There's a "Sally Forth" Joke Here Somewhere

Today's Failbook fail: Works Every Time.

Question: How do you make a woman fall in love with you?

My answer: Hmm. Well, you can't make anyone fall in love with anyone else, right? That's . . . sort of the point of love. It's a great, mysterious force that strikes by surprise and keeps you locked in its hold through good times and crappy times alike. Asking me why I love my guy is like asking me why I sleep in a bed or why I eat tomatoes: it's just so obvious to me (though for other people, obviously, it wouldn't be obvious at all!), and I can't imagine things any other way.

That being said, if you have a girl you've got your eye on, there are things you can do to try to win her favor. Asking her out is a good start. Always respect her bodily autonomy. Never think you "deserve" a kiss for taking her out to dinner, or "deserve" sex for taking her out a few times. (Also, it's not on you to pay for the dates! It's 2011, fellas.) You deserve nothing, but she may choose to kiss you, or sleep with you, provided that's also something you want. Get enthusiastic consent for any sexual acts -- "Do you want me to do this? What would you enjoy?" Etc. If she says, "I just want to snuggle," don't be all dickishly disappointed. Snuggle like a pro.

Listen when she talks. Take her opinions seriously. Honor her intelligence. Look at things from her perspective. If you get this right, you'll be way ahead of the pack.

If you actually act on things you hear, you'll do great. If she talks about how Ben Folds Five was the first concert she ever went to (. . . ahem, not that I base that on my life or anything), maybe get her the new Ben Folds album for her birthday. You see where I'm going. It's all about listening and making her realize you do listen.

Oh, and don't lie. And if you're not feeling things, don't be like, "I need some time to think about our future," or whatever. Just apologize and end things kindly. Gah. (. . . Ahem. Again.)

So, that's pretty much it, I guess.

Facebook's answer: "have a chocolate penis that ejaculates money"

. . .

I, um.

. . .

Wait, so this dude wants me to bite off his wang? Or is this supposed to be a goose-that-laid-the-golden-egg scenario, what with the money ejaculation? Oh, wait, I have a JOB. I don't need jizz made of pennies, ASSHOLE. So yeah, I'll be biting off your dick now, douchebag.

Her Full Name Is Little Jane Owned-By-Father

Today's Failbook fail: Her Full Name.

Some 13-year-old girl takes a Facebook quiz about what her baby will be named. (. . . Why is that even a quiz?! It's not as if a baby's name is something that just happens to it, with no input from the person who birthed it.) Her father replies that the baby would be an orphan anyway, since he would strangle his daughter for having a baby.

Charming. I mean, honestly, it comes off as slightly funny for a moment, but then you follow the thought to its logical conclusion and go, "Oh damn."

Fathers threatening their daughters with extreme consequences if they act upon their natural sexual feelings is so commonplace in America, we barely think about it. "When she turns 13, I'm gonna buy a shotgun." "No dating while she's under my roof." "Any boy she brings home, I'm gonna give him the third degree before he sets foot anywhere alone with my baby girl."

What's wrong with this? Well, it's all about men protecting the virginity of the women they own. Mothers rarely say shit like this. And parents almost never say it about their sons. What father of a boy has threatened to buy a shotgun on the kid's 13th birthday??

Here's the thing, Dads of America. Your children are going to develop into adults, and during that in-between time, adolescence? They are horny as hell, girls and boys alike. Also, they are not babies. You have to give them room to learn about their own sexuality, gradually and naturally. No, I don't think any 13-year-old should be giving birth. But the fail in today's Failbook fail is about the atmosphere that makes a comment like, "I will kill you if you get pregnant" so matter-of-fact and unquestioned.

Another Creeper Alert

Today's Failbook fail: Complicated and Imaginary.

What is it, I ask you, about the way het men relate to women that they can feel they are in a "relationship" with a woman they've never met? And by the way, this is by no means the first Failbook post of this nature -- it's one of at least several, and it's always het men talking about women. Why do they feel this is acceptable?

This isn't an empty question. It has repercussions from stuff as trivial as this Failbook post, all the way up to actions like John Hinckley's.

I suspect that when one gender is taught to view members of the other gender as objects rather than people, then this sort of behavior naturally results in a small, but not insignificant, portion of the population. Only a theory, of course.

Go Back To Fifth Grade Health Class

Today's Failbook fail: To Whom It May Concern.

A woman complains that her employer, a hospital, does not provide tampons for sale in the gift shop. Her boyfriend comments that she needs to stop "broadcasting her bleeding lady bits." No, seriously. Her boyfriend says that. He also says he's "grossed out."

