Sick of your Shitty Movies, Hollywood

I think I am the only person in the world who does not want to see The Hangover. My boyfriend asked me to go, telling me that apparently it's a critically acclaimed comedy, people are going wild over it! That's great dear, and I'm sure other people may find it funny, I'm sure I may even find parts of it funny if I switched off my brain for a while.
The thing is, I'm really not in the mood, ever, to pay money to sit in front of a screen for two hours being assaulted with the Bromosocial way of life, that ideally does not include women. The only women ever involved in these bullshit identical movies that have been spewed forth in a steady vile stream over the past few years are as such;

1. The Mommy-Wife. She nags, she's whiny, she's generally 50% hotter than the husband she is married to, just wants him to do things like "grow up" and "get a job" and "contribute to the relationship" and all those stupid things that only girls do.
2. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl-type Lady. She's quirky and pretty and wears funny clothes and does CRAZY things like; jumps off cliffs into the sea, makes main-character-dude go run out in the rain, laughs at all his jokes, never ever judges a thing he says, politely accepts when he cheats on her.
3. The Ugly/Fat/Old/Drunk Whore. Ew! She's ugly! She's so fat! She's so drunk! She's a "cougar"! One of the main dude characters will have sex with her anyway, but EW! As if anyone would want to put their penis in that! Even though I clearly did!

Chicks in these movies are basically only there to present the main dudebro with the opportunity to learn his big life lesson at the end of the movie where he realises something along the lines of; "Wow, I am a giant turdmonster whose life is a cesspool of idleness. I will make this tiny change and voila, I now have the perfect dudebro life." Cue entire cast singing in rainbow world, or all the main characters circle-jerking about what awesome friends they are. We've come so far, and learnt so much!

So...no, I don't want to watch a movie about dudes, and why chicks are gross, cause they have vaginas, and vaginas are totally gross, but we'll fuck them anyway, and man don't you hate it when your wife nags you, and haha, look at that fat whore. And you know what's funny? PENIS!LOL!

In other news;

• You can have a read of what Sady at Tiger Beatdown has to say about the Hangover.
• Check out the trailer for Woody Harrelson's awesome new zombie movie, Zombieland.
• In case anyone doesn't know, I have an obsession with all things Frankenstein, and I found this the other day - Bride of Frankenstein-inspired nude pinup. NSFW Obviously.
• Short zombie film, I Love Sarah Jane, starring the girl who's playing Alice in Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland.
• Monster Island is a serialized online novel about, you guessed it, zombies.
  
• More pimping for Prime geek nightclub which is coming up fast on the 11th of July.
• And one last one, if you're interested in watching movies that don't rely on casual misogyny for laughs, give the Bechdel Test a try. It involves watching only movies that fit the following criteria:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

I aim to give it a go....Will require some research beforehand though.

Oh and for anyone who is close to me/cares, I got booked in for my surgery on the 20th July, and will be out of commission for a week after that. So if you wanna come round and give me casseroles, flowers, massages, cupcakes, ponies, rainbows or just treats in general, I would like that.

RIP Michael

Women can be misogynists too

After all the discussion of (yes I am bring it up once again) the crazy footballer sex/rape/whatevershutup saga, the one thing people keep talking about are the ugly attitudes emerging from people in regards to women...rape...sluts. And the one thing that keeps being said is "I can't believe these attitudes are coming from so many other women".
At first I was a little shocked too, possibly because I only ever discuss these topics in my online bubble of the feminist blogosphere so I guess I'm not used to being faced with "dissenting opinion" that is so incredibly WRONG. But the thing that you forget when you only ever talk to people who agree with your views is that women can be misogynists just as much or more than men.

Here's a quote from a Feminism 101 post at Shakesville that explains why women can be misogynists (do I really have to urge you to read the whole post?):
"Men and women are misogynist for different reasons: men to marginalize women, and women to ingratiate themselves with the men trying to marginalize them. Neither one is justifiable, but one is oppressive and the other is a (bad) strategy to deal with that oppression."

I agree completely with this sentiment and I can say that looking back on my younger self I can say for sure that I was a misogynist. I was told all my life that Real Girls (TM) only like pink, at school they play netball and they're not allowed to wear the same uniform as boys, and at lunch time they have to all sit around talking while the boys get to play. I internalised that I wasn't a Real Girl (TM) because I didn't like Britney Spears, and I liked my hair short and I kicked ass at soccer and because I would ride my bike with the boys. As I got older I realised that now instead of being indifferent to me, all the other girls had started to hate me for some unknown reason. I got enough teasing to last me a lifetime from boys, but mostly from girls, so I spent most of my school years avoiding girls, hating them because they all got to be perfect Real Girls while I was some kind of in-between, there was no way that I could possibly be a Real Girl, how could I be without compromising and giving up everything I liked?
But that's bullshit. There is obviously no definition for a Real Girl, no matter what society tells us - we are all Real Girls, let's just say by virtue of being a living breathing entity who was born/is transitioning to a woman. When I learnt this, I felt like a completely different person. I stopped defensively hating all those girls who I didn't even know, and the more I made friends with other girls I realised that none of them were those perfect pink Real Girls - they were all just like me, and often just as confused. We can't sabotage each other to earn the approval of the patriarchy - whether we will admit that is the reason we are doing it or not.
Again from the Shakesville post:
"Men not being sexist shouldn't be contingent upon women not being misogynist. They should stop being misogynist just because it's the right thing to do... One thus sees that if the men who are misogynists weren't, the women who are misogynists wouldn't have any reason to be. Ergo, exhorting women to stop being misogynists so that men will stop gets it precisely backwards."

So the word I saw most used by misogynist women in regards to the footballer bullshit was the word Slut, and to be honest I've seen it used enough times in the past week to never want to hear or see it again. The word slut is a derogatory, insulting word used to offend promiscuous women - it's original uses also had connotations of a slut being a lowly, dirty person. This has not changed. Please don't try to tell me that calling a man a slut is the same thing, because it's really not, and if you want to argue that, go somewhere else.
It is women who are demonised for being promiscuous. Promiscuous, by the way, means having sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis, or being indiscriminate. Promiscuity is subjective - what may seem to you like an 'unreasonable' number of people to sleep with (let's say, two) is small fries for someone else, your taboo is someone else's fetish. Not to mention that women's sexuality is regarded as non-existent, or "receiving" of men's sexuality - and any woman daring to own or promote her sexuality is publicly dragged over the coals. Since promiscuity is subjective, there is no accurate scale for what is "too much" and there is no way you can ever call someone a slut and hide behind the excuse that she slept with "too many people". What you've just done is compared someone else's sexuality to your own and judged it to be immoral and inferior. Since when did a stranger's sexual life have any bearing on your own though?
This whole bullshit-explosion lately has made me think about these two issues and I really hope anyone reading this takes a moment to think about all the times they have hated a woman or used the word slut (or bitch, or cunt for the matter) and perhaps think twice next time you find yourself saying/feeling it, and try to examine why you're doing it.
It's hard enough to get by in the world just doing your own thing, and it's even harder when people are judging you unfairly for it.