November 29, 2005
Aiding an Oppressor?
A few “posts” ago, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” informed you that we were officially sick and tired of carping and caterwauling about the many things we detest. In fact, upon careless reflection, we decided that we pine to use our considerable e-powers for good.
To this end, we asked our sizeable readership how we could be of some service. Like your mother, we aim to please.
Naturally, dear reader, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” received an outpouring of e-missives from concerned fans figuratively dying to get our advice. Car mortgages; shotgun weddings; grout work—no cause was too dire to stop our colossal readership from seeking our counsel.
Accordingly, our Official Advice Team (a.k.a. the Official Department of Customer Cervix) has recently gone into overdrive, if we may hit you with a bit of an automotive metaphor. We’ve offered more help than Courtney Love’s shrink—and we’d like to think that our advice has been markedly superior.
Yet we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” didn’t expect to receive an intriguing query from one of the Internet’s true e-eminences, the proprietor of the delicious “weblog” The Misspent Life. Mr. Misspent, who is working away in graduate school to become Dr. Misspent, sent us the following jaw-dropping note:
To: “Chip” and the Rest of the Crack Young Staff
From: Misspent
I need your help. While “toiling” away in graduate school, it has come to my attention that my life-world is a very oppressive one; that my normative constructions of gender and race and progress are both structurally determined and structurally constitutive and that it all benefits me.
I had never thought about how my very existence was perpetuating oppression and how the words that I used purposely killed children, women, lesbians, and poor people. What should I do? Should I reject my life-world and strive to become a poor ten-year-old female lesbian (in a wheelchair, just to be safe)? Or should I embrace my role of oppressor and use the system as an excuse to be a jerk, since that is the “real me” inside?
I am really in a bind here. I was going to ask some of the women on campus what to do since they must have wisdom beyond my phallonormative capacities (except for the transgendered ones) but I can't tell which ones are female. Of course I could always ask an undergraduate one. They are very wise, empowered, and brave. Plus, I could probably get laid in the process if I bring them beer and a Chingy CD. Oh, and I'd ask the Larouchies but I forgot my nose-plug at home.
Yours, etc.
Misspent
An interesting letter, is it not? We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have been racking our brains for the better part of a fortnight, attempting to solve the Misspent One’s vexing problem.
Although Mr. Misspent only refers to it obliquely, we take it that he is both a male and white. Which, as anyone with a college degree can tell you, are two cardinal sins in the open-minded world of American academia. Further, it appears as if our lily-white pal doesn’t have any other face cards in the oppression deck—no transgenderism, no homosexuality, no nothing.
At first thought, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” firmly believed that the Misspent One’s best shot to gain some campus respect was becoming “a poor ten-year-old female lesbian (in a wheelchair, just to be safe).” After all, if the Misspent One could honestly pull this off, all his problems would be solved, and he could undoubtedly land a job in some mindless Department of Noxious Political Grievance-Mongering.
Still, we aren’t entirely sure that the Misspent One could actually do this. For starters, it’s really bad karma to use a wheelchair when you don’t need one. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” don’t leave too many taboos unsullied, but the handicapped are certainly one of them. Nothing says “You’re Asking for it, Dipstick” quite like messing with the disabled.
Also, we couldn’t quite figure the value of transforming into a ten-year-old female lesbian. We mean, come on: How would such a young thing wind up in graduate school in the first place? Is he supposed to become some amalgam of K.D. Lang and Doogie Howser? We just don’t think it’ll work.
Unfortunately, this left us with only one reasonable option. Although we certainly dislike the fact that the Misspent One’s “very existence was perpetuating oppression,” and that “the words that [he] used purposely killed children, women, lesbians, and poor people,” such is undoubtedly the case.
As such, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” officially advise our pal Misspent to change his language. Although he certainly can’t alter his oppressive existence, he could employ a few different turns of phrase. Perhaps this would halt some of his congenital offensiveness.
Allow us to offer an example. We officially recommend that our pal cease using phrases such as “Boy, I’d like purposely to kill children, women, lesbians, and poor people.” It’s a rather polarizing sentiment, to say the least. Instead, how about “Hey, I know I’m a white guy and all, but I’m pretending to believe in your pandering, simplistic, and childlike worldview regarding women and minorities in an attempt to get in some chicks’ pants”?
If that doesn’t work, we collectively don’t know what will.
