thebigblackwolfe:

You don’t HAVE to forgive people that have harmed you ever like that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my entire fucking life.

If YOU feel like you need to forgive somebody because that’s what you need to heal and move on from whatever they did, then go ahead and do it. But don’t you ever sit here and tell people that they must automatically forgive folks so they can be the bigger person.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Some people need to let the wound smooth over, some people want to grow a spike in its place. Don’t be telling spike people they need to do otherwise.

(via feltelures)

whoo, tax compliance shit was just someone else’s poor organization and failure to logic, yay~~~ 

indigobluerose:

ladyyatexel:

indigobluerose:

Weird observation:  Bertie Wooster refers to women with phrases like “the delicately nurtured,” and on numerous occasions as “females” or “the female of the species” and for some reason this doesn’t annoy me.  (I would say it even comes across as adorable at times, but that is almost certainly pure bias on my part; Bertie Wooster’s entire existence overloads my adorability senses)

When I read The Last of the Mohicans, Natty Bumppo frequently referred to the women in the story as either “the females,” which made it sound like he was talking about livestock, or “the gentle ones” which was so damned condescending that it made me want to barf.  It is, of course, a much older book than any of Wodehouse’s work, and sexism is sadly just to be expected, but that book stuck in my craw as astonishingly sexist (and racist, for that matter) even for its time.

Why does Cooper’s usage of these phrases bother me so much — oh my lord so much — while Wodehouse’s doesn’t?  I’ve been pondering this… Bertie’s use of his phrases is usually referring to women in general, while Natty Bumppo’s are used to refer specific women, whom he knows personally, and who have names and a part in the story.

James Fenimore Cooper’s treatment of female characters was so utterly dehumanizing; a double-whammy of objectifying and idealizing.  Through the whole book Natty Bumppo’s attitude toward Cora and Alice Munro is as if someone has asked him to look after a small herd of glass sheep.

And WOW, those two stories have no relation to each other whatsoever, but those phrases in The Code of the Woosters made me think of TLotM, and I have really really wanted to complain to the world about that book for a long time.

(By the way, I’m not trying to suggest that those types of phrases in Wodehouse aren’t problematic, or that everyone is or should be affected by either of these stories the same way I am.  Just rambling.)

I think about this frequently.  I haven’t read the TLotM, and can pretty safely say I never will, but I’ve definitely read some Jeeves and I’ve experienced the same feelings.  I’m always sort of expecting a certain level of sexism in something written so long ago, but I’m usually surprised that there isn’t as much as I’ve braced for, a lot of the recurring girls have real personalities, and that I’m almost never frothing mad at Bertie.  I’m glad you’ve thought about it too! Also glad you mentioned this pattern of Bertie being general where other people are specifically reducing people they know. I think I didn’t know what it was for me that made Bertie so okay until now either.

What gets me a lot more often is how much MORE sexist the comment threads about this series get when people are trying to ape the vocabulary. LiveJournal entries in which you can see people slinging ‘beazel’ about in particular rub me the wrong way so aggressively that it leaves rug burn.  I think they’re trying to be period and cute, but the way they use it and load it with disgust it is usually interchangeable with ‘Beezelbub’, even if it kind of seems to just mean ‘chick’ according to the internet.  I have a weird suspicion the words are related, though.  

It’s probably because I’m reading comments on a *LiveJournal* from a period in which it was normal to see yaoi fangirls just launch into female characters as being ‘evil’ and ‘bitches’ just for existing, but I’m always struck by how much more venom for women the (frequently women themselves!) commenters there have than Bertie ever seemed to. 

You can see it in some fanfic too, of course, where it’s obvious the author could barely contain some raging hate and their Bertie comes off as really gross.

Oh, goodness, beazel.  I’ve certainly read fics where Bertie refers to women almost exclusively as beazels, or even “horrid beazels” and “dreadful beazels”.  I’m totally unfamiliar with that term in any other context, so I don’t know just how much of a slur it’s supposed to be, but it certainly comes across as at least something of one.  (internalized misogyny, one of the great plagues of slashfic since days of yore at least the 90s)

I’m about halfway through the canon now, and unless I simply didn’t catch it or have forgotten (which is certainly possible), Bertie has not used that term one single time yet.  Probably the rudest way I can recall him referring to any specific woman, would be calling Madeline “The Bassett” or Honoria “The Glossop”.  And that’s still at least using their names.  It feels to me distinctly like an expression that it is these people in particular he dislikes, and not women in general, despite not wanting to marry.  He has genuine friendships with and affection for other women — Cynthia Wickhammersly, Marion Wardour, Pauline Stoker, and of course Angela and Aunt Dahlia.

I don’t know.  My view of these stories is certainly a bit rose-tinted by my affection for the characters, and Bertie in particular, so I’m sure there’s some things I’m not seeing quite like I should, but Wodehouse, despite some period ubiquitous sexism, does seem to handle his female characters surprisingly well.  (better than some writers do today, ehem)  I’m mostly letting these stories be pure escapism, but I try to peek over the rosy spectacles now and then, and this weird comparison just sort of popped up out of nowhere.

The Last of the Mohicans is definitely worth avoiding for life.  :)  I only finished it because I wanted to be able to say with total honesty that it was the worst book I had ever read, and I felt like I couldn’t say that if I stopped after two chapters and threw it out the window.  Also, I am stubborn.  Finishing it felt a little like winning a fight.

Egad, that is the worst book I have ever read.

I’m in the same weird boat of ‘this is a happy land to escape to and I love Bertie so much it’s ridiculous’ and then occasionally getting hit with “but feminism.”   On the whole, I think the books do super well, especially for the time period.  I love them.  My criticisms are for specific instances of things that are frankly glaring examples that anyone would be alarmed about (the minstrels, for example), but I feel the same on the whole that it’s just something fun to read.   I’m definitely criticizing what I’ve seen of fandom rather than Wodehouse!

I am at about the same place as you in reading the canon, actually, and I also have yet to see beazel in the text.  I was looking for it, even, because I was so used to seeing it thrown around in fanfic as the only word for women ever. I thought surely the canon would give me a better sense of what weight the word really carried, as opposed to the weight fanfic gave it, but so far it is totally absent.  It almost feels CONSPICUOUSLY absent with how much I’ve seen it in fanfic and such.  With every page turn I brace for it, and it never comes.

 I saw the television series first, and I was braced for so much more straight up woman hate in the books than I’ve so far experienced.  Such a huge part of fandom is so obsessed with using the worst words for women ever when writing Bertie and it is such an uncomfortable thing.  This is one of those fandoms that I feel happy to keep close to my chest and share with like three people because wandering too far from people who understand is full of linguistic land mines!

(via indigobluerose)