So . . . you want to publicly pronounce that you're "grossed out" because your girlfriend is shedding her uterine lining -- which she does every month, because she is not pregnant, probably much to your relief. What if she were to proclaim that she's grossed out by your penis, which urine comes out of multiple times a day? Ew, it's like a pee factory! I don't want that thing in my mouth or my vag! Grooooooss!!

Here's the deal, buddy boy: when you have sexual relations with a person, you accept everything about that person's genitalia. If you're a het guy, this means being cool with periods and period paraphernalia. Just because it's socially acceptable to say "ew, gross" when it comes time to talk turkey about that time of the month doesn't mean your girlfriend should take that shit. I hope she drops you right quick.

Also, never fucking say "bleeding lady bits." Ever. Fucking. Again. EVER.

For Female Lawyers, It's $1.4 Million!

Today's Failbook fail: Equal Rights.

Women talk about times they have "sweet talked" their ways out of tickets. One woman says she cries to get out of tickets.

For the record, according to Traffic (which I just read), crying has a net neutral effect on whether you will get a ticket. Some cops will let you off; others will specifically give you a ticket to punish you for crying. (Others, of course, will do what they are supposed to do, regardless of how the driver reacts.) So I'm happy to ignore the woman who says she cries.

As far as "sweet talking" . . . let's be real here. Most cops are men. If women are "sweet talking" men to evade punishment, what does that actually say about our society? Perhaps that women are taught that their most valuable commodity is their sexuality? And, by the way, there's no earthly reason that most cops should be men. In fact, Traffic also covers how in Mexico (I think), they've hired all female traffic cops, because they were shown to be less susceptible to corruption. Is that a model I think we should follow? Absolutely not. But a mostly-male police squad is yet another reminder of how the patriarchy affects our daily lives.

Anyway, back to the fail. You might be wondering where it is, since all I've done so far is pontificate about traffic cops. So some dudebro busts into the thread and says, "so don't bitch when men make more than women do in the workplace, we actually have to pay our tickets."

Dude? Bro? Go fuck yourself. Over her lifetime, a college-educated woman loses $713,000 thanks to the gender wage gap. Oh, and therefore she collects less Social Security and has less in her retirement fund, so she's more likely to be an impoverished senior citizen. Unless you are routinely paying $10,000 parking tickets that come straight out of your Roth IRA, you can shove that Men's Rights Assholery right where it belongs.

A Woman's Place Is In Your Face

Today's Failbook fail: Kitchening.

Some jackass says because a person is a woman, she should be good at things involving the kitchen.

I don't give a flying pancake if this is supposed to be noveau hipster irony, or if this jackass genuinely believes a woman's place is in the house. You know why I don't care? Because every time a man says "make me a sandwich" (or one of its three thousand variants), it reinforces this fucked-up notion, regardless of the speaker's intent to be "ironic." Maybe we should save this joke for when women don't do like three times as much housework as men! Maybe then it will be funny! Not now! Right now, you need to shut the fuck up!!

Doubleheader

Today's Failbook fails: That Time Is Now and Roadside Assistance.

I was agonizing -- yes, dear readers, agonizing -- over which of these two piles of shit to deconstruct, and my dear fiancé said I should do a two-for-one deal, which I thought was fair, since I took the weekend off.

In the first, a father masquerades as his daughter on Facebook, saying that she has just found her boyfriend (husband?) in bed with another man, and so she is dumping him, because he is "so GAY." So, all right, it's hard to know what the father's intentions were here -- does he hate the boyfriend? Is it "good-natured ribbing"?

In any case, if a woman were to actually walk in on her significant other having sex with another man, I imagine the reaction would be more along the lines of, "You asshole! You cheated on me!" But no, the father just wanted to be like, "GAY GAY GAY, " so of course that's the faux reaction we get.

And then the daughter puts the crap cherry on this shit pie by saying her dad has "fraped" her. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It's bad enough that this phrase makes light of rape -- must you add to it by implicating your own father?? It's as if she doesn't even see the word anymore, she uses it so casually.

The second steaming turd is all sexism, all the time. A woman expresses gratitude for the man who kindly stopped to help her change her tire. Men flock to the status to say dumb shit. "Hurr durr, it's because you have boobs. Hurr durr, if you were a man you'd change your own tire. Hurr durr, you didn't strip for him in gratitude?" A woman cannot even thank a man for his kindness without other men coming along, whipping out their dicks, and peeing all over the scene. Sexism: turning men into douchebags since THE DAWN OF TIME.

