In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Moron of the Day

Jill

I don’t usually go around calling people stupid (ok I do, but usually only in my head), but Charlotte Allen has really taken idiocy to a new low by writing about Blogging Against Heteronormativity. Prepare yourself. It’s just… wow.

Hey, betcha you don’t even know what “heteronormativity” is!

Well here’s what: It’s the belief that, just because 97 percent of human beings have strong attractions to the opposite sex and like to do heterosexual things such as get married, we have no right as a society to view those 97 percent as normal and the remaining 3 percent as a bit off the beaten path.

And by “off the beaten path” I actually mean “So depraved and wrong that I personally enjoy advocating against giving them the basic rights that all other Americans have.”

“Like to do heterosexual things such as get married.” Fancy that. Apparently there are some gays and lesbians out there who want to do heterosexual things, too! But that wouldn’t do, because if they wanted to get married then that would mean that they fit Charlotte Allen’s narrow little idea of “normal,” and everyone knows that teh gays are nothing if not abnormal. And so we must not let them marry. Or something.

I do love how she attacks “blogging against heteronormativity,” and then makes cartoonishly heteronormative statements in order to demonstrate that heteronormativity does not need to be blogged against.

Also, do 97% of human beings get married? Fact-check!

And here’s Maia, a New Zealander, complaining about her country’s heteronormative paid-leave laws:

“Under the Holidays Act you get 3 days’ paid bereavement leave on the death of a set of named people, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, spouse and spouses parents. For a friend you can get one day’s paid leave if your employer accepts a bereavement.

“Our society does not value, or even really recognise friendships, particularly friendships between women.”

Isn’t that awful? Imagine deciding that most people’s parents are more important to them than their friends! What’s next to complain about: no paid bereavement leave when your dog dies?

Yo, dumbass, I think her point was that if your same-sex partner dies, they’re technically only a “friend” under New Zealand law and you don’t get the same leave that you would if they were your legal spouse. And Maia gave a few examples of women who really are “just” friends but who operate essentially as family members — raising children together, etc. What she was trying to say, I think, is that people have all kinds of domestic arrangements, and priviliging categories like “spouse” doesn’t really speak to the situations that many people live in.

And comparing female friends to dogs. How sweet. And what an independent little lady she is!

7 thoughts on Moron of the Day

  1. I’m amazed by her ability to pigeon hole ‘heteronormativity’ into an even tighter catagory. In her mind heteronormativity seems to mean 2.5 kids raised in a dual parent household to grow up, get a spouse, white picket fence, golden retreiver, and produce 2.5 more kids.
    The idea that a friend can’t be more important than a spouse is down right shameful, whether that friend is your partner or not.

    I constantly get the question of, “aren’t you worried that your daughter will get too attached to someone you’re dating?”
    Well, no. Why would my daughter get more attached to someone because I’m having sex with them, than she is to our extended family, that though we don’t currently live with, we spend equal amounts of days and nights at their house as our own?

    Proof positive, Kids: Heteronormativity is bad for straight people too.
    Somehow I don’t see it as being better for gay people.

  2. Isn’t that awful? Imagine deciding that most people’s parents are more important to them than their friends! What’s next to complain about: no paid bereavement leave when your dog dies?

    I was more sad about my cat dying than I would be about my brother dying.

    I have few friends, but they are intensely close friends. Society has no business giving you more time to mourn for relatives you may be stuck with and not like, than friends you love and cherish.

    And they’re not just deciding that “most” people’s parents are more important to them than their friends, they’re forcing that decision and those priorities on everyone. “Most” doesn’t matter when you’re not one of them, when you get bereavement leave when the parents who threw you out of the house and disowned you 20 years ago for being gay pass on, but not when your lover dies and you are actually bereaved.

  3. I’m more amazed by the fact she doesn’t allow comments.

    This behavior reminds of the tricks we used to do as kids. Ring the door bell and run away, etc.

    Another asshat!

  4. What she doesn’t realize is that it’s not ABOUT cultural majority. It’s about language as a means of connoting cultural perception. Say whatever derisive things you will about political correctness (or, as I like to call it, TACT), one cannot use intolerant language and expect anything but intolerant dialogue.

    Wittgenstein and Derrida both talked about this. In order to talk about new concepts, be they cultural, philosophical or spiritual, society needs to continually adjust language and re-examine the meanings of traditional symbols (gay, straight, boy, girl), lest such symbols interfere with real dialogue.

    THAT to me, is blogging against heteronormativity. It’s about changing the way we view certain symbols and roles, in order to create a society more accepting of all.

  5. That’s not what I was saying at all Jill. Spouse would include same-sex partner in New Zealand, because it includes defacto partners (and we have civil unions).

    My post was about how sexual relationships are priviledged above all other forms of relationships. Why that happens, and what effects it has.

  6. Well, in that light, Maia, I can see the government’s point. Because, look, there has to be some end point at which you’re going to give benefits like paid bereavement, and blood relations plus friendships sufficiently strong to register so that there is some legal recognition of the bond (not necessarily sexual) is a pretty good line to draw.

    And I speak as someone who actually had opposing counsel refuse to give consent for an extension of a deadline because I missed a lot of work while my mother was dying. The judge was rightly horrified.

  7. zuzu I really recommend you read the post as a whole, because I was making a much larger point with that argument (http://capitalismbad.blogspot.com/2006/04/down-with-practically-everything.html ).

    The only legally recognised relationships are blood relationships and marriage relationships. This reflects the social situation, where blood and sexual relationships are prioritised. I think we should be able to choose what relationships are most important to us based on the relationship, not on the type of relationship.

    But I am someone who believes in radically changing society. I don’t think that just because it’d be hard to work in the way we organise the world at the moment, that that makes it wrong.

Comments are currently closed.