Does anyone read newspaper comics any more? Does anyone even remember reading newspaper comics? One of the worst of the bunch is a mawkish little one-panel strip called “Love is …,” with a simple formula: a little drawing of a plump, happy, naked couple (minus sex organs), with a caption starting off with the words “love is.” The more popular strips were turned into greeting cards. I actually have an oil painting someone made of the Love is couple that I found in a thrift store for $1.47. The caption: “Love is … letting him win once in a while.”
The strip began in 1970, and the creator turned it over to the current writer and artist in 1975. I have no fucking idea how on earth he can come up with a new “love is” caption every day. His life must be some kind of existential hell. He must spend hours just staring out the window looking for inspiration. Love is … a dog taking a shit, no. Love is … a fat guy waiting for a bus … no. Love is … sitting alone in my underwear wondering what has gone wrong with my life.
Anyway, the reactionary Manosphere blogger Dicipres has decided to do a similar thing with the phrase “feminism is.” Only without the little naked couple. Here are some of his captions-without-pictures.
Feminism is a morbidly obese, sexually promiscuous, short-haired, tattooed, cussing beast whom no man can ever love or trust.
Feminism is a family which hates itself.
Feminism is a line drawn inside your home between you and your wife.
Feminism is a woman furious over ‘rape culture’ and who masturbates while fantasizing being beaten and raped. …
Feminism is a woman who cannot be loved anymore since she hates the domineering man she lusts and sexually despises the submissive man she likes.
Feminism is alimony and every other weekend
Feminism is a son hating his father
Feminism is equality as the only measure for progress of a society …
Feminism is a demographic annihilation due to low birth rates
Yeah. I don’t think any of those are going to work as greeting cards.
And what do these guys have against women with short hair?
Sure, SredniVashtar. Whatever.
And to think that I was accused* of not being able to tell fantasy and reality apart.:/
* for being a tabletop roleplayer, for liking anime, etc..
SredniVashtar, I fantasize about living in a giant motorhome and traveling the country. This doesn’t mean I ACTUALLY want to live in a giant motorhome. It DEFINITELY doesn’t mean I want some guy to FORCE me to live in a giant motorhome, cause me mental and physical damage to KEEP me in the motorhome, and then get self-righteous and whiny when I tell him that dammit, I don’t want to live in a giant motorhome!
Why is this so hard for people?
SredniVashtar, I think you need to clarify what you meant. The slimeball in the original post was pretty well showing he doesn’t get the difference between fantasising and reality, and that women are hypocrites for talking about the rape culture if they ever have rape fantasies. I’ve seen your comments before, I know you’re not trolling, but could you explain what you meant?
*and saying that women are hypocrites
Oh Brz, mon petit.
You think feminists are only fight online? Tell that to the fool who grabbed my ass today and got a black eye in return.
“only fight online” – oops, excuse the typo.
NonServiam, yay for you!
@kittehserf (& LBT & Malitia & vaiyt)
I just meant that I love the idea of a woman who is righteously furious about rape culture, and writes a blog or goes to a protest about it or whatever in the day time, and then in the night time she goes home and happily jills off over her own specific fantasies which hurt no-one, and she falls into a blissful guilt-free sleep and then the next day she wakes up and is all furious about rape culture some more. And i think that actually *is* a good description of what ‘(sex positive) feminism is’….you could rephrase it as ‘feminism is…a woman being furious about real power inequality while still being able to enjoy fake power inequality in a sexy way, because it doesn’t hurt anyone’. or ‘feminism is…being able to separate fantasy from reality’.
So I just think the asshat in the original post was *accidentally* sort of on the money with that one. He meant the woman in the example to seem like a hypocrite but actually she seems totally sane and rational and cool. Thanks for the benefit of the doubt kittehserf – I’m not a troll guys I promise!
Thanks for the clarification, SredniVashtar! I thought that’s what you might have been driving at, and it’s a good point – almost the opposite of what the sleazoid in the OP meant, curiously enough.
I remember your earlier comments and being not-a-troll – your nym’s hard to forget (fuck that was a chilling story). 🙂
I AM SO EXCITED YOU HAVE READ THAT STORY AND GET MY NYM! FORGIVE THE CAPITALS BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY WARRANTED! 😀
I read it as a child so it had that special resonance – I devoured Saki as a child, he’s got such a dark but sympathetic view of the child condition that rings so true. Did you ever read any of his others?
LOL I can’t take the credit, someone else here recognised it when you first posted and I only remembered it then.
I read a few of his when I was a teenager, too – The Open Window (crumbs, in the Reader’s Digest Young People’s Annual 1966, would you believe), Tobermory, and Gabriel-Ernest. Possibly some others, but I don’t recall their names now.
The Open Window’s a favourite of mine. Well jealous you got to be a teenager in the swinging sixties by the way.
Sadly I didn’t! The book belonged to my brother or sister, who’re much older than me. I was a teenager in the late 70s and early 80s – cringe! 😛
Ah, sorry about that SredniVashtar. Just run into too many folks who use it the way OP did.
I suspect I was the one to recognise H.H. Munro.
I guess I’m not a feminist. ‘Im not overweight ,I have no tattoos, I have hair halfway down my back (need a cut ) I used to be “promiscuous ” not anymore and not for a long time.
But er…um ..I cuss. Including I’m repulsed by fucking evil misogynist whining about their dicks not getting wet .
Does that count?
Should I get a tattoo ?
feminism is the dawning realization that women and men canand do have wildly varying tastes, ambitions, talents, and ideals, and that being an asshole about it creates nothing but mass dysfunction in the long run.
I know people who insist feminists are a dogmatic and arrogant bunch set on re-engineering society to suit their own images, but ye lords, anti-feminists leave them in the dust on that front, ime. “THIS is how you should be a man/woman; exactly like this, and if it isn’t working, (…however it is that one defines “working”) then you clearly aren’t doing it hard enough.”
brrr!
And, you ask yourself, ‘what the hell; who died and made any of those eejits god?’
Sredni, I used to run a D&D campaign (eight years) and at one point introduced a cult of Sredni Vashtar worshippers. They were some scary folks – thanks for reminding me of that.
Note: the cultists were scary. The players were an entirely different kind of scary.
You wish. And so does he. But surprise! You’re both full of shit.
(At least where THIS woman is concerned. Rape fantasies do nothing for me.)
Bina, please read further for what Sredni was talking about. Zie is not a troll.
What is zie?
Zie is a gender-neutral pronoun, used instead of him, her, it, or they. Zie or zer instead of s/he and her/his. I’ve also seen it with X instead of Z. I’ll admit that I’m not entirely comfortable using it, because it’s too close to made-up words from really bad fantasy novels from my youth that I may or may not have written. It’s getting more familiar, though.
I feel much the same about it, Unimaginative. I use it when I don’t know someone’s preferred pronouns, or if they’ve said they prefer it, as Argenti does, f’rinst.