Leave it to Roosh V’s Return of Kings blog to publish the most reprehensible thing I’ve yet seen related to the Boston Marathon bombing.
In a post with the lovely title “The American Woman Has Hit An All-Time Low,” guest blogger Samseau offers some thoughts – that is to say, wild, unsupported speculation – about the widow of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and uses that as evidence in a case against American women as a whole, declaring her “a profound marker in the decline of the American woman.”
Samseau bases much of his, er, theorizing on the facts that Tsarnaev was a Muslim immigrant while his widow, Katherine Tsarnaev, nee Russell, was “common American female stock.”
According to most accounts, the two met in a nightclub, and Samseau – his head filled with PUA fever dreams — imagines the scenario:
Although it is unclear how he seduced her, my guess is that he got her with some Muslim game: intimidating gazes, ramrod straight stances, bottle service, congregating with all of the other jacked immigrants in the nightclub with their top two shirt buttons undone, and then inviting girls back to his table to talk.
Most likely they both frequented the same nightclubs when he noticed her, and made a few attempts to get her back to his place before he went for the close. Given that she was an American woman, she put out right away as she did for so many other men in her freshman and sophmore years.
Wouldn’t you hit it? I know I would.
Samseau is somehow able to conjure all this up from the one widely reported fact that the two met in a nightclub.
But it’s what he manages to conjure up from the reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev physically abused his wife that really takes Samseau’s post over the top. (TRIGGER WARNING in what follows for Samseau’s strange apologia for domestic violence against women.)
Noting that Tsarnaev was arrested for domestic violence against another girlfriend around the time Katherine Russell started dating him, Samseau concludes that “Katherine knew this guy was a piece of shit from the get-go, but most likely willfully ignored it in favor of her lusts.”
Oh, but Samseau is just getting started. He then posits that because
Katherine was a young American woman, she most likely did not see Tsarnaev, or any man she was banging, as anything beyond fun. But because Tsarnaev was a violent man, using force, coercion, and beatings to keep her from straying. Any hint of infidelity resulted in some kind of punishment for Katherine.
Samseau, while registering polite disdain towards Tsarnaev’s alleged violence towards his wife, also seems to regard it as something of a necessity:
I am not surprised that it took the violence of Tsarnaev’s level to keep a young and beautiful girlfriend in Boston. I know that hookup culture well, and girls actively dump and cheat on men whenever they so please. Men are more likely to be pump and dumped than the women are.
Yes, that’s right, he’s arguing that the only way to keep young and beautiful American women from cheating is to beat them. Adding insult to injury — quite literally — Samseau goes on to argue that this is how American women secretly like it.
Thus we reach the disturbing conclusion of this story – Katherine was not a victim, she was not a special case, she was an ordinary American woman who represented her culture in every way, and that is precisely why she betrayed it. She was given everything a woman could want in life, and instead she choose to find something, someone – anyone – who could take it away from her. Unsatisfied with her life of being catered on beck and call, of whim and notion, she was drawn to the first man who would remove it all and place chains around her – even if that man hated the country who raised her. …
And since Katherine was nothing more than an “All-American girl,” it is reasonable to conclude that most American women are exactly like Katherine – unhappy with their spoiled lives who would gladly give it up just for a chance to be enthralled by a powerful man. The women of this country have no more loyalty to the land that raised them, but instead are opportunists looking for a chance to submit in pleasure.
Samseau follows this appalling victim-blaming bullshit with a version of the standard-issue Nice Guy ™ Lament:
Until that opportunity comes, they will hate on all men who try to be anything good towards them, and act out against them – by denying them sex and relationships, by throwing them in jail with trumped up charges, by stealing their money under the pretense of marriage – until they are forced to stop. And it doesn’t take much to stop them – even a welfare bum like Tsarnaev could do it.
Oh, but Samseau isn’t exactly recommending that American men beat their girlfriends – because this would be bad for them. For the men, that is.
