Author: Ophelia Benson

What’s wrong with this picture?

A guy commented on a Facebook thread about Carmen Callil’s boycott (as it were) of the Booker International prize over its decision to give it to Philip Roth:

So much to love about that story. Virago indeed. [plus some more that’s not relevant]

I said

“Virago indeed”?

Oy.

He said

@Ophelia — no offense intended. Just reading the article, and following up with a visit to Webster’s.

Sigh. Whether intended or not – it’s sexist. Never mind “offense”; it’s both less and more than that.

But I couldn’t say that, on someone else’s FB page, so I was more diplomatic.

[His name] – sure, but sex- (or race etc) specific epithets are just that. That was the point of calling Virago, Virago…

He said

Respectfully, I’ll take my free pass on irony too, then. Now, about the merits of Ms. Callil’s comments on Roth’s oeuvre…

What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s that he doesn’t get to take “his” free pass on irony too. Why? Because he’s a guy. We don’t get to help ourselves to free passes on “irony” when it comes to epithets that don’t apply to us.

Isn’t that obvious? If it’s not it should be. I know I’ve had a few million arguments about it, so I guess it’s not, but godalmighty, I can’t for the life of me see why not.

He wasn’t being ironic in using “virago” about a woman who’d done something he didn’t like. The women who founded Virago were being ironic in using the word, but he was not, and he doesn’t get to hide behind the word “irony” when he just used a sexist insult.

This thread was on the page of a rather well-known writer of Indian origin. I don’t think this guy would call the writer a “wog” or a “darky” or any other epithet of that kind, even ironically. I don’t think he would refer to anyone as a “wog” or a “darky” on the writer’s page, even ironically. Maybe I’m wrong; that’s a conditional verb; but I do strongly believe that – it would be such a clanger. Yet for a woman…

That’s what’s wrong with this picture.

I get fokking tired of it sometimes.

Michael Ruse bending over backward and kissing his own ass in his effort to be Nice to religious believers again. The pope says in his Easter sermon that humans can’t be “a chance of nature.” Ruse Understands.

Now let me try to be understanding here. I realize where the Pope is coming from. As a Christian, humans cannot be just a chance occurrence.

No kidding; we all understand that much; it’s obvious. But never mind that – what I want to know is, why does Ruse try to be understanding there? Why is he so keen to understand the pope when he never ever says “Now let me try to be understanding here. I realize where the new atheists are coming from”?

Why is he so eager to give the pope the benefit of the doubt? Does he think the pope is a sad lonely isolated figure who gets no support? Why is he so prompt to suck up to existing established power and privilege and at the same time so intensely hostile to people challenging that power and privilege?

I wonder.

H/t Jerry Coyne.

The Freedom Rides were fifty years ago this month.

They weren’t universally seen as a good idea within the movement at the time – many people thought they were too much: too much of a deliberate provocation, too likely to trigger violence, too risky.

Well – they were a deliberate provocation, made by doing something that was entirely legal, and unexceptionable (to wit, making use of a public commercial facility). They did trigger violence, but the violence finally, after a lot of chickenshit footdragging by the Kennedy brothers, in turn triggered a federal response: when a mob attacked a church full of civil rights activists in Montgomery and pinned them inside, in fear of being burned alive, martial law was declared and federal troops arrived to prevent a mob victory.

The tame safe moderate unprovocative quiet thing is not always the best thing to do.

Fucking hell.

Police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have filed preliminary charges against two women accused of killing their daughters.

The women, who were neighbours and are both Muslim, were reportedly furious with their daughters for eloping with Hindu men, police told the BBC.

Zahida, 19, and Husna, 26, were strangled last week after they returned home to make peace with their families.

I know it’s nothing new.  It’s just so depressing. They went home, to make peace with their families – and their mothers strangled them.

That just……..

it makes me despair. Their mothers strangled them. For marrying Hindu men.

One of the accused is quoted by the Indian Express newspaper as saying after being arrested, “How could they elope with Hindus? They deserved to die. We have no remorse.”

Despair piled on despair.