By David Futrelle
If you regularly partake in the Twitter, you may have seen this lovely tweet making the rounds in recent days:
https://twitter.com/renoomokri/status/963280461647659008
More than a few people have pointed out to Mr. Omokri that vaginas are not in fact slabs of dead fish and that vagina-havers can push entire human babies through them without permanently stretched them out. “Vaginas are muscular structures, not gaping holes,” writer Leah McElrath noted in a tweet. “They are potential spaces whose size changes to accommodate what goes in or comes out (i.e. babies).”
It turns out that Omokri — a conservative Christian author — has a lot of other thoughts about women, and vaginas, and food.
In this tweet, he tries out a citrus-fruit-based metaphor that I’m still struggling to make sense of,
Dear singles
People tend to throw away an orange after they have enjoyed the juice. That is why a wise orange does not allow itself to be enjoyed until the other party has committed themselves by doing the needful. A parable on keeping your virginity until marriage #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 11, 2018
So ladies, don’t be slutty oranges that men will toss out after fucking once. Be monogamous oranges that men will want to keep around to … fuck again and again, I guess.
Omokri is trying to sell his readers on marriage, but he’s doing a terrible job of it. This tweet is probably the bleakest metaphor for marriage I’ve ever run across.
I just hope he doesn’t think men should be peeling the skin off their wives before enjoying their juice, as it were.
But he’s not done with the food metaphors. Hell, he’s not even done with the fruit metaphors. Here he is comparing men to fruit trees.
Dear men,
Learn from nature, instead of wasting time chasing women. A tree doesn't chase birds. It simply produces fruit and birds become attracted to it. Likewise, if you as a man will just produce the fruit of success, birds will be attracted to you #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 8, 2018
He makes the same point again in this tweet, in which he compares women to stinging insects.
Dear men,
Don't dissipate your energy chasing women. Conserve your energy and focus it on generating money. Money is like nectar and women are like bees. As long as a flower has nectar, bees will be attracted to it #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 11, 2018
In yet another tweet he compares women to soup because why not?
Dear ladies,
A woman who sleeps with many men reduces her chances of being married by any man. Too many cooks spoil the broth and too many men spoil a woman. If sex could give you a husband, all prostitutes would have been married #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 11, 2018
While the food metaphor is once again nonsensical and misogynistic,it’s too dumb to get outraged over. To me, the most offensive thing about this tweet is that Omokri missed the opportunity to make an obvious pun. Shouldn’t it be “too many cocks spoil the broth?” Do I have to do all the work here?
But Omokri doesn’t only compare women to bugs and foodstuff. Here he offers an even darker metaphor.
Some men think they have married wives, but what they have married are living coffins inside whom so many aborted children have been murdered. This is why it is so important to abstain from sec until marriage. So that you remain a human being. Not a coffin #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 12, 2018
While Omokri thinks the vaginas of promiscuous women are like overfucked tuna or wrung-out oranges, he has a rather more sympathetic view of the vaginas of virtuous virgins.
Dear women,
The only legal entrance from the spiritual to the physical is a woman's private part. A spirit being from God passes through your womb and then your private part to become a human baby. So don't trivialize your private part by using it for promiscuity #RenosNuggets
— Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) February 12, 2018
So, cis ladies, are you whores or virgins? Your choice, at least in Omokri’s exceedingly strange mind, will determine whether your vaginas are unappetizing foodstuffs or portals to the divine.
PS: If all the talk of sex and fruit has you turned on, you might want to check out the new sex technique that’s (allegedly) sweeping the nation. It’s called Grapefuiting. This somewhat NSFW video explains it far better than I could, though there’s a slight chance it might put you off grapefruits forever.
@Arctic Ape,
Okay, that’s just astonishing. I loved that book when I was a teenager. And there was you, all the way up there, reading it too ??
It also reminds me (possibly TMI), but along with heat, humidity, and mangoes, sex is the other dominant element in my high school memories. tbf, there wasn’t much else to do…
I like pineapple, and I love pizza. But not together. That’s heresy!
Pineapple for dessert AFTER pizza, though? YUM.
I like pineapple on pizza; used to be just hawaiian but i’ve done, like, tomato and banan peppers and pineapple; stuff like that. It’s very nice. The sweet and the spicy go very well together.
But I don’t generally admit that i like pineapple pizza and never ever suggest it in mixed company, ’cause people get so offended by the suggestion. Grown men, whining about the suggestion of a fruit! It’s so damn obnoxious. It’s like suggesting that maybe bacon isn’t always the best thing ever.
F’n memes.
As another North Queensland and further north than that raised person, I’m iffy about mangoes. Also pawpaw (papaya), pineapple, custard apple, pumpkin and choko, all of which we or family and friends had growing in our yards, and all of which were force fed as kids.
Mangoes are horrible slimy things that are dropped half-eaten by birds and bats so that you can slip on them. Dried mango, pawpaw or pineapple are great though. And Valentin, fresh green mango with soy sauce and maybe a little sugar is wonderful. That’s how the Philippinx I know serve it. It’s not lemon-sour.
another wonderful sweet, sour and salty thing you see a lot of up here is salty plums, which are sour Chinese mountain plums (haw) buried in salt and sugar until their flesh dessicates to a thin skin. So yum!
