What to read
Deborah Cameron has a shorter and of course vastly better list of some good reads.
- Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto.
- Emma Jane, Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History.
- Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and tumblr to Trump and the alt-right.
About the Nagle, she says
Before anyone was talking about the ‘alt-right’, Angela Nagle was investigating the online subcultures from which it emerged, tracking the people involved, the platforms they used, the political positions they espoused and—from a linguist’s perspective most interestingly—the evolution of their distinctive communication style. This isn’t as distinctive as we might think: it has much in common with earlier celebrations of transgression (‘kill all normies’ is reminiscent of Baudelaire’s ‘il faut épater les bourgeois’), and its emphasis on men rebelling against the domesticating influence of women recalls the leftist counter-culture of the 1960s (think Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
Yesssss – and other “transgressive” fiction before that. I remember noticing it decades ago when reading something late 19th century, I can’t remember what – it was all about the surging genius of the male protagonist and the determination of the castrating woman he had the bad luck to fancy to tie him down to domestic wharblegarble. I remember reading it and scowling and noting what a familiar pattern it is. Man has dreams, woman wants to put an apron on them.
Another item to put alongside Jack Nicholson versus Nurse Ratched is Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould versus Hotlips Houlihan, in which the dudes get their revenge on the uptight nurse by gathering everyone on the base to watch and then tearing down the curtain behind which Houlihan is taking a shower. Haw haw haw, naked lady in front of all those laughing fully clothed men. So transgressive.
Cameron then offers some shorter reads.
Unsurprisingly, 2017 produced many reflections on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, and one issue some of these reflections addressed was the role played by gendered language in shaping responses to the candidates. Among the most intriguing approaches to the question was a dramatic experiment asking ‘What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had swapped genders?’
Must read that.
When I read this, one thing struck me: they showed it to people (1) who knew what they were doing; and (2) to people who were Hillary supporters. It seems like it would be a better idea to show it to people who were not actually aware going in that this was Hillary/Trump with gender swapping, because they wouldn’t have expectations, and they wouldn’t be “trying” to get a particular sensation. And I think it is much more crucial to show it to people who didn’t vote for Hillary, whether they were Trump voters or people who didn’t vote for either…that would tell us a lot more, I suspect.
And I was very disturbed by some of the responses. Hearing Trump’s words spoken, they got a sense that this was their Jewish aunt they didn’t like much, but would take care of them? Seriously? I can’t even….and someone commented that they wanted to have a beer with her? With a belligerent bully? God, what sort of people are we, anyway?
I begin to suspect we have not earned the right to self-rule, when we can hear factual, solid argument, and complain that it doesn’t have a “hook”.
A good companion book for Nagle might be Bram Dijkstra’s Idols of Perversity; don’t know if she mentioned it. Unsettling art history but also a good fun read.
Sounds like a really interesting project, and I’d love to see the whole thing.
(Kind of weird though that they only have rehearsal footage because the real thing was, and I quote, “televised on TV”. Now they plan to “go into a studio and film these debate excerpts, shot for shot, as they were televised on TV.” Hopefully if they do a future project they’ll invest in some of that amazing new technology that lets you televise and record at the same time.)
The “smiling” thing is incredibly interesting. Women are always told to smile, but when they had the male Hillary smile as she did, people found it weird and offputting. Romney got flack for smiling too much in a debate with Obama as Obama rhetorically pummeled him, so this is not a new reaction. I wonder if even though it was the “correct” thing to do for Hillary if subconsciously people had the same negative reaction to it. Damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t…
Kill All Normies is definitely a must-read. I appreciate that Nagle doesn’t shy away from criticizing the excesses of leftist callout-culture, no-platforming, “TERF”-bashing etc., although in her struggle to be fair and balanced, concede valid criticisms etc. there are times when I wish she would make it more clear that any talk of misogyny, racism, homophobia etc. will be construed as examples of said excesses whether there’s anything to it or not. On the other hand it probably makes her more difficult to write off as a crazy radical.
The point about the “transgressive” style is interesting. As Nagle points out this obsession with anything “transgressive”, “shocking”, “offensive” etc. has traditionally been so closely associated with the left that some leftists initially celebrated alt-right trolls as a “progressive” force, even if the “offense” was aimed at women, homosexuals or people of color. But as she writes…
And perhaps even more to the point…
I can’t wait to read Nagle’s book.
Speaking of transgressive literature, though–don’t forget how transgressive much of Radical Feminism was, and to some extent remains. Maurice Girodias published a lot of “Angry Young Men Rebelling Against Apron Strings” “transgressive” lit, but he also published Valerie Solanis. Any woman who says, fuck you, no, I won’t, to men–or should I say males, is transgressive–far more so than effin’ Ken Kesey or the M*A*S*H boys.