A Meditation on Blonde Jokes

Today's Failbook fail: Four Blondes.

What are blonde jokes "about," really? Other jokes that indict groups of people are usually pretty clearly racist, anti-Semitic, ablist, what have you. Blonde jokes are odd in that they target the most sexually desirable members of American society -- blonde women (who are presumably het/cis/thin/blah).

But I guess the message of blonde jokes is, Don't get too big for your britches, ladies. Don't let our desire of you ever distract you from the fact that you are a woman and therefore an idiot. In fact, the hotter you are, the dumber you must be. Ugly women are dyke feminists. Hot blonde women are morons who want nothing more than to trick some many into marrying and supporting them.

It's funny -- not funny ha-ha, more funny sad -- that jokes like this, which are, let us get one thing straight, written by het men, put on display the very real contempt so many men have for all women. These are people who are sexually attracted to a group of people that they loathe, fear, disdain. They believe terrible things about a group of people that they want to fuck, maybe even marry and procreate with.

This is why I never got this "battle of the sexes" shit. Most of us are attracted to people on the "other side." I do my best to believe nothing about men as a whole, and make my mind up about them individually. My father is a wonderful man. My fiancé means the world to me. I have tons of male friends at work. My mentor at work, with whom I'm very close, is a man. Some people want you to believe that feminists hate men. Nope. But plenty of men hate women. And that's just sad.

Thelma and Louise Notwithstanding

Today's Failbook fail: Bad Example.

Some jackass makes fun of women drivers. Someone (a woman, probably) reminds him that he is himself a shitty driver.

But she does it too nicely, frankly, with a little winky face and all that shit. Next time someone pulls this shit on you, say calmly, "Have you ever thought about why men's car insurance rates are higher than women's? It's because actuaries have crunched years' worth of data and determined that men are costlier to insure. Meaning, men are bigger insurance risks than women. Meaning, women are the better drivers."

I usually don't pull this actually-the-data-say-otherwise shit out unless people espouse something that's just completely the opposite of the truth. Like when assholes spout off about gay people turning their kids gay or abusing them or whatever. Actually, it's the opposite! Gays make better parents! Shut the fuck up!

Not Even Close

Today's Failbook fail: China = Japan.

Look, if you can't tell by looking at a Southeast Asian person which country their ancestors are from, you are not alone. And no one would fault you for not knowing.

But the damn video here is titled with the word "Chinese," and then the idiotic OP starts spouting off about Pearl Harbor. Jesus Christ Almighty. It just showcases your ignorance, pal. You really don't differentiate between those countries at all.

Also, I just have to say . . . the actual video is an ad for a torture device for women that will squeeze them in precisely the right excruciating way to give them video-game-woman-style cleavage. I'm calling sexism on this one for not even acknowledging that this ad is for something ridiculously awful for women.

In Your Defense, Perhaps You Were Born a Jackass

Today's Failbook fail: Charlie Sheen's Lawyer Has a Point.

I'm going to be honest with you: I don't keep up with news about dickwads who are unjustifiably famous. (Sheen's dad? Justifiably famous. What the fuck has Sheen done to make him so damn famous, besides being born into a famous family? The last reasonably good movie he did was Being John Malkovich, and that was 1999.)

Anyway, so I don't keep up with the Sheenosphere. So my curiosity was piqued by today's Failbook fail, which says, in its entirety: "in Charlie Sheen's defense, cocaine is fun and those women have vaginas."

So, I have no interest in telling anyone what drugs they should or should not put into their bodies. The cocaine part, I am indifferent to.

But the part about women . . . well, I just wanted to know what the hell the commenter was talking about. I searched around for recent Sheen meltdowns, and I couldn't figure out what the women part was about. All his recent ranting seems to be entirely based on cocaine, self-aggrandizement, and anti-Semitism.

Then I pulled up this gem from the New York Times that summarizes Sheen's relationships with women: "In addition to wreaking all manner of havoc on himself with drugs and alcohol that has put him in the hospital and the show on hiatus, Mr. Sheen has done a lot of damage to the people around him, women in particular." It goes on to describe three separate incidents in which he threatened to kill women with whom he was involved, and how he had physically abused all three of them. The kicker: "Yet none of these incidents got Mr. Sheen fired from his lucrative day job as a sitcom star, not even suspended. What did? He insulted his boss."

