Part # 1
TANGENT
BY DAVE SIM
if the ensuing seems unduly harsh to male and female feminists (which it will since everything
besides complete and abject surrender to feminism strikes male and female feminists as
unduly harsh) there is, perhaps, some small feminist consolation to be had from the fact that,
with the completion of “Tangent,” I intend to “have done” with the subject of gender and
gender “issues” entirely: in much the same way that The Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing
constituted my “hail and farewell” to the subject of self-publishing. As with the Guide, “Tangent”
represents a summing up of my conclusions about a subject which has occupied my attentions
for a period of time and which I have resolved for myself in my own way and to my own
satisfaction (and which I am now pleased to put behind me so that I can pursue other areas of
interest to me).
PRE-TANGENT
Carol West resigned her position as Aardvark-Vanaheim's Administrative Assistant (a very
fancy feminist name for a very plain secretarial position: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and I
don't intend that ironically) after “inputting” a first draught of “Tangent” parts one and two. Her
resignation, far from being either a surprise or a disheartening event, to me, seemed just the
latest example of feminism undermining its own 30-year long campaign to be taken seriously
as a societal movement by (literally) getting offended and leaving in a huff whenever it
encounters any viewpoint which does not represent absolute capitulation to its own. At some
point – whether the intervening period is measured in days, weeks, months, years, decades or
centuries – At Some Point, feminism will, I am sure, at long last be forced to face a number of
hard questions about its total lack of intellectual foundation. Carol West can get offended and
leave, but the hard questions remain. My feminist readers can roll their eyes theatrically, but
the hard questions remain. They can exhale noisily, but the hard questions remain. They can
snort derisively, but the hard questions remain. They can, collectively, turn their backs, but the
hard questions remain.
In the arena of intellectual opinion, when it comes to these hard questions, asking Dave Sim,
“Why do you hate women so much?” is irrelevant when my subject is feminism's lack of sound
intellectual footing. It is irrelevant whether I hate women. It is irrelevant whether I love women. It
is irrelevant whether I consider women in any emotional context whatsoever, just as – when my
question is directed toward feminism's lack of sound intellectual footing – it is irrelevant
whether I hate ice cream, whether I love ice cream or whether I consider ice cream in any
emotional context whatsoever. All That Is Relevant, when the issue at hand is my contention
that feminism lacks a sound intellectual foundation, All That Is Relevant, Germane and/or
Pertinent is the intellectual foundation – or lack of same – upon which feminism rests.
Walking away is not relevant. Rolling one's eyes theatrically is not relevant. Snorting derisively
is not relevant.
It seems to me that after thirty years, all thinking people must be coming to realize that these
reactions – far from constituting a defence of feminism – lead, inescapably, in the contrary
direction: lead, inescapably, to the fact that feminism has no sound intellectual foundation:
that, in fact, feminism has only its own rapidly dwindling momentum and the sheer gall,
chutzpah, nerve and inherent unreasoning contrariness of its perpetrators as its foundation,
as its sole line of defence, as its single raison d'etre and as its solitary rationale.
Anyway, this is how I began:
TANGENT I
Having dispensed with the Hemingways (how many of you still think that Mary Hemingway –
despite having murdered her husband – is a “strong, independent woman and a good role
model for wives everywhere”? Show of hands. Almost all of you. Big surprise.) I now prepare
for the next complete waste of my own time and energy: my promised “last word on gender”
entitled “Tangent”.
* * * * * * *
All males (as opposed to men) sound like social workers and/or voodoo profession wannabe's,
so it came as no surprise – when the fellow turned to me and asked “Where do you think your
ideas about women come from?” – and the saccharine undertone was there (“When we share
our experiences with others, it helps us to get in touch with our innermost feelings and
emotions”).
“Where do you think your ideas about women come from?”
