offensive limericks and North American politesse

Therese Fitzpatrick therese.fitzpatrick at gmail.com
Sun Apr 24 11:52:15 PDT 2005


So what are you saying, Raffi?  Are you suggesting that tame poetry
that reduces women to sexual objects should be acceptable on this list
or anywhere else?  As long as there are chuckleheads in the world who
think it is acceptable to reduce a women to a tattoo on her ass, I am
quite certain there will not be enough open space in the world to
change our problems.  When you tell me that you are grateful for
Ralph's poem that reduced a female to a sexual object, you are closing
a whole lot of space for me, Raffi.  You are telling me it is OK to
sexually objectify female bodies and, intrinsically, females.

Let's try and imagine that the woman in Ralph's poem was your sister
or your niece. . . . let's imagine it was Ralph's daughter with the
price of beer tattoo'd on her ass; then imagine a bunch of drunks
leering at her ass as she interacts with them in a servile manner. . .
.

Let's imagine you serving me beer, Raffi.  Would you be willing to do
it in a pair of pants that fully reveals the contours of your package?
 And would you be willing to serve me beer with the price of beer
tattoo'd close to your crotch for me to leer at while I asked you to
wait on me?  I would like you to wear a string thong with just enough
fabric to cover your package and I would like you to have $3.00
tatoo's on your thigh.  Is that close enough to the edge for you?  I
don't know you, of course, but I venture to guess that if you heard
jokes that gently and goodnaturedly made fun of a man's package, day
in and day out, you would find it increasingly difficult to perceive
your world the way you do now.  Women have been living under the
oppression of this kind of good clean fun for a long time and it is
all but impossible for you to imagine the damage it causes, like water
on rock.   We don't know what the world would look like if women were
not reduced to tattoo's on their ass in the name of good fun.  I'd
like to find out.

We can live on the edge you like, Raffi. . . but as long as that edge
denigrates women all in the name of silly jokes that are rooted in a
deep devalulation of a woman's worth. . . we are not going to solve
all the problems of the world.

Out there on this edge you like Raffi, would it be ok to share a poem
that gently and kindly made fun of Armenian genocide?  Do you think
that the domination of women comes from a different root in the human
soul than genocide?!

Ralph, please believe me, I am certain you shared your poem to be
harmless and I assume you live in the same sexist culture I do that
has long held it to be perfectly OK to reduce women to sexual objects.
 I did not object to attack you, Ralph.  I objected because for the
rest of my life I am going to object when overt denigration of women
crosses my path.  I want to open space in the world for women and men
to be free of such male dominator cultural stereotypes.

I am 51 and I have probably spent about 45 of those years politely
chuckling or ignoring things like Ralph's poem.  If every women in the
world woke up tomorrow and made the same decision I have made to stop
choking such 'harmless' gender stereotyping, it would end.  I am doing
my part to open space for gender equality.  Asking me to not only let
Ralph's poem go unnoticed but to also refrain from commenting on
Raffi's male-dominator insistence that a joke about a tattoo on a
women's ass is a good thing to have on this list serve is asking me to
tolerate bigotry, domination, control. . . .

I don't need to keep this on the list.  I was half regretting that I
had objected to Ralph's poem until I read your gratitude, Raffi. I
just can't let it pass that you seem to be insisting that it is
acceptable to post poems on this list that reduce a woman to a tattoo
on her ass. So I am going to conclude that you think reducing women to
sexual objects, Raffi, is a good way to build community?

Let's get back to talking about OS and using it in our work in the world.

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