In which, against my better judgment, I call out a person for being a cockburger.

Today I was reading through Left Face's recent posts (I've been so internet-naughty lately and haven't kept up with shit like I orta) and found a trackback from Ophiolite's post about how she braved the Navy Ball and found that she enjoyed it despite the reservations built up from years of being subject to Mean Girls attacks. So I clicked on the trackback. And what did I find?

A mean girl, wangsting ineloquent about how the "Debbie Downers"* can never find anything positive and can't seem to "bloom where [they're] planted." To which I respond: Fuck her in the ear.

This here blog post is why I find her attack so reprehensible. Let's call this particular blogger the very fucking heavy straw that broke this camel's back. I've been pissy about shit like this for a while, but I've had enough after the articles at milspouse blogs about how classy women don't dress like they'd prefer to display their quickevering, dick-eating vulvas on sterling silver platters; recent attacks against girls who've been abused by grown men and then slut-shamed sometimes into suicide; and the reporting around a certain ex-CIA director and his inability to direct his cock into his wife when there are women apparently throwing themselves at him.

And guess what? I'm not even going to talk about how she's a mean girl who can't seem to let go of that high school mentality. Oh, no, darlings. We're going to look at some of the shit she wrote, and I'mma 'splain how it makes her a perpetrator of evil.

The shitbaggery begins in her opening statement:

How many adult women get the chance to dress up and spend a night dancing?
...
And with that, I introduce you to this girl:

Where by "this girl," the blogger means Ophiolite.

So first, let's look at the fact that she infantilized someone straight off just because Ophiolite has a different opinion, different life experience, and different methods of dealing with the stresses of being a milspouse. She starts out referencing women--ADULT women, specifically, because apparently women come in kid-sized, too--and then drops down to infantilization via "girl." Oh, but I bet she does not know this word. It's not one generally referenced outside of intellectual circles, I know, so I'll define it here in case she gets a trackback and sees this post and does not comprehend all these words I use. I'm so sweet like that. It's my Southern upbringing. Momma always taught me to help out those who are disadvantaged.

From Dictionary.com, natch:

in·fan·til·ize

/ˈɪnfəntlˌaɪz, -taɪˌlaɪz, ɪnˈfæntlˌaɪz/

verb (used with object), in·fan·til·ized, in·fan·til·iz·ing.

1. to keep in or reduce to an infantile state.

2. to treat or regard as infantile or immature.

Infantilization is a hallmark of sexism, practiced intersexually. Hell, sometimes we even do it to ourselves (e.g. calling oneself Victory Girl). That's what happens when we're all indoctrinated and socialized to believe bullshit, and we've not taken the opportunity to dissect our attitudes and biases in order to better ourselves. Just sayin'. But let's move on!

I’ve read some of [the MSM and SB] ball advice posts. For the most part, they’re common sense. Don’t wear anything slutty or ostentatious, for example. Because it’s true. Wives do it every year, too. They skank it out, wear cocktail dresses to a black-tie event, or wear a dress with so much sequins and glitter that Las Vegas surely must have run out.

Behold! We have graduated from infantilization to slut shaming and judgment based on attire. Let's hit the latter first.

What if a woman chose to wear a formal gele to the ball? If it's a part of her heritage and something she considers formal, would this blogger declare her Too Ostentatious For Mah Delicate Eyeballs and make snark all over her blog about how they clearly ran out of silk in Africa and can you believe how low-class she is?

What if a woman chose to wear a sequined abaya to the ball? If it's part of her heritage and something she'd be comfortable to wear to a formal event with other women of her heritage, is she going to judge all those black sequins and the yards non-form-fitting black silk as Too Ostentatious For Mah Delicate Eyeballs and make snark all over her blog about how they clearly ran out of sequins in Dubai hurr hurr hurr?

