Politics

I’ll admit that, in my day-to-day life, I can be pretty sensitive. Not in a weepy way, but in the way of an aggravatingly delicate instrument that requires patience and calibration. I feel others’ pain and seek to avoid causing it; I have to mentally coach myself before a confrontation. And, like most progressives, I hold the usual shield out against sexism, racism, homophobia, and other flavors of true assholery.

That said, I have a confession to make: current feminism makes me feel like a bull in a china shop. I literally feel like I have to stand real still, or pull a quick fade, before “they” find me out and attack. I see the hugs and sisterly support from the outside, but I’ve learned that I can’t have any myself unless I pretend to be a lot more diluted than I am.

I mean really—I love war movies and blood-spitting rock stars, hate predictability, and tip every sacred cow I find.

My true self (the substance inside of me that I live with every day) is not only of no value in the feminist communities I’ve found, but accidentally comes across as trolling.

I’m a white, liberal middle-class woman (supposedly the core demographic) but so much of what is discussed and rehashed feels so irrelevant to my lived experience. I call myself a feminist, but I can’t talk to feminists about feminism. Because somewhere along the way, it became bitchier—and yet somehow tamer—than the big bad world it’s trying to fight.

Is feminism supposed to be a safe haven for all women, or yet another exclusive priesthood? Because that’s how it has struck me these days, in all its line-toeing, hairsplitting formality. And what, besides hypocrisy or passive-aggression, could position anyone as its gatekeeper? There’s a reason I’ve kept myself to a holding pattern on the outskirts of feminism since first discovering it twenty years ago: the priestesses at its center hate the fucking guts of girls like me. I don’t know why. Aren’t we women?

I’m not only for the complete equality of women, I’m for the evolution of the entire human race through justice and fairness…and I’ve committed myself to practicing what I preach, by being as true to myself as I want, and accepting no less than authenticity from others. I see us all as humans first, goddesses and gods second, men and women third. To kneel to a philosophy that makes me a biological woman first—and an unacceptable one at that—feels like what it is: a comedown.

I don’t say any of this to feminists I meet. I don’t criticize feminism to anyone. In fact, I usually only reveal around feminists a small fraction of the heart I’m willing to aim at a drunk, sexist man…and I’m a heck of a lot more gentle about it. But why the hell am I supposed to put that juice away around the ladies? Why should I stand up to mean ol’ men, but then act meek and kindly and never question a sister?

I can’t do it. Screw the china shop. We each get one life, and I want to spend mine living: balancing a need for consideration and justice with a determination to suck all the marrow out of my time. If I fail at feminism, either though impatience or plain noble savagery, at least let me be remembered for trying. I meant no harm.

I can only assume it’s what the average man feels like, ironically enough.

There’s talk, of course, that the CEO of BP is doomed, job-wise. What all the commentators, political and economic, fail to realize is this: so what?

Rich, sociopathic bastards like Tony will find another position from one of their fellow soulless friends, once again making more money than you and I will ever see in a lifetime.

It’s our middle-class naiveté—we think because he’s being degraded in the press, and might lose his employment, that he’s truly being punished. Guys like him don’t give a shit, really. It’s actually cute of us to think that our opinions, our lives, even matter to big oil men like him. So I have a further proposal.

He should be extradited to the United States, and handed over to to the South.

We know what to do with fat cat scumbags like this. Even just forcing him to endure this heat would probably constitute torture. Send him to some redneck jail in Louisiana, or Mississippi, or northwest Florida. Let him have a few years of mosquitoes and roaches, and his toothless meth-head bunkmate. Let him callus up his lily-white Englishman’s hands cleaning the goddamn Gulf of Mexico beaches, one shovelful at a time.

He should be covered in tar and dropped off on a sweltering Alabama beach, made to pick up oil with his fingers while the locals jeer and throw dead fish and birds. Let him experience the true underbelly of southern hospitality.

And when he becomes ill, he should be thrown upon the mercy of the American healthcare system and social safety net—that is, he should learn firsthand what his countryman Darwin meant.

Tony Hayward shouldn’t just lose his job—he should be stripped of his wealth, position, and all social opportunities, permanently. He should be made to experience despair comparable to what he’s caused.

Hanging’s too good for him, literally. He ought to spend the rest of his long life trapped with us in the blazing southern heat, staring directly at the ecosystem he trashed. We can’t escape it—why should he?

The President of the United States has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the angriest yowling about it is coming from within the United States itself.

See anything a little off about that?

Put aside for a moment whether or not he should have won. Ask yourself: what must this fuss look like objectively?

To have an American President win the award for the second time in a decade; and to have a vocal minority of the country not only fail to take pride, but choose also to denigrate the honor, and degrade the value of a 114-year-old institution for giving it to someone they don’t like.

Who hates us most? Ourselves?

This has gone past childish, into schizophrenic and self-destructive.