviously much nicer than The Wench's.
Case in point: The Wench's husband once worked with a very bright, very successful patent attorney with an engineering background. This man possessed an amazing rational mind -- as well as an array of strange facial gestures and other social tics. His voice was never modulated quite right. He failed to meet you in the eye. He sometimes burst out in laughter at inappropriate moments.
And yet: the male attorneys in the office frequently took him out for a beer. Perhaps they made a few jokes at his expense. But they rather thought his eccentricities were endearing.
Contrast this with a female teacher at the nursery school where The Wench sent her spawn. She was a financial whiz who formerly worked in the stock market. She also failed to meet you in the eye, and was rarely seen smiling. Her speech often seemed stilted and she was incapable of exchanging small talk. She would greet a simple "How are you?" with a non-sequitur, like "You need to fill out the permission slip for the field trip."
She worked solely with female teachers, and all of them made no attempt to hide their dislike and disdain for her. Likewise, the nursery school mothers professed to "hate" her -- especially her flat, affectless face. They gossiped that she was in clear need of medication: "massive amounts of Prozac."
(Interestingly, the three-year-olds which she assisted seemed to like her well enough, perhaps because they had not yet learned to judge others as mercilessly as adults.)
The Wench believes it's no accident that the patent attorney fared better than the teacher in terms of colleagues and peers. And gender had everything to do with it. Not one woman accepted the teacher as "eccentric" or a "bit of an oddball." Not one woman accommodated her behavior or tried to understand it. Some of these women had their stomachs tied up in knots with fear that their boys were autistic because they enjoyed machines. Yet amazingly, the possibility that this teacher -- who exhibited some classic Asperger's tendencies -- was on the autistic spectrum never once occured to them.
Sigh. For all our much-vaunted nurturing abilities, for all our much-lauded capacity to protect the weak and spread the love, women can be a vicious, vicious bunch.
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