I‘m beginning to wonder if Chateau Heartiste isn’t so much a “Game” blog as it is an elaborate unannounced contest to see who can say the worst possible things about women in the most pretentiously incoherent prose. My evidence? Heartiste’s latest choice for “comment of the week” from an aspiring ladykiller (hopefully not literally) who calls himself burke.
Burke’s grand insight into the female of the species?
if you could grind a woman’s entire being to dust with your dick, like a mortar and pestle, that’s the oblivion she is searching for
Well, that’s pretty good, as far as pretentious douchebagginess goes, but it’s almost coherent. I mean, dicks are roughly the same basic shape as pestles, and it’s not hard to visualize one grinding away in a little stone bowl. Hell, there’s probably some porn video out there featuring just that.
But then Heartiste comes along and offers his own comment on the comment, and shows burke just how it’s done. And by “it” I mean “awful, pretentious, incoherent misogyny.”
Insight elevated to sheer poetry by the breezy lack of punctuation. Women secretly desire their oblivion at the insistence of an imperious man. As the vessel sex, they must be filled with the life force of another — a powerful man, or a child — to fully experience sublimation of their souls. Thus it is that surrender is encoded in the gristle of woman.
The gristle? It’s “encoded in the gristle?”
Gristle is cartilage. The tough stuff in meat that’s hard to chew. The stuff that sharks have instead of bone. Nothing is “encoded” in it. Animals don’t store all of their genetic material in their gristle.
The somewhat archaic phrase “in the gristle” means “not yet hardened into bone or strengthened into sinew” or, more broadly, “young, weak, and unformed.” It’s not a fancy synonym for “in the genes.”
Here’s the phrase in a sentence — that is, in a sentence written by someone who actually knew how to use language.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Well, come to think of it, that’s a sentence fragment, not a sentence. But at least Edmund Burke understood why that particular metaphoric phrase made sense in that context.
Heartiste, not even competently pretentious.
I did not know “gristle” was an English word. It was used as a Neanderthal swearword in Robert T. Sawyer’s “Neanderthal Parallax”, and I assumed it was implied to mean “shit”. It would make sense either way, since Neanderthals in the story were big meat-eaters.
DING DING DING we have a winner!
Hey, can another vagina-owner ask a question? I can’t use tampons either – not ‘cos I can’t get one in but because it’s impossibly uncomfortable to leave there. Is that common (I’ve only tried it twice, decades apart)? Not that it’s a problem, I’m just curious about it.
My impression (personal experience and what my friends tell me) is it’s fairly common, but it can become less uncomfortable as you get more practice inserting and removing. For some reason some tampons are scratchy!
Also, some makes of tampon are quite uncomfortable even in the smallest sizes. There was one make I remember which was kind of ridged – unfortunately, where I was living (abroad, pre-online shopping), it was either that, really awkward-shaped pads, or look around for sponges.
I’m 54 today and I never have to deal with that stuff again! Yay!
I had a few friends in high school who had problems with tampons. Apparently doctors responses ranged from ‘not being ready’ to ‘its a psychological issue’. Not even a consideration that it simple won’t fit.
I would be SHOCKED if this is just another area of womens health that has been criminally overlooked. Oh, no. No I wouldn’t.
I also very much like the idea of how horrified the guys who see women as holes and vessels would be at this conversation of people talking about their own bodies with very little shame and embarrassment. HA! PERIODS. PERSONAL HEALTH! MWAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
There are some horrible failures in tampon design – toxic shock syndrome, applicators, perfumes, and so on.
A friend many years ago did an academic study of the linguistics of tampon box instructions (we hairy-legged second-wavers had fun in the 80s!) and found they were largely couched in euphemisms (some of which were quite baffling – like that blue dye they use in the sanitary pad adverts) and advantages-that-weren’t-advantages – for instance, a non-biodegradable scratchy plastic applicator tube was “so you don’t have to touch yourself”. Like touching your own body with your own fingers is the literally worst thing you could do.
“Gristle” is an interesting word in the context of all this “pestle and mortar” sex imagery. It’s exceedingly unappealing. It’s obviously got the connotations of the bits of a slaughtered carcass that get stripped to become mechanically-recovered meat (nostril, tendon, knuckly bits), but in the UK anyway often used in the context of a useless and embarrassingly flabby penis. There used to be a punk band called The Throbbing Gristle band – I’ve never known quite how parodic they were intending to be.
