Straight talk

Today, as part of the 15th birthday celebrations, I am delighted to present an interview with an actual female supremacist! Please welcome Dr Lydia Hatchard, Emeritus Professor of Gender Studies at the University of West Sussex!

Servitor: Dr Hatchard: welcome to the blog.

Dr Lydia Hatchard: What the hell is this? When I agreed to do the interview, I was told this was a women’s rights blog. I’m not going to have anything to do with a porn site.

S: Well, err, Ma’am, I –

LH: Don’t call me Ma’am. It’s Dr Hatchard.

S: Oh, err, sorry, Dr Hatchard, Ma’am, sorry sorry, didn’t mean to call you –

LH: Most of your posts feature young women lounging around half-dressed, or uncomfortably constrained in tacky fetishistic costumes or absurd high heels and the like. Classic exploitative objectification of the female form for male titillation! And the captions focus on sexualised interactions in a way that denies agency – or any true personhood – to the supposedly female speakers who are just male fantasy stereotypes. It’s the most sexist thing I’ve ever seen.

S: Well, I…

LH: Heard of the Bechdel test? When do any of your captions feature two women talking about something other than a man? It’s just wank-fodder.

S: Of course, I can see that, but –

LH: Not to mention the repeated focus on feminine traits and traditional female ocupations as markers of shame. How can you claim to regard women as superior, if being treated as a woman is a humiliation?

S: Umm. I suppose, maybe, ummm, it could be seen as an ironic –

LH: Nonsense, you can’t just excuse sexism by waving your hand and saying ‘irony’, like those so-called comedians who ‘ironically’ tell old-fashioned sexist jokes.

S: No, I wasn’t trying to –

LH:And the homophobia! ‘Forced bi’? Really? I don’t know which is worse, regarding gay sexuality as a punishment, or making light of rape!

S: Uh, yes, I…

LH: And how come 99% of the women are white? Don’t you –

Ha ha – ahem! Wow… what a shame, it seems our Internet connection with Dr Hatchard has accidentally been cut. Just when the interview was going so well.

Still that was… ummm… well, that was illuminating. Challenging, perhaps, or a little, umm… humiliating, even. Yes, yes: humiliating, that’s the word. Mmmm. What a severe, stern, harsh lady she seems to be. Why, I can almost imagine her in a lecture room, striding around in high heels, wearing a strict blouse and pencil skirt, stopping to pick up an implement of correction and then lowering her glasses to look over them at the squirming males in her class, as she…she…

PS – On the ‘Bechdel test’ (“requiring a work to have at least two named women who have a conversation about something other than a man”), had I been quicker witted and more inclined to disagree with a member of the superior sex, I could have pointed out to Dr Hatchard that although it is true to say women on this blog often talk about men, it is very rare for males to speak at all, and I cannot think of a single caption I have done in which two males have had a conversation about anything other than a woman (usually one standing over the two of them with a whip). But I’m neither and didn’t.

PPS – A little bit of found femdom, for anyone who has made it this far down today’s tedious self-loathing post. What a lovely lady, to devote herself to supporting such a worthwhile cause.