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November 1, 2005
Phone Chips and Salsa
Several weeks ago, Wayne and I had phone chips and salsa, which is a lot like phone sex except with chips and salsa in place of the sex. (That's probably pretty self-evident, but I wanted to make sure everyone understood.)
That is only one of the many activities we have shared over the phone. We have also scrubbed our bathtubs together. We have gone for walks. We have plotted and taken fiendish but heartily deserved revenge against Adam, my evilest of exes. We have washed dishes. We have done laundry. We have googled our celebrity crushes and directed each other to websites featuring photos of obscure foreign actors without their shirts.
In fact, I got a cell phone a mere 14 months ago largely to facilitate talking to Wayne. He was very upset about a $400.00 phone bill he got, especially since most of the charges involved phone calls to or from me. So I got the same carrier he had and we both signed up for free mobile-to-mobile minutes, with the upshot that I began spending 25 to 30 hours a month talking to Wayne on the phone, and about two and a half hours put together talking to everyone else I knew.
That kept up for a good long while until we had a falling out over religion. I may discuss our six-month estrangement and reconciliation at some point in a future post, but let me say now that within days of reestablishing contact all the animosity disappeared and it was like we'd never quarreled, except that it took us a while to work back up to talking on the phone for so long that we'd grow peckish and have to rummage through our various cupboards for snacks.
After we both closed up the bag of chips and put the salsa back in the fridge on that Saturday several weeks back, we decided we needed some internet action, so we blog surfed by hitting the "next blog" button on blogger. We came across a site run by some guy in Vienna dedicated to enormous breasts. He provided plenty of photos of breasts, including a substantial pair on a naked blonde woman who sits on a fireplace mantle, drinking a beer and looking bored while some guy eats her out. I found that in rather bad taste, but what upset Wayne was a photo further down the page of Christian Bale from American Psycho, accompanied by a lavish and loving paean to the character CB portrays: the guy went on and on about how that was his favorite movie and how he really identified with that character--the one who tortures, rapes and murders women.
The thing is, earlier in the conversation, while he was cleaning his kitchen I was tromping through this small wooded area near my house, Wayne had said to me, "So, I read that article you linked on your blog, the one about ‘Die, Women, Die!' and it really kind of bugged me. I couldn't trust it."
"Why?" I asked.
"The tone bugged me. There was this cheap shot about Desperate Housewives, and it makes it sound like the show is just about 40-something T&A. But it's not--it's so much more than that. So the whole article just seemed to have--"
"A feminist agenda?" I interrupted.
"Exactly," he said, "and I don't trust agendas."
"Everyone has an agenda," I said. "It's just that they can be more or less explicit, more or less offensive, more or less progressive."
"Well, I just don't see why someone needs to prove their agenda by knocking Desperate Housewives. It's a great show."
(Unfortunately I couldn't comment on that particular issue at that point, as I had never seen an episode of DH. I have now seen eight episodes, and have been surprised at how much I like it--but more on that later.)
"I think it's a good point and a good article," I said. "There are so many shows that feature violence against women. The article makes the point that not only are these shows most popular among males age 18-34, but these shows are about the only television programming that demographic group really likes to watch."
"But I'm a male between the ages of 18-34," he began.
"Yes, but you're not a straight one," I said.
"But I watch Desperate Housewives," he said.
"Do you watch CSI?" I asked.
"Of course not. I don't watch most of the crap on television. And if you started examining the crap on television, you'd see that almost all of it insults someone."
"But that's not necessarily the same thing as trying to titillate someone by depicting the violent rape, torture and murder of women," I said. "Why should that kind of suffering be entertainment? Why would anyone enjoy watching that?"
(I admit I honestly don't understand that, but then, I have never been able to see anything funny about someone slipping on a banana peel. Even as a small child, I never felt able to laugh because I was too busy thinking about how painful it would be to fall down like that.)
And then the conversation took a turn and we talked about other things for over an hour until we both read the entry about how great that American Psycho character is. "This is obscenely offensive," Wayne said, "because that character is sick!"
So I said, "Do you get it now? Do you see why it's repugnant and abhorrent to have someone identify positively with a character who gets off on brutalizing, degrading and killing women? Do you see why it's not cool to make women convenient objects to be destroyed and discarded as part of a man's exploration of good and evil? Do you see why this sickens and distresses women who come across it?"
And he did--thank goddess.
I haven't unleashed many feminist rants on my blog lately (OK, I haven't unleashed them on the blog, but there have been several in real life), but it seems about time for one. I was going to write something about this Amnesty International Report on Japan's refusal to apologize for enslaving thousand of women as sex slaves, claiming that rape wasn't a war crime until 1949; and about a museum in Japan documenting the lives and suffering of comfort women, but I found an entry on the topic already posted on a blog I really like, I Blame the Patriarchy. So I'll work on drafting some of the ideas I've been mulling over lately, and in the meantime, you can enjoy the insights of another spinster aunt.
Posted by holly at November 1, 2005 12:16 AM
I seem so much cooler on your blog.
Let's hope my mother doesn't see this. Phone chips and salsa is about the closest I come to any feminists agenda this whole life.
I love you.
SO
I don't know how you can say you seem so much cooler on my blog, SO, since I always despair at the impossibility of capturing the incredible coolness that is you. I'm just glad you hang out with and inspire me, so that some of your coolness rubs off on ME.