Wake up, Moose! Come on. Stop sleeping. Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. It’ll be the mid terms soon. Time to shake that shaggy ass and get up off those dusty haunches. You’ll be needed come November. Just leave that grass alone (not mentioning anyone by name) and get up onto your hoofs!
Where are they now? Ou sont les neiges d’antan? Where are the snows of yesterday? Bushy Blasky and Prickly Allen? Where battling feminists JJC and Michelle? Where imagistic Kysen and empathetic Sricki? Where hot-hob Hubie and down-under Shaun? Where Gadfly and Btchakir and all my friends beside?
OK. I get it. You’re tired. You’re bushwhacked. You fought to elect a democratic president and congress… and waddya get? Trouble. Compromise. Legislation. Grey zones. More legislation. Imperfection. Sell outs. Corporatists. Pragmatists. Idealists on a stick. In other words.. Politics.
To use more ponsy French: plus ca change.
But how to goad the somnolent beast out its slumber? What woke it up before? What made the Moose strut, run, and use its horns like a Spanish bull in frenzy?
Hmmm. I know. I remember the most commented diaries. So here we go. This has got everything that gets you going my Moosey Friends. Feminism. Palin. Sexism. Liberalism. And even a bit of I/P in the mix like a Tequila slammer with nitro, triple sec and glycerine.
Follow me below the fold if you dare.
A diary and a newspaper piece have got me thinking: is Feminism always liberal? Is it, sui generis, progressive?
On Daily Kos, someone I don’t usually read that much has written a brilliant impersonation of Sarah Palin as a reactionary feminist or Mama Grizzly. Here’s a brief sample of this rather wonder spoof, or reactionary riff:
Throw the hockey sticks and kids into the back of the van, look in the mirror, and I am sooo ready
I must throw off the shackles, scream blue murder, who cares about facts, I’m a Mama grizzly and you are in deep doodo.
You want crazy, well I’m going to unleash Jaeger styled Frontier Woman mad!
I must gird my vagina with the holy scriptures and be piously loopy.
Perm my hair, break out the pearls and I’m ready to rock; photogenic you betcha, I’ve got the looks, now I want the power!
Republican sexy! You better fucking believe it buster!
Burn a bra, no way, I’m going ta wiggle into the tightest basque there is, I’m going to aim myself directly at those gonads!
I’m going to win! Come ta mama!
Wolf, shot one. Moose, skinned one. Man, dumped one, well he was a liberal!
Look at this blood red lipstick you lilly-livered republican men, you think driving around in a truck with a gun rack is going to scare anyone, just look at these lips and teeth babe, think sucked dry!
Mama’s taking over, off to your room with no dinner! You want directions? Well I’m holding the map
Wow. Kind of nails a strange mixture of empowerment, misanthropy and right wing anger. Who’d have thought feminism could be reactionary? Except perhaps Camille Paglia. So question number one:
Why do we assume feminism is always progressive?
The second part of my timely provocation now takes us to Israel, where sexual politics now mingle with race (again): in this case the tension between Jews and Arabs.
In this case Saber Kushour has been convicted of “rape by deception” for having casual sex with a Jewish woman who thought he was Israeli. The Guardian explains some of the background to the case.
Last week the married father of two from east Jerusalem was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the “rape by deception” of a Jewish woman who claimed she would not have had sex with him had she known he was an Arab. What might have been a tawdry episode – casting neither Kushour nor the woman in a favourable light – exploded into a debate in Israel about racism, sexual mores and justice.
“I am paying the price for a mistake that she made,” Kushour, 30, told the Observer. “I was shocked at the sentence – it shows a very vivid and clear racism.” The message from the judge, he says, was that “because you are an Arab and you didn’t make that clear, we are going to punish you”.
In his verdict, Judge Zvi Segal conceded that it was not “a classical rape by force”. He added: “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have co-operated. The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.”
Now deception I understand. Rape by deception, not so much. Surely, either party in consenting sexual congress agree to the physical interaction, economic, social or ethnic issues aside. It’s yes/no to two bodies: if you don’t like the guy/gal, that’s experience. If you have been bamboozled by them, that’s fraud. But rape?
In the UK, most rapes go unreported, and only a small percentage of those that make the courts are successfully prosecuted. The overwhelming power lies with male strength, and a mainly male justice system which belittles women and undermines their claims to justice.
But having said that, can rape itself be reversed, and an allegation itself used as a weapon of oppression?
Flame away Mooses. Glad to have you back
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