More recently the word “gristle” just reminds me of what happened to Mr Hong when he opened the Three Jolly Luck Takeaway Fish Bar on the site of the ruined fish-god temple in Dagon Street on a full moon in the winter solstice. Apparently events could be summarised as “crack, crack, gristle AAAARGH!” and most of Mr Hong was never seen again.
These guys sound like they’re about 15 and they’re certain they know everything. Except most 15-year-olds aren’t *that* misogynistic.
Oh, just look at the wrongness of it all!
Where to begin…
One could just as easily say that be-penised folks crave being consumed by another, if you want to draw some connection between who sticks what where and some bullshit about people’s desires or “nature”.
Has no one told these guys that LGBTQ folks are a thing or that not all sex is piv?
The motor isn’t ground away. You use it with the pestle to grind other things. I don’t think the most rigid of cocks would be very useful as a pestle, anyway.
Wait…jizz is “life force” now?
These guys really can’t just think of sex as being a fun thing people do for mutual pleasure that can sometimes, but not always, be used for making babies. It’s just friction for fun and it”s just semen. Nobody is conferring mystical quintessence or being ground away. However much Fartiste wants sex to be degrading to women or a symbol for something, it’s just sex.
What is it about that fact that scares them so much?
It’s like they’re flailing at the dictionary and picking words at random. Seriously, I’m about to die from second hand embarrassment from all the pretentious twittery.
Bluecat,
I think a more accurate “advantage” of applicators would read, “So you don’t leave the ladies room stall looking like you just delivered a calf”.
@bluecat
I never understood ‘applicators’ for tampons. Surely you need to feel where you’re putting it so it goes the right direction?
Is it some religious thing where fingers in ‘there’ must mean masturbation? So confusing.
Meanwhile the pill I’m on means I haven’t had a period in about a decade. It’s pretty much the best.
@Lea
Menstruation is a filthy business. I doubt a little bit of plastic could’ve prevented the horror show of my periods. Uh, tmi…
I always thought applicators were a sanitary thing, so you don’t introduce bacteria from your fingers into your vagina.
TMI: tampon use etc
Yep, my experience was the same. First few times of using, insertion was on the painful side of discomfort Took me quite a long time to get used to them and also to get practiced at getting them in the right position so that I couldn’t feel them once inserted. But I thought it worth perservering and so I did. If you don’t feel the same, that’s fine too. Noone has to use ’em.
Never used applicator ones – I couldn’t imagine how difficult and uncomfortable that would be, given my issues with the more basic ones.
And yes, I am certain that there all sorts of basic vagina-having health issues which are completely ignored. But any more TMI on that I’ll take to the Open thread (or save for next time we need to discourage a particularly unpleasant troll).
@Buttercup
I thought it was that and for if you have very long nails.
But, given that they are barely a thing here in Australia, I suspect it is more cultural than practical.
Huh. What women really really secretly want deep down even though they might not know it always seems to correspond exactly to the fantasies of the dudes doing the imputing-of-desires to women.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and not evidence of massive projection and narcissism.
To add my contribution to the Tampon Talk.
I pretty much can’t use tampons without them as otherwise I struggle to push them far enough inside myself and they sit too low and are uncomfortable and they leak.
I also find that the smooth surface of the applicator makes it more comfortable to push in, otherwise I find that a dry, new tampon, the hard compacted surface is quite painful to have scratching against the walls the vagina.
And for me, as it seems with most others, tampon insertion was uncomfortable and a bit of a struggle at first. It got better with practice.
It is something that I have noticed however, that people who can’t or don’t want to use tampons for menstruation often seem to be considered “immature” or there is something wrong with them. And that people who use pads after adolescence are weird. I remember seeing adverts for tampons in magazines (aimed at teenage girls) that linked the use of pads with nappies. Thus suggesting that women and girls who used them are infantile or not a proper grown woman. Which feels wrong to me on a lot of levels.