Now, I do not think any man should go around beating women just so he can keep them. This is obviously a shitty, destructive way to live that will only cause you more pain and unhappiness in the long run. Any woman that requires beatdowns in order to remain faithful is a garbage woman who will never make you happy. And yet with the extreme shortage of eligible American women, what is a good American man supposed to do?
Samseau ends his post with a suggestion that American men leave the country to some foreign paradise where women aren’t so, well, American. Which is, I suppose, a better alternative than advising men to stick around and beat up women. Be thankful for small mercies, I guess.
I’d like some advice if you folks don’t mind.
Lately I’ve been wanting to train my voice to make it more femme. Right now I have very deep baritone masculine voice, and I can’t stand it. I sound even worse in the morning or when I’m dehydrated. I know how to train my voice, fortunately. I have sources available for learning how to do that.
Unfortunately, finding the time and place to do it is almost impossible for me as far as I can tell. The main reason is that I can’t afford to do it around certain people. I need feedback from people, and I can’t be doing the training and then asking if I sound like a girl. That’s a very easy way for my religious family members to find out or at least become suspicious, and I really don’t need suspicion.
When I’m not at home, I’m usually at my community college, but I’m shy about training my voice there because, well, it’s a public place.
So I don’t know where to do it. Unless I’m at home alone, which is almost never.
I’ve tried to train my voice in front of my mom, my older sister, my older brother, and my step-dad. But even though they mean well, their reactions really hurt my feelings. They’re always like “LOL You don’t sound like a girl at all!”
I know I have a lot to work on, but when people ridicule me so early on, it’s very disheartening. It’s awful when I try to be confident in sounding more femme only to hear someone say “You still sound like a dude” so bluntly and coldly. I’m not saying that I don’t want criticism – I need it, obviously – I just wish they were more sensitive.
Do you folks have any suggestions for finding opportunities to train my voice?
Some goo:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/21-photos-that-will-turn-your-heart-to-goo
Because we can always use a little more goo inducing in our lives.
Aaliyah, I don’t know if this is a good idea or not, but have you considered either acting or voice classes? It seems like those would be places to get good, constructive comments. (But I’ve taken neither, so what do I know?)
Also, maybe explaining to your more supportive relatives that hearing them talk like that is disheartening would make at least some of them a little more sensitive.
Tree trunks for breakfast? He needs that much fiber to stay regular?
Vegetables are for sissies and girls. He lives off a diet of tree trunks, T-bone steaks, and bourbon.
He steals the bourbon from beta males, at the same time he steals their women.
Since my brother is the only accepting family member here (well, except for one of my cousins who lives close by, although he doesn’t count because he’s wholly apathetic), I’ve asked him to help me before, but every time I ask he’s like “I don’t feel like listening to you So I’m afraid talking about it with those relatives isn’t going to help.
Voice classes would be nice perhaps, but only if they’re trans*-friendly. And so far I haven’t had any luck in finding those. =[
Hey Aaliyah, I’ve been reading some of what you’ve had to say about your home life — though not all of it, so this may be totally obvious and a billion people have already said this, but you really need a Team You! Can you get away from the house to go to an LGBTQ support center a couple times a week? Or if that’s not possible and you feel weird practicing in front of people you know (friends at school?), maybe someone on g-chat or skype could listen, while you’re in a private study room on campus? I bet you could find people online who’d be willing to or maybe even want to practice themselves … maybe even here?
Sorry … I wish I had better advice. My heart goes out to you, and I hope you’re able to find the support you need very soon.
princessbonbon, I love those squishy goo photos! 🙂
Voice classes work.
Alternatively, if you have a phone or a microphone that connects to a computer or any other voice recording gadget with ease of play back, you can use that.
That means you can practice where-ever you are, if your set up is mobile, and you can keep a running track of what you sound like and what you imagine you will sound like. Simple phrases and specific work done for 15 minutes a day helped me.
Admittedly? My voice is of the “speakingsofastotherpeopleoccasionallymisunderstood” variety. If anyone here’s seen Zero Punctuation?
