If you’re unacquainted with Judith Butler, you’re in for a real treat. Judith Butler “is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.” If you don’t agree with her ideas about gender, you are a fascist.

Her latest pronoun of choice is they, but I will refer to her as she because (1.) she is a single, and not plural, unit and (2.) I  just feel like it. She is a professor at Berkeley and has received 14 honorary degrees. In other words, she is a big deal. According to many, she is among the most influential intellectuals alive today.

Let’s start with this: In her book Gender Trouble, Butler claims that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. Well, no. I would say nice try, but no.  Gender critical feminists (i.e. feminists who aren’t on board with her ideas) come in for some of her most scathing attacks. They are the victims of “phantasmatic” anxieties and also are big stupid liars whom she compares to Richard Nixon, of all people.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about gender, or not enough of a shit to ponder its meaning. I came across Butler in a critique of her assertion that the events of Oct. 7 constitute “resistance.”  Reading her put forth this idea, I thought, “Who is this pretentious idiot?”

I was delighted to find that she had won first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature – a prize given to “the ugliest, most stylistically awful” sentence submitted by its readers . Here is her winning sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

You have to love her, right? I mean, she gave us the concept of gender performativity!Wikipedia notes that

Butler also explores how gender can be understood not only as a performance, but also as a “constitutive constraint,” or constructed character. They ask how this conceptualization of an individual’s gender contributes to notions of bodily intelligibility, or comprehension, by other individuals. Butler continues to discuss bodily intelligibility by means of sex as a “materialized” entity, upon which cultural, collective ideals of gender can be built. From this angle, Butler interrogates value conscription upon various bodies as determined theories and practices of heterosexual predominance.

Whatever. I suggest that you don’t waste your brain cells trying to decipher this gibberish, just be aware that you’re not allowed to object to any of it. If you’re a woman (a human born with a reproductive system that produces eggs) or a non-man, as some gender identity theorists might say, you are a TERF  for taking issue with Judith Butler. If you’re a man, I don’t know what happens. Probably you’re just a homophobic colonialist defender of the patriarchy.

Please do your own research on Judith Butler, I promise you it is more fun and rewarding than anything you can do online besides getting into arguments on Instagram. Also, note that I didn’t title this “Judith Butler: What a fucking cunt!” She’s more of an irritant, albeit a uniquely flagrant one. And I realize she is low-hanging fruit, but try to resist taking a whack at her!

I have already complained about my trouble retrieving words, and about my senility, which is currently resulting in the escalating loss of jewelry and household objects. But here’s something new: Along with the loss of my vocabulary, is an increased sensitivity to word usage.

If this sounds contradictory, think again. The loss of my words makes existing words all the more potent. Or maybe it’s just an autistic sensory thing, like reacting to the seams in your socks. I’m trying to read a long essay about friendship in the Atlantic, but each misjudgement in the prose is killing me.

I can say misjudgement not out of pedantry ( is that the correct word??) but simply because my ear knows right from wrong. I can’t help it. It’s not an achievement, it’s just innate, like a sense of smell. It’s sprachgefühl.

I asked my husband, a musician, what it feels like to hear someone play the wrong note, but it turns out there are several kinds of wrong in music. Plus, he doesn’t “feel” things as acutely as I do, according to him. But he agreed that a singer who can’t follow a tune is exasperating.

I might not be able to know a wrong note from a hole in the ground, but I do know this: The following sentence is ruined by one single word.

Most of us have [Problem Friends] though we may wish we could tweeze them from our lives.

Right? The word tweeze right there is so awful. It makes you wince. Clearly the author chose that word deliberately but did she want us to wince? Why not just use expunge or expel? Even “jettison” would be better, although I hate that word and would be glad to forget it. Or if she’s trying to be funny, how about “defenestrate”?  Defenestrate is always funny, even when applied to actual defenestration!

