Don't Forget, She's Also A Lesbian
My dad’s best friend likes to send out “funny” spam emails, and because I have respect for my elders and everything, I just silently delete them. A couple of weeks ago he sent one over with the subject line, “No matter what your politics, this is hilarious!” The hilarity in question is the subject of a post today at Every Woman Has An Eating Disorder. It is a sign at a KFC reading:
HILLARY SPECIAL 2 FAT THIGHS WITH SMALL BREAST & A LEFT WING
I was so incensed by it that I almost sent out a “reply all” ranting and raving about how, no matter what your politics are or how you feel about Hillary Clinton, this is misogynist, offensive, and the farthest thing from “funny” that I can possibly think of. I don’t know why I didn’t send it, now that I think about it. My god, is it too late to hit reply all?
Posted by mo pie
Respect has to be earned. Hit reply all and let ‘er rip.
Yeah, that’s heinous. I’ve seen it before, and probably would have thought it was funny when I was 12, except I wouldn’t have gotten the “left wing” reference.
Also, Hillary Clinton? Not really left wing.
Yes, I think you should reply. At the very least it would probably keep you from getting these sorts of emails in the future.
Hit reply!! And make that “reply all”!!
Maybe you could mention in your reply that that joke wasn’t funny when it was first made back in 1995.
that definitely deserves a scathing response! i vote for a reply all response.
“My god, is it too late to hit reply all?”
No.
You know, that is kind of offensive/misogynist, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it. It’s a joke. One dumb joke circulating the internet isn’t going to set women’s rights back 100 years. What will set women’s rights back is the general bitchy stereotype of feminists that are like you.
Oh, the old, “you’re just being a hysterical feminist bitch”! I love that one!
good contribution. the condescending tone really works for your point.
Thanks! I thought it worked nicely also!
Ah, yes. Feminism will be seriously negatively affected by the perception that feminists are humorless bitches, particularly because Mo Pie, internet writer, was offended by a stupid internet meme. Adam, I am impressed by your grasp of the scope and meaning of the women’s movement of the past 150 years. Thank God Mo wasn’t around during the years when women were trying to improve conditions for factory workers, or when they were trying to win suffrage, because by gum, you had to be damn funny to get an audience, and clearly her influence would have led directly to more disasters like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and to an even greater income disparity between men and women. Because the only way to get powerful people to take you seriously is to laugh along with them! Anger, after all, is always inappropriate.
Thanks, Adam, for the tremendous enlightenment. Truly, you are the first man.
Ginger–
I’m sorry that I didn’t have the specifics of the years down pat, please forgive me. The point is, this kind of bitchiness won’t win any support. Pick your battles. An internet joke doesn’t deserve your anger–an actual legal issue does. You can be assertive, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it. Until then, stick a cock in it, will you?
If the cock in question is yours, I somehow don’t think there’ll be any takers. Troll genitalia just doesn’t do it for me.
Haha thats cute. Did you ask your husband/male guardian before going on the internet?
I was hoping it was metaphorical cock. Also, it’s kind of beautiful to start off with “you feminists are so bitchy!” and end with a cock reference. I love how it beautifully undercuts his point. Also telling us to lighten up and then coming back to continue a stupid flame war. Irony is so cute!
Nope, it’s not too late. It’s a distasteful, disrespectful, and offensive “joke”, and deserves to be repudiated.
“Ha Ha. It’s always amusing to mock a woman’s body. So funny. Oh, and regardless of politics, there’s added funniness because Hilary is an uppity bitch who needs to be taught a lesson. Get back in that kitchen, bitch, and don’t be thinking you can play with the boys.”
Dear god. Is this really the world we live in? Head/Desk.
To drag this back to actual interesting conversation, does anyone remember a recent Fatosphere entry (maybe by Kate Harding, I don’t know) about the importance of having thin people in the fat acceptance movement? I think it was about how members of the dominant paradigm are taken more seriously because the standard knee-jerk reactions (“you’re just an out-of-control fatty” or “you’re just playing the race card” or “you’re just being a bitchy feminist”) don’t apply.
I’m hoping somewhere out there remembers the entry and can point me to it; Google didn’t really help.
Perhaps you could counter with a “Mike Huckabee” at Gray’s Papaya* Special: “Just one tiny little weiner.”