Yeah?
I think that’s sort of slow and level.
These days people don’t say “What, Fibi? What was that?” every 10 seconds when I talk to them. My life is much improved!
So that helped me. Needing other people to tell you what you sound like is useful, but, since it’s often the case that you don’t have the luxury of being able to rely on people you can come out to completely, the recorder + yourself is very beneficial. It’s also a very good tool for doing something you’ll find useful later on:
Put a copy of the voice files on a private folder on your computer, and tag them pr. date.
This allows you to track progress over time, in a very specific, quantifable way, and will, in times where you go “Aahaha, I’ll never learn!”, allow you to check out how you were doing a few days or weeks ago.
The downside is if you don’t have enough computer privacy, you might be leaving clues that are bad.
If you have an e-mail you’re willing to offer, I can also lend you my e-book copy of Alan Greene: The New Voice: How To Sing And Speak Properly, which, despite its name, is more a book on how the voice works and how to train it to do what you’d like and less a book on manners.
Do you folks have any suggestions for finding opportunities to train my voice?
I think a lot of actors train their accents by listening to peoples’ voices and imitating them, and that can be a self-reinforcing thing where as you listen and imitate you begin to hear how you are different and try different things to change them. In terms of setting up for sounding the way you want to sometimes and passing as male other times, if you link the practice with wearing some kind of significant item – like a heavy bracelet or necklace – you can form a sense-association with the voice to help you only use it when it’s safe (when you have the article of clothing on).
One major part of voices and accents is how you hold your mouth, how you move your tongue, and where the sounds originate from. When I was taking singing lessons, part of the practice was moving my voice between the “chest voice” which was the deeper, richer sound, to the “throat voice” which was my normal speaking pitch, to the “head voice” which echoes in the sinuses (with a large enough echo chamber in the mouth and throat it doesn’t sound nasally – nasally is when the voice is originating from the front of the head; deeper voices come from farther back) and is the highest pitched.
To move your voice higher in pitch (which registers as more feminine to most people I know) it’s about moving up the vocal chords to the littler ones. It probably would make some sense to start with some deeper voiced women to imitate, get comfortable at that pitch, and then pick someone with a slightly higher pitch. Another approach might be to imitate a woman very high pitched – what registers as unnatural to most people – but that might be a lot more discouraging; I’m kind of aiming for within somewhat-easy reach so you can have some early success and feel more positive about yourself.
In terms of voice classes, learning how to sing in falsetto would probably help develop your high pitches and controls, but I don’t know if you have singing ability/desire.
Also, can I say how much I love random “break out and help someone in the community” moments at manboobz? You guys all make me so very happy.
What Deoridhe said although if you have no money, try working at a telephone job, it helps you modulate your voice when you have to be soothing to irate customers all day.
And how to become friends by our friends, the cat and dog:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/cats-and-dogs-reveal-the-secrets-of-making-friends
Aaliyah,
I would totally skype or chat by phone with you once I’m back from vacation!
Have you contacted the Cantu Queer Center at UCSC to see what resources they have to offer? [email protected]
Another idea for an online resource… Ami is a Canadian trans* activist who used to comment here; you might check out her blog at http://ami-rants.blogspot.com/
She’s also responsible for the Escher Girls blog which is awesome. There are probably people closer to where you are, but I can vouch for Ami’s awesomeness. If you’re a Twitterer, she’s active there.
Aaliyah, you are a woman, so you sound like a woman, by definition 🙂
I’ve got no help on changing your voice, though; I’ve just got one of those weird-sounding voices, myself.
Thanks, Fibinachi, I’ll follow your advice. I just hope I can find the time to do it when I’m alone because usually I’m around family members. Can you recommend any voice recording software you know of?
That’s a perfect suggestion, actually! I have a little necklace I bought a while ago that I don’t wear unless I know I’m around only trans*-friendly people. Or around people who don’t care.
That would work great.
I’ve always wanted the butch female voice anyway, so that’s a good idea. I just hope I can get an opportunity to listen to more butch-sounding women, lol.