So the essay has become a challenge, since I’m keenly interested in the subject of friendship, but the lapses in judgement are like potholes interrupting my flow. Was potholes good for you? Are you glad I said it was a challenge rather than calling it “problematic?” I could have said, “like nails on a chalkboard” but then I’d feel bad about myself.

You see how troublesome this shit is. Before I forget, I wanted to share a list of words I couldn’t retrieve in the last few weeks. My plan was to keep a comprehensive list and then try to compose haiku with them. But I keep forgetting to write them down, because senility. Here’s my list:

mariachi
linens
Napoleon Dynamite
rapport
attention
shingles
surface
hindrance
concierge
kangaroos
concierge
tsunami.

I wrote concierge twice because I keep forgetting it. I keep wanting to say “Courvoisier” even though I didn’t know what it was before googling it.

Getting back to the Atlantic essay, try this sentence:

But the lacuna in the literature is also a little odd.

God, what the fuck?? Lacuna, for fucksake? Why not just gap? I mean, I see that it’s an alliteration, but when an alliteration interrupts the idea being conveyed because it’s so stupid and uncalled for, why use it? When I used to read books and screenplays for a living, I remember having to read something by Danielle Steele. Her writing is so bad that I started screaming “editor!’ every few minutes. I guess that’s what makes a best seller.

Anyway, I plan to finish reading the essay and see if I can retrieve enough words to write my own essay on friendship, or rather the break-up of friendships, and how painful or liberating it can be. I am getting to be an expert on this. In the time of Covid, I’m finding I have no tolerance of craziness in my relations, despite being desperate for companionship. I use to quip that “I want to be the craziest person in a relationship” and this holds true more than ever. Or, if you prefer, “now more than ever.”

A friend just brought up the subject of using “adult” as a verb, and I figured it’s time to complain about the latest words and usage crimes that are making me flinch.

“Parenting” was bad at first but now I accept it; it will never go away. But adulting? WHY? Can’t you fucking millennials get it through your heads that most of your lives will be spent as a grown up?? Why does it strike you as an amusing condition? Just because you’re too commitment-phobic to buy a car or a house or have children, it doesn’t mean you can act like a baby forever.

Call your Ubers and drink your cold-pressed coffee but don’t come up with these awful words, okay?

A word that’s been cropping up everywhere is “intentional.” It’s a perfectly good word, when you mean “on purpose” and the opposite of “by mistake” or accidental. But does everything you do have to be intentional now? Before you use it, stop and ask yourself if it’s an extraneous word that just makes you sound like an asshole. Better yet, if you like to use it, go here and get back to me.

What about “performative?” People seem to think it makes them sound smart to use this word, but outside of a college classroom, it’s pretentious. Just stop it.

I can’t remember if we’ve discussed “yassssss” before. It literally kills me. I mean literally, because I can feel my soul die a little, each time I see it. That and “woot.”

“Squad” is gut-wrenchingly awful. Are you in middle school? If not, don’t use it and don’t condone its use.

If you read Instagram comments, you should hate these two with all you’ve got: “This is life.” And “This is everything.” Usually it’s in reference to a sweater or something. Can a sweater really be life? Can it be everything? Can’t you just love it or say it’s nice or gorgeous or dope? If it’s life, what’s left?

I’m too angry to continue. Please feel free to add your complaints or argue with mine.

No, wait! I just remembered a word-related moment of joy I experienced last week. I was shopping at a local thrift shop, where the ladies behind the counter are around 100 years old. I heard one of them say to another, “That’s not my jam.” I was astounded; old ladies are that hip now???? Then I turned around and saw that she was talking about an actual jar of jam.

Okay. Your turn!

Lake Superior State Universary has published its 40th Annual List of Banished words, “Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.”

Considering what an awful year it’s been for language, not to mention humanity itself, it is a short and vastly incomplete list, compiled from nominations received via the university’s website.