So . . . his violence against women was utterly minimized . . . he never seemed to face any repercussions for it . . . and this douchebag on Facebook says, "those women have vaginas."

I'm fairly sure the original commenter was excusing Sheen's fucking around, not his beating up of those he fucked, but . . . no. Just . . . no. I have no tolerance for anything even close to this level of shit when it comes to domestic violence. Sit down and shut up, jackass.

I -- What -- But -- Really, WHAT

Today's Failbook fail: Men, Women, and Trees.

Oh shit, y'all, it is on.

Failbook hasn't been pushing my buttons for the last two weeks or so. I was starting to secretly wonder if . . . no, it can't be, but maybe . . . are they reading this blog?? I do tweet them with a link when they do something absolutely atrocious. But they've certainly never responded.

This is typical of my relationship, if you can call it that, with Failbook. I email them, or tweet at them, or use their contact form to complain -- not that I do this very often, mind you, but I did it a few times when they started using "frape" like it was the new hotness instead of a hot mess -- and they never get back to me. Ever. Not even a form letter to say, "Thank you for your concern. Humor is subjective, blah blah patronizing bullshit, we hope you enjoy our product."

So, I don't know, I thought they could be silently reading. I have to assume they read my emails and were silent, so I postulated that they could get my tweets and stay silent, too.

Anyway, my point is, my ridiculous fantasy wherein they read this blog and say to themselves, "Shit, we are being assholes by promoting some of this stuff"? Shattered. Totally shattered. All thanks to today's post.

A woman kicks off this layer cake of sexism with this gem, which I have always hated with a fiery passion: "If a man says something in the middle of the forest and there isn't a woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?"

STOP. STOP IT. I know you think you're being cute, but you are perpetuating this Henny Youngman vision of heterosexual relationships that still, to this day, colors almost all interactions between men and women. Women nag! Men pout! Take my wife, please! Christ on a cracker, have we seriously not moved past that?? You are free to date and/or marry anyone you choose (if you are het -- we're working on it for the gay half of this equation, obviously). Why would a woman become involved with a man who, in her opinion, is always wrong?? Why would a man become involved with a woman who believed that about him? Can we not all agree that men are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and that women are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, because as wacky as it sounds, we are all the same species?!?!

A woman says, "Of course." Shut up.

A man says, "Balderdash, we are always right." Triple, no, quadruple shut up. "Women are always telling men they're wrong" is an ugly manifestation of our culture's ideas of heterosexuality, but "Men are always right" is an even uglier manifestation of men's domination of women. Read some of the stories at No Longer Quivering and then make that fucking joke.

And the last comment, the one that no doubt launched it onto Failbook, is a man saying, "If a tree falls on a woman and no one is around to hear her, why is a tree in the kitchen".

Let's go through what that one sentence is doing:

1. Telling a woman her place is in the kitchen; and
2. Throwing in a healthy dose of violence, by way of blunt object trauma.

I know a lot of men, a lot of men, who consider themselves to not be raging sexists, use that whole "back to the kitchen/make me a sandwich" shit in an attempt to be . . . ironic? Or something. Yeah, it's just like wearing a trucker hat, except for the part where you deny the potential of half the human race to achieve anything outside one room in one house.

Lest you think I am overreacting, I invite you to watch The Daily Show's coverage of the 2004 March for Women's Lives (which I proudly attended). It's only 6 minutes long, and it's hilarious, so you should watch the whole thing. But if you're insanely pressed for time, skip ahead to the 2:30 mark, where you see that the anti-abortion protesters are screaming at the marchers, "SUBMIT! BACK TO THE KITCHEN! NOTHING COMPLICATED!"

So, yeah, about your irony? There are plenty of people who don't find it so fucking ironic.

In summary: imagine a train speeding along at 90 MPH carrying a metric ton of sexism. Now imagine Snidely Whiplash has tied a giant sexist douchenozzle to the tracks. Finally, imagine a trucker carrying a wide load of sexism is speeding towards the train tracks, because the arm that's supposed to come down to stop him is tragically malfunctioning.

That KABOOM reverberating through my little scenario is the trainwreck of sexism that this post created. Ugh, it's like sexist shrapnel is being lodged in my brain. Get it out, get it out!

Being Trans Is Not a Punchline

Today's Failbook fail: Lady GaGa's Perfume.

You know, Failbook's fails have been pretty minor for the last couple weeks. It was getting to the point where I was wondering if they had decided to cast off the Dark Side and actually respect human beings.

Then I saw today's fail and I was like, "LOL, they got me, ROFL."

