Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Pussy Frame: Just Like the Nigger Frame Except It's Acceptable

It's all about insult.

You want to insult a guy, you call him a girl.

If you're the governor of california, you call a guy a "girlie-man." If you're a politician, you call a yappy little dog you don't want a "girlie-dog" or you call a woman "sweetie." And you can get away with it.

If you're casting aspersions on candidates, you imbue them with female characteristics: you tar them with stereotypical female qualities/weaknesses: vanity, superficiality, etc. -- complaining about their haircuts, clothes, their color choices: Edwards as "Breck girl," Gore's "earth tones," Clinton's $400 haircuts, Kerry windsurfing like a sissy. You're about to fake-waterboard some loudmouth Con radio host, you tell him he's gonna "moan like a little girl." You want to justify torture, you frame your opponents as wimps and wussies.

You want to insult the [female] Speaker of the House of Representatives to further your rightwing political agenda, you call her a pussy.

And -- you can get away with it.

10 comments:

democommie said...

No Blood For Hubris:

Stop it! You're whining like a little Limbaugh!

Rev.Paperboy said...

by the same measure, if you are that kind of a moron and want to insult a woman, you call her mannish, don't you? You make fun of Hilary by calling her Billary, joke about her wearing the pants in the family or being a lesbian or at least "butch" -- lets not even get started on the "mAnn Coulter" jokes or I'll be at this all day.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Yes, rev, exactly.

This brings up the issue of philosophy of insults, considering which types of insult reflect legimitae concerns so to speak? Probably ones along the stupid-to-smart continuum.

Insult by race? Nope.

Insult by gender? Still socially acceptable. So far. But illegitimate, sexist, unacceptable.

democommie said...

No Blood For Hubris:

Is it true that Buddhists speak of the unenlightened as being "dense"?

No Blood for Hubris said...

lol.

not to my knowledge. ; )

No Blood for Hubris said...

actually, demo, maybe so, maybe so. might depend upon one's translation. the three obscuring states of mind are passion, aggression, and ignorance. passion as in "grasping attachment" and ignorance as in "obliviousness." a kind a density. Think of Bush and Cheney as being exemplars of all 3 obscuring states of mind.

on the other hand, even the unenlightend are, by nature, enlightened. or potentially so.

Quoth Hakuin:

"All being by nature are buddha,
as ice by nature is water.
Apart from water, no ice.
Apart from beings, no buddha."

or something like that.

democommie said...

Even Bush and Cheney? There IS no fucking justice!

Rev.Paperboy said...

Yeah but Democommie, consider the Karmic debt they've rung up in this lifetime. When the wheel of dharma spins, those fuckers are coming back as cockroaches again and again and again.

Anonymous said...

Ooooh, that's better! All they'll have to do is change their soft pink suits for exoskeletons. They've been cockroaches on the inside for a long time.

democommie

No Blood for Hubris said...

Insulting a woman by calling her mannish/butch/lesbian, wearing the pants, works insults as part of the "she's not adhering to her correct gender role, she's uppity, she is aspiring to fill the higher male role" thing.

The insults I can think of that is demeaning and gender-specific to males is calling someone a "dick" or a "dickhead" or a "prick."

But calling someone a "cunt" is a lot worse.