We have two national newspapers here in Canada, Globe & Mail and the National Post. (Of itself, I find that a bit gigglesome, coming from a tiny country that has nine national dailies and the same number of Sunday papers.) The Globe is fairly middle of the road, veering rightwards on all things fiscal, while the Post is unabashedly right-wing, having been launched by that bastion of Canadian conservatism, Conrad Blackânow serving time in a US slammer for enriching himself at the expense of his shareholders.
The First Husband and I get both papers delivered every morning and, if I had to choose just one, I would probably pick the Post, despite its conservatism. It’s not as smug as the Globe, has better writing overall, and, last but not least, it has my favourite cryptic crossword, which I think is lifted from the Daily Telegraph in Britain. I did give up my subscription for a whole year, once, while the paper carried the syndicated column of the skinny bitch who will not be mentioned by name on this blog but, as soon as they turfed her, all was forgiven and I went back into the fold.
Part of the Post’s charm is its letters page. Unlike the Globe, which seems to favour a select group of grousers, the Post’s letter writers are a great bunch of splenetic flat-earthers, and their morning bitching is a highlight of my day, always good for a laugh. Yesterday, however, I didn’t know whether to shriek with laughter or horror, as I read the following missives, which had been posted on the website of the Post’s comment pages, and were being given star-billing in the middle of the letters page:
The lives women enjoy today are the direct result of the advances made by men.
Women can join the military today because a soldier no longer needs to be a blood-thirsty testosterone-charged brute able to wield a 40-pound broad sword to hack the limbs from his opponent face to face. She can sit in the comfort of a room on a ship and push a button that launches awesome fire power and think herself a warrior.
Women can “bring home the bacon” because you no longer have to have the sheer machismo to stare down a wild boar with a sharpened stick. You sit at a desk rearranging numbers and think yourself a master of the corporate jungle.
They can travel the world because crossing the ocean is no longer a three month life-threatening ordeal of searching for land no one really believes is even there, and most of the murderous indigenous peoples have been pacified. Now they’re too eager to see you arrive with your tourist dollars and make you feel like an adventurer.
They can snowboard down mountain sides for fun, because getting to the top is no longer a two-day trek in wool coats.
The power, machismo, innate engineering ability and sometimes sheer stupidity of men were the absolutely necessary elements that conquered the Earth and developed technologies that rendered what were once life-threatening undertakings mere hobbies by comparison for women today. Women enjoy the freedom of having had all the heavy lifting done for them.
But even as women revel in that freedom, men, or perhaps more accurately “manhood,” are suffering from their own success. The programming that led men to strike out across an ocean, or to say “yes, I believe I can take down that buffalo with a sharpened stick,” makes them at their core less well adapted to this soft, easy, collectivist, feminized world. Worse, they’ll get little but grief from the women they raised out of the drudgery any time they dare to rock the boat with reminders of the manhood that got us all here.
This little piece was signed by Fred_001. Three guesses as to what I think his surname is …
The cherry on the cake was the response to Fred from a little remora fish named MikeMurphy:
Fred: well said. Feminists, particularly the gender-branded variety want more and more and constantly whine about their gender as an underclass of victims. For them it is not about equality but domination.
I’m assuming these whingers used pseudonyms, because their wives would kill them if they saw what they wrote.
Oh yeah, sure — kill them all right. From the safety of a desk! by pushing buttons that launch awesome fire power! And then the little women could return to juggling spreadsheets and mastering the corporate jungle (easy, now that their husbands are dead). Cute things in those little bulletproof vests, aren’t they?
Seriously, though, I know the feeling about being stabbed in the figurative eye by letters columns. The local paper here has even sharpened the point further, with the introduction a few years back of something they call “Zing!” These are little one-liners from readers, submitted by phone, email, whatever, with the added twist that they’re anonymous. And we all know how much more thoughtful that makes comments!
(Here’s the current link to Zing! online, btw. And you thought Florida was just a warm place to escape to.)
I did get a definite impression that these knuckle-draggers really missed all the pig-sticking and slaughtering of their forebears. It was funny that they assumed women would enjoy playing those kinds of roles too. I never miss the letters page, even in our smalltown local paper, where the quality of the writing and logic is woeful. Zing! is interesting. It’s a bit like an anonymous Twitter. Do they actually publish them, or just display them online, I wonder?
Well, I’m assuming all those he-men that are taking credit for all of those wonderful advancements are also taking credit for things like, oh, global warming, the economic crisis and Paris Hilton’s status as a celebrity.
You’re also assuming there are women out there stupid enough to marry these slack-jawed troglodytes. Mom is washing their underwear.
If Mom is washing their frillies, then why are they so pissed at womenkind? And, yes, I have no problem in blaming men for Paris Hilton’s 15 interminable minutes of fame. I’m pretty sure there weren’t any women downloading that sex tape … Otherwise, I rather like what men have done for us, especially our nearest and dearest!
Oh yes, they actually print them. Left-most column, first page of the section they call Local Conversation (which includes editorials and local news), every day of the week. Every so often an old-school journalist (or a level-headed reader, cough) challenges the practice. But then all the Zing!ers jump down that person’s throat, and management caves in, and the cycle continues. (Hrooom, hrooom.)
Can’t find it at Amazon, but a collection came out several years ago of letters to the editor of an English newspaper; title was something about a bird, which (or whose call) had been inaccurately described in an article of a few days’ previous. Give me charming and dotty any day over willfully stupid, crazy, and annoying.
I am quite certain that no respectable paper would have used real ink and paper on that letter. The internet means all sorts of vile stupidity gets an airing. I am okay with it being out there, but I don’t waste my time reading it. I guess my sense of humour doesn’t extend to finding that sort of thing funny.
All I have to say is *$#@@$ and %$#@$ and someone should @#$*%# to his @#**$&%. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
And a tip of my beribboned bonnet to the wonderful and gracious patriarchy which has made my life so blissfully happy with the advances they have made on my behalf.
Oh you shouldn’t have, sirs!
Good gracious me, what can I do to thank you fine gentlemen properly?
XO
WWW
Please say you know his name and address so you can go give him a hard kick in the balls as a thank you from a grateful little woman raised out of drudgery
Here’s the reality of ‘having it all’. In the UK you need two incomes to have any hope of buying a house and educating your children. If (like me) that means your husband works away most of the time, you are left raising a family, cleaning a home, running a business, and – oh, trying to knock out the odd novel y’know because little women have little dreams. I’m not whining, I’m sure as hell not an underclass, and I don’t want ‘more’.
The reality is the sheer cost of living has escalated so much here that if you want the basics (home, health,. education/a good start for your kids) women are working twice as hard as they ever had to. Damn, I might just move to Canada and whupp his arse myself.
Do you think we should reveal to them that it’s really just because they learned to cook turnips?
I suspect these disgruntled neanderthals probably are ticked off because they can’t get a date (I mean, really, what self-respecting woman would put herself through that?) and/or because they lost out on a promotion to a more qualified, more-intelligent, more worthy female.
What absolute rubbish!
I don’t think you should get too upset about something which doesn’t hang together or make sense though.
He’s just making himself look an idiot.
I’ll bet those two guys measure short….in more ways than one.