As yet another Queenslander… Having wild mangoes everywhere just made me love them more, heh. Bush tucker at its best, assuming I can find a tree that hasn’t been picked clean by the bloody lorikeets.
me too! I am so annoyed by this. and worse – they think they are funny and original. but it is old and stupid joke. and honestly, pineapple on pizza is typical classic toping ? what is the problem?
obnoxious is perfect to describe them.
kupo:
I’ve heard these stories, to lesser extent experienced myself. I was never much into performing eating (or anything else) as a communal ritual. Sexual consent, esp. from kink angle, is a great analogy. Like, it’s a meme that everyone likes or at least tolerates vanilla ice cream, but I wouldn’t literally expect that.
(And I try to avoid kink-shaming people who like pineapple pizza ice cream)
One of the ways people are weird about food is that whole eating meat as a sign of masculinity thing. Guys competing with one another about how rare they like their steak, vegetarians being laughed at as unmanly, “real men don’t eat quiche” and so on. Ok, good job, you ate part of an animal, so?
Mish:
I never had quite that experience. There should be a youth novel about a teen boy who reads books all the time…
I’ve been occasionally reading Swiftlet Isles as an adult, since I found it on a flea market. Not long ago, it occurred to me that I can easily find detailed maps of the area on Google Earth. Then, I was able to confirm that Family Islands actually exist – and with a heap of money I could have a luxury vacation on Biagurra.
@Moggie
Yep the meat = masculinity thing is a whole ‘nother set of issues. Sexual Politics of Meat was first published in the 90s but still has relevance now, I think.
@Arctic Ape
Now I’m confused. You never had what experience? ??
Also, the kink analogy does work, but all this food plus kink stuff is … distracting. Reminds me of Tampopo too.
I’m off to do something very boring and worthy for a bit ?
The experience of reading a novel with a major character very much like you, if that’s what you meant in the first place.
@ mish
Ooh, I’d never heard of that, but having had a quick Google I know someone who’ll find it interesting. So cheers for the heads up.
@ arctic ape
I’ve had the weird experience of reading a book that was describing the room that I was reading the book in.
@Arctic Ape,
Ah, I get you. Sorry for being dense!
That wasn’t what I meant. I’m not sure I’ve ever had that experience (recognising self in a main character), and not sure I’ve ever wanted to, either. I usually read to get away from me, not find me again. Swiftlet Isles captured the atmosphere of Qld summer, is all. That boy was much braver than me.
I just meant that it was a striking and wonderful coincidence that yourself, up there in Finland, had read a somewhat obscure novel that I’d also read and loved as a teenager.
@Alan,
When you Googled, did you find Carol Adams’ blog? She’s been writing about Trump in relation to Sexual Politics of Meat, inter alia. Your friend might find that interesting?
@ mish
I hadn’t; but that’s pretty interesting so I’ll pass it on. It’s funny about the veggie/vegan =\= masculinity thing. I think you see the posts my friend constantly sends me in her mission to “get you off the tit” as she charmingly puts it. That’s all vegan MMA guys or ‘tough’ actors and celebrities.
ETA: I do soy milk anyway, but I like chocolate. Although apparently Bourneville is vegan so we can probably work something out.
Alan:
You turn a page, and read:
“Sitting at a desk in the room is a man, reading. He turns a page”…
@ moggie
It was a bit like that. Got goosebumps and kept looking over my shoulder.
Proud meat eating is also some sort of status marker for conservatism. At least in the US. Vegatarianism and veganism is very associated with progressivism. That’s why the right threw a tantrum over the suggestion of doing meatless Mondays in school cafeterias. Just as the Obama’s are trying to take the guns of real Americans, they’re trying to take their burgers! Because suggesting that maybe you don’t need to eat meat every single day is exactly the same as outlawing meat altogether.
Ted Nugent syndrome.
It’s ironic that the Nazis do the ‘soyboy’ thing, considering their idol’s culinary preferences.
Oooh, was it … Bleak House??? 🙂
Weirdly it was The Big Hungry Caterpillar (not really, it was one of the Rumpole books)
But speaking of reading stuff in the original location, that’s a great excuse to post my favourite curmudgeonly sign.
I get the impression that last paragraph was added by someone saying “FFS Kevin, leave them something“
Hotblack Desiato, Estate Agents, need one of those signs, if they haven’t got one already. They do have a bit on their website explaining that Douglas Adams named a character after their business and not the other way around.
@ moon custafer
They do have a sign in the window, and a copy of the book open at the appropriate page. It probably doesn’t do them any harm though.
I wonder if Vladimir Harkonnen is still around? Frank Herbert just got his name from the phone book.
OK, I thought that was a separate point. I too am impressed to find someone who both lived in that general area as a teen, and read and liked the book. I figured it’s not a bestseller in Australia either, because of very little online reference.