Here we go:

Bae
Polar Vortex
Hack
Skill Set
Swag
Foodie
Curate/Curated
Friend-Raising
Cra-Cra
Enhanced Interrogation
Takeaway
-Nation

I’m going to say meh to this list, even though most people might include meh on their own list. I’m also going to complain about the spelling of cray-cray.

Takeaway is a good choice. Bae, though, I’m really conflicted about, since it’s so stupid that I hear it as tongue-in-cheek even if it’s used with sincerity. I enjoy it in a perverse way, like when I hear someone say ‘conversate.’

So let’s get to the shit they overlooked. Just off the top of my head:

Unpack, used to mean find out more about the subject. I hate this. It’s the new ‘Drill-down.’

Folks, as in ‘Yes, we did torture some folks.’ Enough of folks, for fucksake! Let’s just say ‘people’ like we used to!

Bro– as a suffix. Brogrammers, Brodouches, we get it, now let it go.

Let it go is a prompt I never, ever want to hear again, ever, unless I’m holding on to a butterfly or something.

A Red Lip as in ‘wear with simple jewelry and a red lip.’  God, why?? Say ‘red lipstick’ unless you want to die.

Okay, I’m going to stop now before I get too worked up.

What about you, bae? What words and phrases need to be banned for 2015?

Twenty years on, I am still rattled by my husband’s fucking ex. Not only has she opened a tiki-themed restaurant too close to my neighborhood,  she has recently written the following:

“There was a time in my youth, those long gone halcyon days, when it seemed I spent a large part of my life in front of a camera. In the pursuit of an acting career it was standard operating procedure to continuously update and change the 8-by-10s that were the calling cards of all of us who tramped the mean streets of Los Angeles in constant and often futile rounds of meetings in the offices of agents, photographers, producers, directors and various unsavory characters.

“Perhaps in retrospect it is the smiling [photos] that fare the best, as I was innately happy, clear of eyes and had good teeth. For my fiftieth birthday and retired at that point, I pulled out all the old headshots and plastered them over a large wall at my parent’s house, creating a sort of gallery. They made a remarkable display and told a story of my own evolution, not to mention hairdos. The one topless shot, though artistically done and revealing but a modest bosom, shocked my brother. Frankly, I was rather proud to shock anyone.”

There was one thing that each photo had in common, one through-line, one essence captured. It was youth, my youth. And youth is hope. There it is, around the curve of my smiling lips, in the gleam of my eye, in the open expression.”

Jesus. Christ.

I brought up the subject of her uniquely annoying existence with my husband, who flipped out. Why can’t I be normal, he wants to know. It’s easy for him to talk about normal: My ex, though a cunt, stays quietly in his corner and doesn’t open restaurants or write about his modest bosom.

Some things are just awful and they stay awful. Some things fall away in the stark awareness of what really matters.  I am waiting for the ex-wife to move from the first category into the second.

This skirt makes me want to kill myself.

But wait. Here is the rear view:

“A patchwork of True Religion denim forms this flowing, vintage-inspired maxi skirt. Slant hip pockets detail the front, and inky-blue pocket shadows darken the back.”

Putting aside the atrocity of the actual skirt, I’m not happy with “darken the back.” Can anyone correct this? Ruin the back? Spoil the back?

$332 at Shopbop

Does everyone know about “Fifty Shades of Grey?” It’s a wildly popular new novel that women are reading discreetly and openly, according to their relative shame or bravado about enjoying middlebrow porn.

I had no idea what the story was about but now I know there’s a sadomasochist relationship at its center. Big deal. Haven’t these women read The Story of O or Justine? The problem for me is that it’s being called “Mommy Porn,” which is condescending, like Mom Jeans.

The other problem is the bad writing. It kills me that people will pay money for bad writing. Not just bad, but hilariously bad. Here are some quotes I found:

“Trepidation lances through me.”

“‘So I brought you here,” he said phlegmatically.