Thanks a lot, everyone!
Also, I’ve have some good news today. I’ve received a very large amount of financial aid today – it covers nearly 2/3 of my UCSC expenses. Yay! If I make money over the summer and continue to work, I might even be able to pay for living expenses for the upcoming Fall quarter. ^_^
I would have received full aid if I accepted the loans as well, but my father is religiously opposed to interest, so I would get into heaps of trouble. He gets fucking furious when he finds out about any family member getting interest-based loans.
@ Aaliyah I know so very many LGBTQ spaces are not so inclusive, despite the name. You know the drill, drama classes, elocution lessons, everything you have been told before. There is no easy way to do this hon. Being free here, using your actual voice as you type here? That will help. Speak as you type. It sounds ridiculous but trust me, it will help. As a side note Kathleen O’Hara has one of the sexiest voices known to man or woman , husky isn’t always gendered thing. Good luck.
True, and I appreciate the sentiment, but voice is a salient gender cue, and I myself am not comfortable with how masculine my voice is. It’s not me. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a butch female voice, but my voice doesn’t even sound female. It sounds like the voice of an 18-year-old guy. I hope that makes sense.
UCSC has the best looking campus. Sure, UCSD has the Torrey Pines, but they don’t look nearly as neat as the Redwoods. They’re kind of short and windswept. You don’t get the same “lost in the woods” feeling.
Aaliyah, back when I was still doing competitive speech, my coaches gave us a lot of advice for sneaking in times to practice our speeches. This one was really helpful for me my freshman year, since my then-roommate and I didn’t get along and it was really awkward for me to practice in front of her.
My coaches told us to go for walks (around campus or town or wherever) and practice our speeches into our cell phones as though we were talking to someone. At first I found this really awkward, because I was sure I sounded stupid, but no one around me seemed to ever pick up that I was having a one-sided conversation. Eventually I kind of got comfortable with the idea that people could only catch small snip-its of what I was saying, so even when I was practicing voices for different characters, no one thought it was weird.
(If you’re going to try this though, make sure your phone is off or on silent. The only time this could have been actually embarrassing for me was when my phone went off when I was “talking” to someone. Luckily no one was around.)
@Aaliyah
I am normally sucky on advice, but there was a thread I read a while ago on a writing forum I frequent (absolutewrite water cooler) called the “T” Party for trans* people to talk and share info (and cis people can ask questions if they do it respectfully). I don’t think people really post on in much anymore, since the conversation seemed to have died, but if you feel like reading it there might be some information of interest.
@ aaliyah
I have written directly to your e-mail cuz my response was rather long. Please look for it there. My partner is a transsexual woman BTW, so she may have better advice I can pass on later.
That’s very valuable advice, thank you. It’ll also help me be less shy in public when I speak with my female voice.
I did a couple quick searches and found this awesome video by a woman talking about how she manages her voice.
Here’s another using musical scales.
I did the search using the term “contralto” which is the term for the lowest voices among women (our language is so damn gendered), so you might find more that way. It looks like this is a common issue for some trans women, which isn’t too surprising; our voices are so central to who we are.
@ aaliyah
Here is a clip of Helen Boyd and her partner “Betty” (now Rachel). What is remarkable about Betty is that she was an actor when they met, known for “his” deep, rich baritone which she can still produce on demand. She has managed to modulate her naturally deep voice in a very natural way. Of course, being an actor, she probably has had a lot of voice training.
On a side note, what they say about American women and how foreign women are so much better and submissive: My friend recently attended a wedding. Some guy was marrying a “mail-order bride.” He says it was a really interesting sight. He looked happy, while she was faking a smile and seemed to constantly have one foot out the door.
Also, I hear that these women, once they start getting better at speaking English, start getting a lot less submissive and start to tell their SOs what they really think of them. So much for it being exclusive to American women.
@Aaliyah:
I have a few links to some decent free programs. Would you mind if sent them to do you over gmail?