Someone mentions that Lady Gaga (which is, BTW, the correct capitalization of her stage name) is making a perfume called "Blood and Semen." (I have no idea if this is true, and I don't give a shit if it is.) Someone of course makes a crack about how she should use her own semen in it.

I have to phrase what I want to say here very carefully, because it could easily be read by fucknecks as being anti-trans. I want to be clear: there is nothing wrong with being trans. This is obvious to all people who are not jackasses.

However, there is obviously something wrong with wielding accusations of being trans (or gay) as though those accusations are insults and/or punchlines. For the people who've been hiding under a rock for the past three years, Lady Gaga is an immensely successful pop icon, and because she is a successful woman, people "accuse" her of being a transwoman. She is in fact a ciswoman.

There's something insidious and awful about denying people's right to label themselves, for starters. And, of course, only gayness/transness are used as punchlines. Let's try to imagine the opposite scenario with a famous gay person (I would use a famous trans person, but I honestly cannot think of a transperson with the level of public visibility necessary to make this analogy work):

Rando: "Hey, I hear Ellen DeGeneres is starring in a kids' movie where she's married to Colin Firth and their kids get into wacky hijinks." [Ed. note: I clearly just pulled this out of my ass, but N.B. I love Colin Firth.]
Jackass: "Ohmigod, I knew it, this just proves Ellen is a straight!! She's always acting so straight, you know? I know she's says she's a lesbian, but Christ, you can feel the straight vibes just pouring off her."

No. This is clearly ridiculous. We only feel the need to snipe at the people we feel are transgressing the normal bounds of sexuality and gender, try and herd them into their so-called rightful place, way on the edge of the map. To many, being called "gay" or "trans" is punishment for not conforming. And therefore it is an insult, because to deviate from the "normal" course of having your gender line up with your genitals/chromosomes/upbringing (there are many ways of being trans), and having your sexual desire focus upon a lifelong monogamous partnership with a member of the opposite sex, is horrifying to jackasses everywhere.

So Lady Gaga, in all her non-conforming glory, must be herded to the edge of the map, confined to Transworld. That's her punishment. Because for many (most?) people, it is punishment.

I can't wait for the day when someone's sexuality or gender identity is a non-issue. A part of who they are? Absolutely. But as unrelated to others' reactions and judgments as the color of their eyes.

No, Seriously.

Today's Failbook fail: How To: Hookup on Facebook with No Fear of Rejection.

The imaginary women in this post are named "Sexy McSexbucket" (photo: stereotypical young Asian schoolgirl"), "Derpy Derpina," "Ugly Pog," and "Dickshrivel Wench." And it's all about wanting to have sex with women.

Go fuck yourself. Seriously.

Also, Blowjobs.

Daily Failbook fail: Bad Day -> Great Day.

Don't even bother clicking the link. It's boring. It's just, "You know what women are good for? Blowjobs." Yawn.

No truly outrageous fails today, though. I'm starting to think Failbook is growing a conscience!!

When Real Life Intrudes on "Humor"

Today's Failbook fail: Divorcée Frapes Are The Best Frapes.

QUIT SAYING "FRAPE," FAILBOOK. CUT IT THE FUCK OUT, I AM SO SERIOUS. JUST STOP, YOU VIOLENTLY MISOGYNIST DOUCHE-WHISTLES!!!!

Okay, had my small moment of pure rage, now we can move onto the rest of the fail.

A man hacks into his ex-wife's Facebook account. He does the following things as her (in chronological order):

1. Posts a note detailing her cheating, and its alleged consequences.
2. Posts a status saying how much more well-behaved the children are with her new boyfriend, because "they see how quick [she] was to leave [her] adoring husband" and they don't want to be "trade[d] in too."
3. Changes her relationship status to "married."
4. Comments on someone else's status that she feels like a "slut."
5. Friending himself.

Then the woman regains control of her account, somehow, and posts a status calling her ex out on his actions, to which some random asshat woman responds that he just "loves his wife and kids and wants them back." Thanks, abuse-negating woman! Nice to see you've got your Patriarchy Hat on.

Let's see what we've got here: slut shaming, of course. Naturally. But what really chills my blood is the husband friending himself -- which I imagine this woman did so that he could no longer monitor her -- and changing her status to married -- which I imagine this woman changed because she left the relationship.

This guy screams "abuser" to me. And he is, clearly, emotionally abusive; just look at what he wrote when he was posting as her. But more than any other fail I've commented on thus far, I wonder if this guy abused her (and/or their kids) physically as well, if he raped her, etc.

