Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse- on the way back from my Aunt Lilly's house (we had a lovely Sunday lunch together at her charming cottage in Hampshire) I was confronted with yet more casual sexism!
I was sitting on the train to Waterloo, working on my little (non-pink) laptop, when some awful 'man' got on the train and greeted me with those charming words:
"Alright darling, what's a pretty gal like doin' workin' on a Sunday?"
As you can imagine I was almost sick, but managed to swallow it back down. This man had obviously be drinking heavily and felt at liberty to reprimand an independent young woman for being hard working and youthful. Well it's just not on. Where will it end I ask you?
Women are never safe, even in floral.
2 weeks ago
Are you for real?
ReplyDeleteYou write like a man, in drag, with his tongue in his cheek. Are you really a member of the heterogametic sex? Your writing just doesn't seem that feminine to me; your words sound like those of a satirical character straight out of Private Eye.
Something is amiss here.
Zola, I am astonished. Has a woman not a cheek for a tongue? Would you deny her that? And what about a tongue to speak?
ReplyDeleteAnd I would like to know what 'feminine' writing is like. I read a terrible lot of fem lit crit as an undergrad and I do recall the idea of 'female seeming writing' was highly contentious. What about Iris Murdoch? She definately writes like a man. Or George Elliot? Sounds like a lady to me!
And what about a tongue to speak?
ReplyDeleteNow you're being silly, Posie.
You encourage exhibitions of chauvinism by your distortions and Greer-like pseudo-protests. You invite comically sexist asides. Here's one for you to get cross about: Women should be obscene and not heard. As you're already obscene please be quiet.
Are you sure you don't suffer from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) previously known as Testicular Feminisation Syndrome (TFS). Such women are often very feminine and beautiful with curvaceous figures yet do not have "normal" XX genes but have XY genes like men?
Your writing has the whiff of testosterone about it, and, believe me, men can smell our own.
Oh gosh Zola, now I realise that you're a man I can stop being concerned about this unheralded attack on my gender. Like all great female writers, I am expected to lift the pen under the cover of a male pseudonym. I'm sure the same thing was levelled at the sublime Bronte's when there sex was discovered ("What, ho, a woman? Well I never, and I thought it was good!")
ReplyDeleteYou tell me to be quiet, but a blog is as silent a form of communication as possible, entirely unassuming and voluntary on the part of the reader (as opposed to, say, being stuck next to you at the buffet of a drinks party). If you don't like what you find, begone.
I find your genetic evidence extremely faulty, and even if it were true, entirely inconsequential. If I have been secretely goijng about all these years with a rogue XY chromosone, yet am fitted for life as a 'woman', I hardly see why this should be a reason to stop writing, let alone how this would be detectable from my writing, even via this 'whiff' you seem to have picked up (the incredible talking, smelling blog, I didn't know I had it in me!)
Also, your book which is apparently being made into a romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Cameron Diaz doesn't exist outside of your blog according to Google, your "vaginal" artwork is actually the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movie, and your historical book "The Suffragettes: why?" is practically a Napalm Death lyric.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, if you're a troll, not a bad effort; special congratulations for getting an article in the F-Word (though that's the other thing, you're actually best-known for your article protesting pink laptops, and this is, like, the pinkest blog I've ever seen).
I'm kind of hoping you'll rubbish the theory that you're a fictional character, just to see how far you'll get.
Actually, if this is satire, it's of the calibre of Polly Filler or Mary-Ann Bighead. I'm quite impressed.
ReplyDelete"Sub-vexted and on the 'Verge' of tearing out my eyes (and my ovaries) in despair at the miserable quality of reading material available to the discerning feminist, I've done what any self-respecting lady writer with half a minute to spare would do, I've launched a magazine! Or, vagazine(!). I mean, it's not technically launched yet, the time for that will come when we're all lounging at the Groucho with a Pernod n' Rosso in one hand, a copy of I've Lost my Arm in another, a hammer tucked into a coat pocket.
In the meantime, I'm on the lookout for SUBMISSIONS from discerning lady writers - are you far too intelligent to pander to the pitiful standards of contemporary publishing? Are you disgusted with the screaming irony and so-called consumer 'choice' of post-feminism? Are you just a bit too old for so called 'third wave' feminism, does it make you go 'ooh, er'? Are you willing to save a post-feminist, even if it means killing them? Then this is the magazine for you."
Oh Zola! -- Posie's vagina is a matter of public record! -- buck up!!!
ReplyDeleteXXXX
I am both flattered and deeply hurt at the same time. It was the patriarch Ralph Waldo Emerson who once wrote "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." In which case young Anonymous 'et al' I'm proud to have lavished you with my profound understanding of obscuration. humph!
ReplyDeleteThe film IS in production. The studio told me so while I was undergoing an intensive course of electro-shock therapy sessions at a mental care unit this summer.
If you prick us do we not bleed?
I don't know if you're male, female or of indeterminate gender but you do seem to me to be frustrated, pent up and corky in my opinion. You clearly need some kind of paroxysm of catharsis or release. I would suggest a good heterosexual rogering and seeing to. It would do you a power of good. It really, really would.
ReplyDeleteOh sod you all! I had hoped that one could blog and share one's thoughts in relative blissful anonymity, being a little witty if necessary, yes, but not enought to deserve accusations like this to be flunge around. I feel compelled to defend my sex and my readers from the suspicious of anonymous assasins.
ReplyDeleteLike Dreyfus, I have been falsely accused, but now Zola comes not to my rescue, but to 'j'accuse'! Well, I am not one to hide from the fray behind my skirts, have at you all and vive la France! The truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it!
Well, I didn't think it was ladylike to have one's subtexts on display so prominently, but if this is satire, my hat is off to you, because it's brilliant (and I mean it).
ReplyDeleteStill, if you insist it isn't, Ms Rider, then have it your way. I still find it mighty odd that you would paint a perfect rendition of the Eye of Sauron during your stay in hospital. What were you being treated for? A particularly evil bout of vaginal thrush?
And Lara, I'm not disputing that Posie's vagina may well exist, after all women are perfectly capable of satire.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the fact that you yourself (a) have knowledge of such an organ and (b) seem to run a couple of rather cool-looking blogs yourself (at a glance) supports the theory that this blog is one brilliant piece of fiction.
Mind you, there's another F-Word piece for you: "I'm a woman and very witty so everyone thought I couldn't possibly exist! internet so cruel etc."
Pretty sure they'd go for that.