Of X-Chromosomes and Crazy Bitches

Sometimes I worry that having two X-chromosomes is just plain bad for people. I think the key example of this is feminists. Yes, dear bell hooks, I know that Feminism is for Everybody; however, I feel that there is something about the possession of a uterus that makes one more inclined towards the cause. Though I'm sure there are plenty of nice, sensitive men out there who truly believe in equal rights (or an easy lay), the vast majority of feminists are women. Crazy, hormonal women.

For twenty years, I considered myself a feminist. I got weepy over suffrage, I was adamant about a woman's right to choose, I cared deeply about issues of domestic violence and rape, I hated tampons. I would passionately insist on the equality of the sexes to anyone who would listen. Yet, just this past week I discovered that term "feminist" does not apply to me. Rather, I am a tyrannical elitist patriarch, whose comma use keeps the entire female population down. Yes, people, every time I use a comma or a semicolon, some young struggling housewife gets punched in the face by the iron fist of patriarchy.

In this, my junior fall at an esteemed Ivy League college, I made the momentous mistake of taking a Women's and Gender Studies class. I believed it would be an interesting way to fulfill my last requirement; I believed in the feminist cause and all that crap. What I didn't expect was to be seated in a class with a bunch of upper-middle-class white women who believe that they are oppressed by everything. Television? Oppressive. Bras? Oppressive. Academia? Really fucking oppressive. The class is not a class; rather a group therapy session about how badly the whole world has treated them. One day soon, I think, everyone will just burst into tears, gather into a group hug, and sing Kumbaya.

Last Tuesday, my professor invited a student to our class to talk about the writing and editing services our college provides. My professor urged us all to employ these services; better grammar and better structure would improve the persuasive properties of our papers. Thus, when my professor later asked us to comment on the book we had all just finished, I thought a critique of its (deplorable) grammar was appropriate. I simply told the class that I found the bad grammar so distracting that it was often difficult for me to find the argument; moreover, I felt that a woman writing on feminism should be particularly careful to employ the conventions of Standard English, as many men consider women inherently intellectually inferior to men, and the use of poor grammar would just validate this belief, thereby undermining the entire feminist movement. My professor: The author is just trying to have a conversation with you. She's trying to appeal to women by being conversational. When I suggested that the book was in no way written in the vernacular (the vocabulary used was much too elevated for the average person to understand), and that the grammar was simply poor, I was called an elitist. "Why does the author have to write a certain way to be considered intelligent?" asked a girl in my class. "My grandma is illiterate—does this mean she is too stupid too write a book?"

Honestly, I do not know how one is supposed to reply to such a question, so I simply persisted in my stalwart, Oscar Wildean fashion: "There is good grammar, and there is bad grammar, and that is all." Whereupon, fifteen shrill voices rose in a cacophony of "classist," "supremacist," and "patriarchal." "By not recognizing alternative forms of writing," insisted my professor, "you are just reinforcing the patriarchal academic structure." Other members of my class called my grammar both "patriarchal" and "oppressive."

I feel that there is a certain ludicrousness to these charges; first of all—do my fellow classmates attend an Ivy League college because they are not elitist? Did not my professor obtain her PhD from the same "patriarchal academic structure" that she so laments? If my professor and my peers spent their lives handing out brochures protesting the evils of patriarchal society in the streets, perhaps I could respect their arguments. But instead, they are all here, in a cozy New England town, with manicured fingers and neatly accessorized outfits, going on tearfully about the oppression I sincerely doubt that any one of them has ever experienced.

After being demonized for two hours in class, I went online to look at the writings of both my professor and my peers. And guess what? Not a single one could compose a sentence in anything resembling proper English. Not a single one.

So you know what, feminists? Fuck you. Fuck you and your pseudo-liberal world philosophies and poor sentence structure. Because you know what? I heart patriarchal grammar.

Damn, I wish I were a man.


~Get Back in the Kitchen!



Woman, Bring Me A Beer! says: My computer's grammar check is offended by this post. It believes "housewife" is too gender specific and should be replaced with "homemaker". Even the computers are calling you elitist.