Two things:
Foremost, they originate from the research that I did for Mothers & Daughters. Not the
voluminous reading of everything from nurse novels to voodoo pop (My Mother, My Self; Our
Bodies, Our Selves; Our House-pets, Our, Selves, et al) to Women's Studies [“ . . . and after all
correlatives of the societal norm have been maximized through the intuitive, the nurturing and
spiritually nutritive, through the hard-won maturation of our collective emotive a priori
dispensation-construct: regarded (herein) not as the mere imitative imposition of the
aforementioned “will to power” (the now universally discredited patriarchal model) but a new
model founded upon, to reiterate, the intuitive, the nurturing and spiritually nutritive, pursuant
to, but not inextricably bound within the ad hoc antecedent culture and/or cultural imperative
blah blah blah”]. All I got out of that research, I already knew: a) women want to be raped by
rich, muscular, handsome doctors b) women are completely self-absorbed and, thus, see
themselves in everything around them and c) feminism is no different from communism in that
all of its literature is founded upon convoluted syntax, bafflegab and academic jargon which
paints a false (albeit attractive) picture of an unattainable utopia which can be achieved –
easily! – by everyone in the world simply and simultaneously (in both feminist and communist
literature the “crux point” is invariable) changing their basic nature overnight. Acknowledging –
(grudgingly) the small likelihood of so sweeping a societal change coming about on its own, “a
rigorous and thorough program of (communist and feminist literature share an admiration for
the euphemism) re-education may be called for.” That is, all “non-comrades, non-fellow
travellers” must be subjected to unrelenting political indoctrination, sloganeering and
brainwashing (“A woman's right to choose! A woman's right to choose!”).
(I sense that my situation with feminism is comparable to that of pre-1989 writers faced with the
task of “debunking” communism: how extensive, lengthy and intricate an explanation can one
pursue in explaining that two-plus-two do not equal five, but in fact, equal four without – even
in one's own view – treading well within the lunatic borders of the excruciatingly self-evident? I
suspect that feminism, like communism, must be allowed to “strut and fret its hour upon the
stage,” “playing out” its manifold absurdities until even the most ardent and most willfully
ignorant “true believer” comes to realize – as has happened with communism – that “there is
no there, there.”)
No. The research which most contributed to my “ideas about women” was the series of informal
interviews I conducted with mothers and daughters – with mothers about their daughters, with
daughters about their mothers, with daughters about their daughters, with mothers about their
mothers. It was really the first time in my adult life that I spoke to women who I found physically
unattractive and the first time I spoke to women with any motive besides getting them into bed.
In the case of the attractive women that I interviewed, it was a guarantee that I was not going to
get them into bed – “mothers and daughters,” as subject, existing at the opposite end of the
conversational spectrum from those topics which lead to sex – and (knowing that) for the first
time in my adult life the intellectual, reasoning, “writerly” part of my mind was engaged when
talking to women.
For the first while, I couldn't figure out what was wrong.
I'm usually a “quick study” when it comes to a given subject – the “high altitude mapping” as
Alan Moore called it in our “Dialogue: From Hell” a few years back. It's really what writing is
made up of. Ask the hard questions, narrow the list of possibilities and work with the resulting
template. As it turns out, nothing in the feminist psyche conforms to this model. All women are
feminists and all feminist evidence is anecdotal. Ask them a question and they will tell you a
little story. Ask them a question to clarify what you infer is the point of the story and they will tell
you another story. When they do attempt to draw a conclusion or a larger inference from an
anecdote they will often ask, “Does that make any sense?” And the answer, of course is
(almost invariably) no, it doesn't make any sense. And since I wasn't trying to get any of them
into bed, I would say so (if you're trying to get them into bed, you always say “yes, that makes
perfect sense” or manufacture some sensible interpretation that has nothing to do with what
they said). Telling them that they don't make sense, I found, is like telling them that not only do
they not win the trip to Hawaii, they don't even get the Samsonite luggage. They become
forlorn and uncommunicative. That was when I realized that it was impossible to engage them
on an intellectual, reasoning, “writerly” level – that is, in a purely matter-of-fact fashion. I had to
act, had to portray myself as being happy, sympathetic, interested and cheerful in order to
maintain a level of . . .
