Bookshelf Battle

Ugh.

Check out this column.

You know, 3.5 readers, what passes as journalism these days is abysmal.

I don’t really want to debate the Kavanaugh situation with you 3.5 readers.  Either you realize it was a bag job or you’re too dumb to realize it was a bag job or…oops.  Yeesh.  Thank God only 3.5 readers read this blog.  Anyway, moving on…

I’ve seen so many dumb columns written by women who talk about their own rage and anger over Kavanaugh and how that somehow applies to the men in their lives and I realize I’m expected to weep for these women but I feel like becoming a male Harriet Tubman – freeing these poor men who have to undergo getting kicked in the proverbial nuts in a shoddy piece of writing so their significant others can have their 15 minutes of fame.

Anyway, here’s what Victoria Bissell Brown, an honest to God history professor wrote, along with my pithy commentary.

BROWN: I yelled at my husband last night. Not pick-up-your-socks yell. Not how-could-you-ignore-that-red-light yell. This was real yelling. This was 30 minutes of from-the-gut yelling. Triggered by a small, thoughtless, dismissive, annoyed, patronizing comment. Really small. A micro-wave that triggered a hurricane. I blew. Hard and fast. And it terrified me. I’m still terrified by what I felt and what I said. I am almost 70 years old.

BQB: Hey husband of this lady.  On the off chance that you’re one of my 3.5 readers, please, for the love of god, get up and go!  You’re 70, man.  You’ve put 50 years in with this lady only to get yelled at as some sort of stand in for a frigging judge she doesn’t like.  Sir, you have done your time. Now please, go to one of those brothels outside of Vegas and score some primo strange before you die.

Seriously, man.  You’re old.  You could croak any time.  Don’t let your last experience with a woman be getting yelled at because you are expected at 70 years of age to dawn a superhero cape and literally apprehend all rapists before they even commit rape.  Yes, you must also be psychic and predict when rapists are about to rape and then stop them.  It is not enough that you, yourself, have lived a good life and been a good husband and handled yourself in a moral manner.

BROWN: I am a grandmother. Yet in that roiling moment, screaming at my husband as if he represented every clueless male on the planet (and I every angry woman of 2018), I announced that I hate all men and wish all men were dead. If one of my grandchildren yelled something that ridiculous, I’d have to stifle a laugh.

BQB: Honestly, lady, I talked to my fellow men and we all admitted that women have gotten us to the point where we all wish we were dead too.  Please, by all means, keep yelling us into early graves so we don’t have to be blamed for things we didn’t do anymore.

BROWN: My husband of 50 years did not have to stifle a laugh. He took it dead seriously. He did not defend his remark, he did not defend men. He sat, hunched and hurt, and he listened. For a moment, it occurred to me to be grateful that I’m married to a man who will listen to a woman. The winds calmed ever so slightly in that moment. And then the storm surge welled up in me as I realized the pathetic impotence of nice men’s plan to rebuild the wreckage by listening to women.

BQB: How did she know nice, non-raping men had a plan to defeat rape by listening to women?

It’s true. I’ve been to the man conventions and the man outdoor camping retreats where we sit around the campfire.  There, we roast marshmallows and say things like, “Hey fellas, just so we’re all on the same page, we’re against rape, right?”  And then the men would talk and then we’d be like, “Yeah, and when our wives want to yell at us as stand ins for judges they don’t like we should totally sit there and take it because to try to explain that we are not the judge they dislike seems like it would require a lot of effort.”

BROWN: I said the meanest thing I’ve ever said to him: Don’t you dare sit there and sympathetically promise to change. Don’t say you will stop yourself before you blurt out some impatient, annoyed, controlling remark. No, I said, you can’t change. You are unable to change. You don’t have the skills and you won’t do it. You, I said, are one of the good men. You respect women, you believe in women, you like women, you don’t hit women or rape women or in any way abuse women. You have applauded and funded feminism for a half-century. You are one of the good men. And you cannot change. You can listen all you want, but that will not create one iota of change.

BQB: Dude.  Seriously, husband, if you’re reading this, get the next flight to Vegas because it sounds like the only thing that will make your missus happy will be your balls in a mason jar.

BROWN: In the centuries of feminist movements that have washed up and away, good men have not once organized their own mass movement to change themselves and their sons or to attack the mean-spirited, teasing, punching thing that passes for male culture. Not once. Bastards. Don’t listen to me. Listen to each other. Talk to each other. Earn your power for once.

BQB: That’s pretty sexist, lady.  I’ll have you know my men’s club meets every Tuesday for a brunch of scones with lavender butter while we read feminist slam poetry and talk about how we all wish we could grow our own vaginas.

BROWN: Pay attention people: If we do not raise boys to walk humbly and care deeply, if we do not demand that men do more than just listen, we will all drown in the flood. And there is no patriarchal Noah to save us.

BQB: Is it me or did she just simultaneously diss the patriarchy and then also demand that the patriarchy do something?

She ends on that note.  Honestly, I have no idea what she was trying to say other than husbands who are kind and decent and loving to their wives and cater to all their needs and whims aren’t doing enough and somehow they must stop bad men from becoming rapists and somehow when men goof on each other and slap each other in the ass with towels and engage in bro speak and drink beers and do manly things this is somehow causing men to become rapists.

Is it me or if a man were to write a column about some famous woman who was alleged to have done something wrong and he wrote that he yelled at his wife for 30 minutes as a stand in for what the famous woman had been done, he’d probably have to lock himself in a cage to protect himself from all the angry protesters, am I right?

I have no idea what this column was trying to say other than apparently it isn’t enough for men to be good men themselves and somehow they must be in charge of all men and all I know is that I do my part as I hold weekly tea parties where I invite all the men I know to eat peppermint cookies and hold hands and sing songs about how we will be nice and share all our feelings and emotions because women love it when men tell their feelings and get emotional.