*Gray’s Papaya, for the uninitiated, is a NY hot dog chain.
i really have no idea what chain of events led me here tonight, (i’ve been blog-wandering for a few hours) but i’m so glad i wound up here. i hope you don’t mind if i link to this post later this evening. if it’s a problem, let me know via email and i’ll remove it immediately.
Hilary Clinton is a ridiculous tool.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/01/14/navarrette/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsLHxja43iY
our world is totally fu**ed up.
Adam, whassa matter, are these bitchy ol’ feminists scaring you? You sound like a chihuahua who’s barking ferociously at all the big dogs (while they couldn’t care less). Rrrufff!
Yes, the Hillary joke is offensive and childish, but we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. These right-wingers will stop at nothing — nothing — to bring down a mouthy broad with presidential aspirations.
Hey Adam: RRRuuufff!
Adam, actually I believe you are wrong, and here’s why.
1) If said joke is repeated (which it obviously has been several times since it first came out in the late 90’s since I remember it from then) then it becomes OK to repeat such things. If it is ok to repeat such then it will be, and not just about Hillary Clinton, but about any woman.
2) When you talk down about women, even in the form of a rather unfunny joke, then you are putting the cause of women’s rights (or anyone’s rights for that matter, be they women’s, fat, gay, trans-gendered, men’s, race) to go backward. Why? Well that’s simple, because you personally are setting them back by laughing at it, saying it’s not offensive, or in other ways promoting the oppression of any give group at any given time.
3) The simple fact that you have quickly regressed into “put a cock in it” and “did you get permission from your husband/male guardian to get on the internet” simply proves that you don’t understand this cause. Which kinda begs the question…why are you here?
4) Why are you here?
Go you, Karen. I totally agree!
I’m speechless.
It’s never too late to hit reply. It is generally understood that people don’t have time to reply instantly to every message they get.
Adam is a classic internet troll. I find it kind of comforting that troll tactics haven’t changed in the slightest since I first encountered them in 1997 (and they had already been common since the days of the BBS message board.)
“Bitch” is a word most commonly used to discourage women from speaking their minds. I stopped trying to avoid being called that and found that my life suddenly stopped being full of jerks. Coincidence?
Oh, I’m sorry, let me correct myself, it was “stick a cock in it”. My bad.
Oh and:
5) (I thought of this while getting my son ready for bed) One joke is never just one joke. It is used, reused, and then recycled to beat a dead emu (I feel sorry for horses, we need a new animal) on every front of every right’s movement in existence. You think that this joke hasn’t been used against other movements already? Just modify who you’re talking about and then POOF! it’s a new joke. Except, it’s not, it never was. It isn’t original now, and it wasn’t original then.
It isn’t really about anger, is it? Because anger steals joy. We all want to keep our joy. Isn’t it more about correcting incorrect thinking?
If you have to have your fun at someone else’s expense what does that say about you exactly? This particular (old) “joke” at Senator Clinton’s expense serves only to reinforce the idea that women are really only valuable or interesting because of things like thighs or breasts. It is hostility, masquerading as humor – it’s not okay. It really isn’t. And it is not really a joke… not really.
Gotta love the level of political discourse in this country! Special thanks to Adam for enforcing the bar!
I don’t think that anger steals joy. For that matter, I don’t think they’re even necessarily mutually exclusive – think of a parent who’s just found his or her lost kid. Angry, relieved and totally overjoyed that the kid’s okay.
I’ve also had plenty of fun at other people’s expense, and been the object of others’ fun. That doesn’t seem like such a big deal, either. But I certainly think people who are being made fun of can legitimately be irked.
Adam, you are about ten pounds of ignorant in a five-pound sack. My point wasn’t to school you about feminism. It was that in all the many decades of feminism, showing a sense of humor about being the object of jokes hasn’t helped at all, but directed anger certainly has. Without that anger, there would have been no strikes. No protests. No walk-outs. No sit-ins. No petitions, no expressing it at the ballot box, no letters to representatives, no lawsuits, no amendments to law.
I can sure as hell guarantee you that feminism – or any other movement of social activism – does not manage by going along to get along, or by smiling at unfunny jokes.