. . . I don't know what you would call it. It wasn't communication in any meaningful sense of the
term as I understand it. It was a kind of “emotional badminton.” I acted happy, sympathetic,
interested and cheerful and then it was her turn to act happy, sympathetic, interested and
cheerful and then it was my turn, etc. She might accidentally say something interesting where I
could, with sincerity, say that I found what she had just said interesting. This temporarily
escalated the level of her cheerfulness but, alas, that is all that it did: whatever was being said
ranking a very distant second to maintaining and escalating the level of cheerfulness. A very,
very distant second. I realized that this is where the “henhouse cacophony” originates. If
“communication” within a group of women is working properly (as women see “working
properly”) everyone should be talking faster and faster and faster and in a higher and higher
musical range – either portraying themselves or being (the two states being deemed
interchangeable in the female world) cheerful, more cheerful, “cheerfulest” – until, maximum
cheerfulness having been achieved, a glass breaks or something.
That was when I realized that women are emotion-based beings. “Once a thing is seen, it can't
be unseen.” I gave a couple of more tries at relationships after that (a year-and-a-half and
three-and-a-half years respectively) but it was really like solving a “brain teaser” after
someone has given you the answer. You know – one of those puzzles where you are
supposed to “make three triangles by connecting the dots using only seven lines” (or
whatever). It can drive you insane for a month, but if you look in the back of the book, or if
someone shows you how it's solved or you figure it out on your own, there is little
entertainment value to be had in endlessly drawing those same seven lines to make those
same three triangles. Likewise, there is little in the way of intellectual value to be derived from
revisiting – either mentally or “in person” the simple fact (once discovered), that women are
emotion-based beings and that (consequently) any female-centred or female-originated
political movement – more precisely, “political” “movement” – will lack sound intellectual footing.
Hence, my billing of “Tangent” as “my last word on gender.”
Women are emotion-based beings.
One of the spillovers from Mothers & Daughters into Rick's Story was Viktor Davis telling Rick,
“Just be happy every waking minute of your life and you've got her for as long as you want
her.” Which was really a perverse way for Viktor Davis to put it. It's valid advice, but the “every
minute of your life” was unnecessarily arduous (which Viktor knew but, in his willfully cruel way,
thought he would add as a little “going away” present for Rick). It could be more appropriately
phrased as: “If things aren't going right, just act cheerful and say things in a musical tone of
voice and everything will be fine.” Which they will, but, in my own experience, I found that that
was no way to live. But even as I found that that was no way to live, I recognized there was no
other way to live in the context. With an emotion-based being, your only choices are to
narcotize her with a steady stream of cheerful, musical expression or manufacture a chaotic
mixture of emotional portrayals to “wake her up” (“awake” being a purely relative term, of
course, in referring to emotion-based beings). You can try being sensible and reasonable but
all you're going to get back is an emotion-based portrayal of sense and reason having nothing
to do with sense and reason. An emotion-based being just attempts to reflect and/or portray
what little emotion she can discern in sense and reason (“sombre,” “serious,” “earnest,” “non-
musical”) and attaches the portrayal to an arbitrary stream of musical vocalizations having
nothing to do with the subject at hand. This invariably provokes extreme impatience in the non-
emotion-based being, to whose impatient expressions the emotion-based being will invariably
respond: “Why are you getting so angry?” Impatience is not a happy emotion, but an
identifiable one for an emotion-based being: “I was singing your sombre, serious, earnest, non-
musical song with you and now you're angry. Why don't you just sing a cheerful song instead
so we can both be happy?” To the emotion-based being, this makes perfect sense.
(All lengthy and thorough explanations being digressional, at this point the fellow asked, “Is this
like that book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus?” To his credit, he hadn't actually
read the book. Neither have I. “There's always a danger with those things,” I said. “I was in a
bookstore and I saw the cover of the sequel, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,
Children Are From Heaven.” The fellow nodded readily. However, as there were a number of
women eavesdropping in the vicinity, I thought it worth adding for their benefit, “If a man lowers
himself to a woman's level of fairy-tale metaphor – I mean, self-evidently men are not from
Mars and women are not from Venus – women will invariably drag the discussion over into
something comparable to Children are From Heaven smiling and chuckling and feeling really
good about themselves.” “Children are From Heaven. Now we're really getting somewhere.”
The fellow nodded impatiently.)
Next....
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