Might come as a bit of a fucking shock to someone so clearly unworldly and intellectually penned in as she makes herself seem, but even different regions in America have different traditions and definitions. My hand to the sky, I never got a better picture of this than when I went from living in Houston (yee haw!) to living in Buffalo (the fuck happened to the temperature??). Fashion is different across the nation. Style is different across the nation. And both are even different within a family. I'd rather go to a ball naked than wear some of the shit the women in my family consider classy. Texas had nothing on Buffalo Big Hair back in the day. And Texan prom dresses, which could be anything from cocktail-length to formal with trains, had nothing on some of the Buffalo dresses that looked like they were ripped from screenshots of My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.

So making a snap judgment about someone's dress because they dolled up in lots of sequins or are showing more skin than might be comfortable for the judge to wear? Unfair. And actually a little infantile, if I do say so.

Now let's look at words like "slutty" and "skank." Allow me to show how to express the same sentiment...only with class.

 Some of these women don't look up what the standard definition of formal attire is, and they decide clubwear and Red Carpet Shocker Attire are appropriate choices for a military ball. And they're not. Formal attire at a ball means the only skin showing should be arms, chest with no cleavage, and at most 50% of the back. Hands and face are optional.**

Instead of choosing words that actually refer to what is wrong with the clothing these milspouses have chosen to wear, they cast that clothing into a sexualized judgment and then shame the woman for daring to have ventured so close to her sexuality.

That's what you'd call slut shaming. Here? It's pretty mild. I've definitely heard worse, though I still want to bite faces and kick puppies when I hear clueless, brainless fluffburgers slut shame even on this level. And then I want to show them what it feels like to be slut shamed by men from different cultures who think women like her should be beaten in the streets for showing a slip of their ankles.

But here's where slut shaming goes as it rolls downhill and picks up speed. It goes here and here and here and even here. Note this particular paragraph in that last link (emphasis mine):

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

In other words, how terrible that this little eleven-year-old girl was raped but clearly she was asking for it, that shameless hussy!

What's wrong with slut shaming? Well, first, it makes a big deal out of something natural...but only for a certain sector of society. Teh wimminz must keep their legs closed. If they open for anyone but their husbands, or if they dress in a way that allows the viewer to infer the person might possibly be sexual, they are sluts. Men? Not so much. They could show up to a ball wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a bow tie, and the only pronouncements made about them would be their lack of class, intelligence, and either sanity or maturity. A woman would be slut-shamed. How dare that skank-whore! I bet she waits for deployment so she can ride every dickstick in town, that shameless tramp!

So aside from just being a checkmark on the Am I A Sexist Asshole list, there's another issue: slut-shaming attempts to remove a woman's agency. It's a form of objectification that boils a woman down to her vajayjay (and maybe her tits, if we're venturing into boobs-as-sex rather than boobs-as-baby-food). She could have discovered cold fusion and could be on the verge of bringing free energy to the entire world, but if she dresses like a man-eating cock-monster, then she's only the sum of her ladybits. Right? Yeah.

All of this, bee tee dubs, is part of the rape culture. For those of you who haven't heard me harp enough about rape culture, allow me to refer you to a much longer and less f-bomb-riddled dissertation than I have time to type up. In short: by objectifying women, sexualizing them, shaming them for having ladybits (much less using them TEH HORRORS!), we lay a breadcrumb trail of excuses for why it's their fault if they're assaulted, and for why the menfolk just can't help themselves when all they see is ladybits...rather than the woman who happens to have those bits.


So congratulations to Victory Girl! She's just contributed to the rape culture. I hope she feels all warm and fuzzy about being a perpetrator of evil. She might despise the articles at MSM and SB, but her attitude places her among the ranks of those with a penchant for slut-shaming and cockburgery.

* In which she's referring to those wives who are sick and fucking tired of jizzdrizzles looking down on the rest for not fitting into their definition of a Good Military Wifey, which is generally some permutation of Pretty Pretty Princess.

** That's not the standard definition of military formal attire for civilians, but I imagine that's what self-appointed Slut-Skank Guard members have deemed appropriate.