My assertive is your bitch, I suspect, and honestly, I like it like that. If that makes you wish I’d shut my uppity mouth, with or without cock? Great. I am glad I made you uncomfortable.
I’m sorry for feeding the trolls, MoPie and Weetabix. Perhaps I’m on the rag.
It might be funny if they left out the thigh and breast comments and just put “two thighs, a breast and a left wing.” They could do the same for the Republican candidates and right wings. Even if it were an appropriate joke (fat thighs and small breast) it makes no sense because Hillary seems to be of perfectly average proportions. I don’t like her a bit, but it has nothing to do with her body, which I couldn’t care less about. And it has even less to do with her sex.
Is this a feminist blogsite then? I wasn’t aware; I thought it was mostly about body acceptance (realizing of course that the two overlap/intertwine for many people; they don’t for me) so if I am under any misperceptions please correct me.
FWIW, Adam, that stuff is genuinely pointless. It’s all been said and done and it gets no one anywhere. Barely even gets a rise out of anyone, if that’s the purpose. Just a suggestion.
Annie, this is first and foremost a body positivity website, but I am definitely a feminist who believes in equality of the sexes, and I don’t think that’s a particularly radical or extreme position. I believe there is a disparity between the way fat is treated in women and in men; we’ve had some interesting conversations about that in the past. (Check out Is Fat A Feminist Issue for instance.)
Since I’m the person who writes the posts, feminism is one of the things that makes me who I am and informs my opinions and my point of view. If there’s anything you ever disagree with, you’re welcome to disagree with me, however. I hope that’s also clear. But I admit, I certainly hope that every man and woman wouldn’t hesitate to call themselves a feminist.
Thanks, mo pie; I have no desire to come here and argue about all that, I’m just being turned on to – well, whatever you like to call it – body positivity is a very good name for it, and that’s what all my reading and stuff is about right now, and all my passionate IRL rants, etc lol. As a guest and a noob to boot, I’ll just focus on that for now :) Also I didn’t want to seem like a sh**-stirrer if I misunderstood where someone was coming from. I understand that for many people they are intertwined, so probably the question was more about what the main focus was here, if that makes sense. At any rate you’ll never hear me tell someone to put a c*ck in it lol. Jeesh.
Also, thank you for the link. :)
Coming late to the table, but it’s *never* too late to hit “reply all”, especially when the reason for doing so is such a good one.
And UGH. Trolls make me twitch.
How annoying. I don’t even want to be aware of Hilary Clinton’s hips and breasts, or Bill’s man-boobs, for that matter. She’s a senior politician. Why are women’s bodies always up for discussion; always considered an appropriate topic for humor? As far as I can tell, nobody’s joking about the male candidate’s body parts.
She’s a politician, not a model or a celebrity.
This is a negation of women’s rights because the woman who they are criticizing is NOT in a position to be “pretty”. If this were about politics or personality, fine. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton don’t have model bodies. Neither do ANY of the male Presidential candidates. Why is it “laughable” to criticize the female’s body when nobody has even tried to criticize the men? But, what better to expect from the GOP. They put Bush in office.
Hit “Reply All”. Please do.
Yeah, I would reply all (I’ve done this once in my life – when some [now ex-]friend sent me some easily disproven urban-legend racist crap that managed to slam both Japan and the Middle East) – but I wouldn’t even bother with going deeply into it. His sense of humor is embarrassing on so many levels. His taking up mailbox space, wasting your time. And – if he’s like my old friend – if he CCs you instead of BCCing you, congratulations – your email address is now attached to that crap as it continues its cycle around the Internet.
Funny, until I saw this post, I never considered Hillary’s body. Now I kind of have to. It feels seriously degrading. How do people do that by choice.
I lol’d.
Also sorry but Adam=lulzilepsy.
I hate this joke simply because now I’m craving KFC.
I lived next to that KFC when that sign was up and had to drive by the stupid thing everyday. It was along the main road in Springfield, OR, and it was really posted for a long time not just a photoshop job. Very insulting, but emblamatic of that whole town. Well, Hillary will get the last laugh when she is President.
Amen, Dee!
Also, in what world does Hillary have fat thighs? I, mean, really? Mine are much larger. (I am trying hard to be a part of the body acceptance movement and will be fully on board when I’ve accepted my own.)