Oh, I'm not supposed to think about the actual circumstances of this post, right? I'm just supposed to laugh at the dumb bitch whose ex hacked her account. Let's see what the Failbook commenters have to say: "Awesome. Yes, her husband hacked her FB… but she sounds like a total idiot. lol" Yes, yes, there's that sweet ambrosia of human compassion.

Wait, this just in, from another commenter:

he’s actually a huge lush. Someone on this blog let out the person’s full name and you can read the whole thing on facebook right now if you check out [redacted] on facebook.

He’s real pathetic. I feel pathetic just reading it.

Wow, so, she's not a dumb bitch? Her reasons for leaving were complicated? Her cheating was a sign of a relationship gone horribly wrong? I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

A Tale of Two Douchebags

Real dilemma tonight, guys. There are two posts on Failbook today that are both of the highest douchebag nature. One is just pure sexism; the other mixes sexism with the false sexuality binary and slut shaming.

Okay, how's this: I'm going to do the mixed one, and assign the pure sexism one as homework. I'll grade anyone who comments.

So. Today's Failbook fail: Try-Sexual.

This is a gem on so many levels. The original post is someone saying they don't "believe" in bisexuality. I love it when people think they have a vote on other people's lived experiences. It's like when jackass white people put down "human" as their race on forms. It's true that bisexuality doesn't seem to be as common an identity as being straight or gay, but I think it's more common than asexuality (which also exists, regardless of your willingness to "believe" in it, dear reader!)

Then a girl comments, saying she is bi, and has two girlfriends and a boyfriend. Now, while this does showcase her bisexuality, it's worth noting (for people who might be, I don't know, confused?) that bisexuality and polyamory are unrelated issues. I mean, they're related inasmuch as they threaten the patriarchy, but they're just two more slightly overlapping circles in the giant Venn diagram of human sexuality.

Still. A dude denies people's identities. A lady reminds him that it is her identity. What do you think is gonna happen next, smarty-pants?

If you said, "He's gonna slut-shame her!", I award you 50 Patriarchy Points!*

Yeah, he says, "That just makes you a whore." Yeah! You tell it like it is, bisexuality denier!! People having multiple consenting relationships definitely means they are sex workers! And also, sex workers are best referred to by epithets! You're so brave, telling it like it is in a sea of acceptance and friendliness towards women, sex workers, bisexuals, and poly people!

Here's an idea, dude: you're not the arbiter of others' sexuality. I know it's a shocker, but better to get it through your fucking head now than later, when you're screaming at some girlfriend because her "number" (ugh) is higher than you thought.

* Redeemable for male privilege at a Wal-Mart near you!

Face the Fail

Today's Failbook fail: Not the First Time a Girl's Boobs Saved Her from a Shot to the Face...

There's nothing particularly fail-y about this post as it occurred on Facebook. A girl says she walked into a wall, but her breasts acted as a cushion.

Then, of course, Failbook has to turn it into a joke about ejaculating onto a woman's face. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT WOMEN'S FACES ARE FOR, AMIRITE??! That, and saying things about how wonderful their man is. Dude.

The Hilarity of Slavery

Today's Failbook fail: R.I.P. Billy.

A guy posts an ad for a "server" (i.e. a piece of computer equipment). His jackass "friends" pretend he is selling a woman who will serve them. The jackass-iest comment of all has to be, "She better not talk back!"

You guys. I am really tired, but I just have to point out that 27 million people across the world are enslaved today. Today, as in, February 4, 2011, 150 years after we "abolished" slavery. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual slavery.

So this post is not fuckin' funny. I don't have the energy to state the obvious anymore.

I Would Have Broken the Thing Over His Head

Today's Failbook fail: Men Are Subtle.

There's something so heartbreaking about this post. One woman's status message is that her husband has bought her razors instead of flowers. One can only imagine that this is his way of insisting she submit to the cultural norm of the smooth-legged, smooth-underarmed woman.

But the comment on the status really takes things to another level. The second woman confesses that when she was pregnant and told her husband she could no longer scrub the bathtub, he bought her a scrubber on a stick.

Is there no more shining example of male privilege than this one? He is unable to conceive that he himself should clean the bathroom, even when his wife is limited in her movements because she's carrying his child.

One may wonder at the people put on display in this post. However, given that Failbook is supposed to be "Too Funny to Unfriend," not, say, "Too Sad, in a John Updike Novel Sort of Way, to Unfriend," this is definitely a fail.