Hahahahahahaha! And yet some awful woman is making a fortune because she guessed that there was a huge audience for a dopey, safely perky adventure in bondage and discipline.   I’m mad I didn’t think of it.

Now that the book is a certified phenomenon, one will be called upon to take a position. If you condemn it, you’ll be scolded for being a prude or an elitist. If you read it and enjoy it, you’ll be dismissed as a sex-starved Mommy or a moron. Or wait, maybe you’ll be congratulated for being modern and having a strong libido!

I don’t mind the idea of dominance and submission in sex. I’m all for it. But why does it have to involve a billionaire with “unruly hair” and a heroine who says stuff like:  “I revel in his possession, his lust slaking mine.”

No no no no, you fucking idiot! “Slake” means to lesson the force of, to assuage. You mean the  opposite!

Can anyone give us a firsthand report on this book? Thoughts or arguments?

Anthony Weiner is a gift from god for people like me who are struggling with depression.   His predicament (no pun intended) is so bizarre and tawdry, and yet  Shakespearean. If character is destiny, Weiner is screwed, or as he would put it, “First I’ll make you gag on my cock before I make you cum.”

Let me say first that I was on his side, in terms of refusing to resign, until I read the text of his online chats with women he’d never met and had no intention of meeting.

It wasn’t the fact that he was a reckless horndog that provoked my disapproval. I was ready to accept the fact that the internet is an irresistible siren song to anyone with a “weakness.” Whether it’s a weakness for shopping, for social networking, for gambling or for porn, the internet makes it  perilously  convenient to indulge.

According to friends I discussed this with, “sexting” is now common among fifty percent of teenagers. It’s a Brave New World out there, where not much is considered too personal, not to mention sacred.

I will admit to chatting online in a flirtatious manner.   Years ago I was chatting with someone who suddenly suggested “Send me a picture of your C**T” and the word was not cunt. I was so stunned and horrified, I shut the chat window and felt deeply shaken. I had no idea that people spoke to strangers like this. I learned that it’s the wild west out there online.

With Weiner, I imagined his sexy chat was something along the lines of “Baby, You’re so pretty, What are you wearing?” Big deal. Maybe he’s bored when his wife is busy and he’s just having a little tame sexy banter…. I don’t feel that calls for his resigntion, since it’s his personal business and he didn’t run for the Priesthood. Better to have a politition with a sex drive than Bush or Nixon, who seemed more interested in abusing the constitution than in getting laid.

But no matter what liberal   principles you think you have, it all goes to hell once you read Weiner’s raunchy efforts at seduction.   The deal breaker for me was “Pussy Juice.” It’s just a big NO in my world.   You can’t listen to a congressman talking about jobs or taxes or healthcare once he’s said Pussy Juice.   It’s over. He is toast.

So basically, for me at least, it comes down to literary aesthetics rather than any moral judgement. Sexting online isn’t a crime that would make someone unfit to serve as a congressman or mayor. Sending pictures is pretty lame but again, no real harm. Lying about it is only natural: You would want to avoid embarrassing your family. But a man’s game does reflect his sensibility. And “Pussy Juice” cannot be condoned. If only he could have said “Are you wet?” instead.

I cannot emphasize this enough but it must be repeated: Words matter! Choose them like everyone’s looking.

Opinions or objections?

It is my privilege to bestow the first Sister Wolf Godawful Writing Award upon Refinery 29.

Please enjoy the prize-winning masterpiece below:

~

For the true connoisseur, it is the writing equivalent of a box of delicious chocolates. I LOVE the last few words, “they so dearly deserves” but for some reason my favorite linguistic fumble is the use of “smattering.”

Congratulations, Refinery 29!

Here are Erin Wasson and a girl carrying either an elephant trunk or a dead emu. Whatever.

They were celebrating the Los Angeles opening of a Vanessa Bruno boutique, where, according to Refinery 29,   “all the L.A. lasses had us scrambling to snap their insouciant style.”