Also another thing I have noticed, is the stigma attached to those who use “alternative” (in the west anyway) products for their menstruation. So reusable menstrual cups and reusable pads. Especially the latter, as people think they are gross and dirty whereas in actual fact they are a lot better for the environment, cheaper in the long run and better for you as they aren’t soaked in chemicals to bleach or make it smell of flowers.
Re: tampon talk
I never had problems using tampons. I took swimming lessons since very young, so nearly as soon as I got my first period, I started using them.
I switched to a menstrual cup in January, and works even better for me (I have an IUD and last ultrasound showed everything’s in its place). I’m surprised no one mentioned it, so I’m leaving this link from my blog with a review, in case anyone’s interested.
http://thexidentity.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/my-experience-with-a-menstrual-cup/
There is also a very complete video about them at the end of the post.
PS: Gristle, LOL
I’m not a fan of the cups, in general, (awkward gory lady cave spelunking = not fun) but there are times when they are the best tool for the job. I like the flannel pads because they just feel better, especially to sleep in.
I’m hoping to switch from tampons to a cup. But at the moment the Implant is messing with my cycle and hormones so I’m waiting until it’s settled so I’m not having to navigate with a new method of menstrual protection while also coping with an unpredictable and temperamental menstrual cycle.
I like cups because they allow me to use blood in my Satanic rituals without needing to resort to human sacrifices.
A lot less fun, though.
@ Buttercup – that is supposedly the rationale, but it doesn’t stand up.
If a vagina is not injured it can deal with ordinary bacteria, much like your eyeball can (both wonderful self-regulating systems), and fingers are extremely washable anyway.
If you had a scratch or cut in the vagina and had also been, say, doing an autopsy without washing your hands (the origins of puerperal fever) there’d be a risk.
But absent an extremely long and spiky manicure (when I first saw these I thought “How the hell can they masturbate?”) your soft, sensitive and responsive fingers are going to be much better at guiding a tampon where it’s got to go than a hard, unyielding plastic applicator (which itself is far from sterile as regards bacteria). Fingers are more sensitive than vulvas: most vulvas are capable of having an infant’s head being pushed out from inside them without the vulva’s owner dying of agony, whereas fingers can learn braille and fine needlepoint.
Then, the applicator is much more likely to scratch you than your hands are. It was the scratchiness of the applicator, on top of which the applicator delivered a spongy thing designed to soak up menstrue and sit over the scratch for a couple of hours, plus in some brands the completely insane addition of chemical deodorants and perfumes, which led to toxic shock syndrome. People died.
@Bluecat; I’m sure most of what you wrote is accurate, but the part about vulvas being less sensitive than fingers because
????
Uh, yeah, people do not usually die from sheer pain when giving birth, but likewise most people who get their fingers mangled in one way or another do not die from it. There can sure as hell be a shit-load of agony and pain involved in both instances. Plus, it’s hard to say whether it would be possible to learn braille with your vulva or not if we came up with a way to let braille-text flow across the vulva-walls (now, there’s an image for you!).
Plus, all this gristle talk makes me think of Anna Anka, ex-wife of Paul Anka and for a while a fairly famous reality-show-star here in Sweden. She’s pretty skinny, and would chalk it down to a diet involving lots of gristle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Anka
PRATCHETT WIN
Whenever I hear the word gristle I just think of those awful moments when I’m eating meat and there’s that squishy crunch that’s not the same as meat – gristle or fatty bits, ewww ewww ewww *hurk*
What, you don’t want to do the James Herriot look?
I wonder if they’ve died out, so to speak? The time I first tried a tampon back in the ’70s, it was an applicator type. Sharp edges, yeah, brilliant …
I don’t even … I’m glad I never saw ads like that when I was that age (whether they were around I’ve no idea, but I wasn’t into magazines anyway). How fucking insulting, and inconsistent given they’re made by the same damn companies!
I’ve never seen menstrual cups for sale here, though that could just be ‘cos our local supermarkets don’t stock them. I wouldn’t use one, partly because I don’t fancy inserting it and partly for the same reason I wouldn’t like tampons even if I could use them – I wouldn’t feel confident there’d be no leaking.
That’s the other thing with tampons: they’re recommended just for the heaviest days, and to me that’s “nuh uh!” because nothing less than a big solid pad feels safe. 😛
Yay for the onset of menopause, that’s all I can say.
That’d make reading on the train really tricky.