The war on unhappiness, or turn that frown upside down before I do it for you
Published by junk science February 28th, 2007 in Conformity, Lick My Jackboots of Love, We caught a troll and he was THIS DUMBI want to know where I can get a chip for my shoulder as big as this guy’s.
I suppose if I were a six-foot, six-inch tall man with a hateful grin plastered on my face, I might suffer fewer daily reminders of how other people see me. Being a good deal shorter, and having genitals much less prominently displayed, I have to settle for an impotent “Jesus, why you feminazis gotta be so goddamn uptight?” or “Just because I spent the last five blocks leering and catcalling at you doesn’t mean I’m hitting on you, you ugly bitch, so don’t flatter yourself” when the world fails to conform to my desires.
But if I were blessed with perfect oblivion, I could take feminist hostility to people who order random women on the street to feign pleasure as a call to strengthen my crusade against surliness.
A zombie-faced sourpuss glooming up the world is the same no matter what genitals they happen to possess. I say “Smile!” And, having seen the idiocy of some of these responses, I will now be far more militant and mindful about it. It’s a war between those who mope and slouch through life and those who want to spread some love.
Amen, brother. Peace. And it’s not just out on the streets that we’re needed, I say. How many women are causing unneccesary discomfort and suffering to their sexual partners by not faking their orgasms convincingly enough? When did sexual climax become more important to us than happiness?
But we cockeyed optimists realize it may already be too late for the world. Feminists, atheists, and eyeliner-wearing goths have been allowed free reign to spread their misery and gloom far too long. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t even dismiss a woman’s concerns without being asked if you can’t pull your head out of your ass before you suffocate yourself. It’s sexism, is what it is.
If you say “People should relax and be less sensitive,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you say “Abortion shouldn’t be taken lightly,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you take a BREATH, you’re a patriarch trying to control women.
…
On Pandagon, my MALE-ness makes everything I say skewed or damaged or wrong in some way, automatically. Ironically, this is how the true sexists I’ve known in my life view women’s ideas.
“What does she know? She’s just a goddamn mouthy cunt.”
But perhaps that is Pandagon’s aim: to let ME know how it feels to be regarded as just a “mouthy cunt.” It has worked. It hurts and it angers.
The reign of the downtrodden must be stopped. We the cheerful must rise up and demand from the populace the displays of happiness we deserve.
SMILE, SOURPUSS!
Well said, sir. Well said.
To summarize that thread:
A bunch of women on Pandagon talk about how they don’t like it when men order them to smile.
SmartMan reads this, doesn’t totally get it, but makes a mental note that women don’t like being told to smile.
A few days later waiting for the metro, he notices lovely UnsmilingWoman. He opens his mouth to tell her to smile, but remembers that women don’t like that. Instead he makes a witty remark about the metro being late, then stares straight ahead like he didn’t even notice she was female.
UnsmilingWoman chuckles at the remark and stops wondering if she’s gonna make it to the dry cleaners before it closes. She takes a good look at SmartMan and notices how handsome he is. She makes her own witty joke. When he looks at her, she makes eye contact and gives him that smile she saves for men she finds attractive. He takes a step closer…..
DumbMan reads Pandagon thread and decides to pick fights with the feminazis. People nicely explain to him why he’s not understanding what they’re talking about. He takes it as a personal attack simply because they disagree with him. Then he goes out into the world ordering women to smile ‘cuz that’ll show those feminazis…. A few months later he complains on a Pandagon thread that women just don’t like nice guys.
I’m just wondering if this post is related in any way to the post about pigeon brains with chips in them? Or are they two separate incidences?
Question two: if frowning bothers the guy, what is his stance on receiving a swift kick to the groin?
His last comment had a very cinematic quality to it. I bet when he wrote it, he thought it sounded very Clint Eastwood, but it reads as very, I dunno, Eeyore. Except not charming.
Wow. Too bad I’ve been busy, else the tiny, amoeba-sized violin that dude’s been playing would have brought a tear to my eye. Or at least a guffaw to my lips…
His last comment had a very cinematic quality to it.
I love how he fell on his face at the end when he forgot the word for “monstrous.” Way to fuck up your exit.
God, I hate the “smile!” “I love to see a pretty lady smile” or “cheer up, it can’t be that bad” shit. They always seem to pick the worst days in my life to do it too. It always rings to me like, obviously, god forbid I have problems, I shouldn’t trouble with that when I could be making perfect strangers think I’m a moron with some fake-ass smile on my face.
It always reminds me of the guys who comment on me when I leave Rocky Horror, usually dressed, as are my gay male compatriots, in revealing clothing and complete strangers, not fans of the show, approach me to tell me that I have a nice rack, or some such. When I continue walking, or flip them off, or tell them to back off, I inevitably hear behind me “I was paying you a COMPLIMENT.”
Telling a female to “Smile!” has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with happiness or joy; it has EVERYTHING to do with demanding that another person, whom YOU percieve as inferior to you, act the way you would like them to, just cause you say so.
It’s RUDE and ENTITLED and Fuck-witted.
It is the equivalent of demanding a African-AMerican to do a tap-dance for you, on the street, because you find such performances amusing.
It IS THAT BAD !!
I don’t personally consider it to be “flirty” at all. It is a dominance-related behavior. The ONLY people I would give a pass on it, would be people over 80 years old, becasue they might be getting senile-ly demented and I am willing to take a lot of crap from Seniors (”they already paid”).
A good comeback to the “Smile!” command from Mr. Entitled guy might be, throwing a nickle at them and saying: “Do a Tap Dance!” (ha ha at least it might get them thinking)
I was struck by the pithiness of a Pandagon Poster who said, they never get the “Smile!” command when they are in the company of a Male. Hmmmm. Velly Telling, and absolutely true.
I was struck by the pithiness of a Pandagon Poster who said, they never get the “Smile!” command when they are in the company of a Male.
I’ve had the command (and am male, obviously), though not often, and mostly from family members.
well, we could organise a whip-round to buy you biiig platform shoes … and I guess that would help display the genitals more prominently, come to think of it.
I do love the inherent idiocy of
Yeah, smiling at people is ’spreading some love’, and so is ordering them to smile, no matter what s*** they’re putting up with. Good.
Here is a link for Darryl X:
http://www.logosky.net/image08/happyface10.jpg
I was actually looking for a different Gahan Wilson happy face cartoon. The one I had in mind shows a couple of jackbooted Gestapo type characters with happy faces on their armbands instead of swastikas. I couldn’t find it online, at least in the short time I spent looking, so this one will have to do.
A stalker saw his victim driving by and honked so much that she frowned. When he showed up at her workplace he told her she looked miserable and frownish when he drove past her that other day. She asked him,”Does the fact that I was frowning mean you want to kill me?” “I ain’t no killer,” he said. This really happened.
Junk science:
‘I love how he fell on his face at the end when he forgot the word for “monstrous.” ‘
He said monster-ly because he meant monster-ly. Here is the sentence:
“And those who fight monsters like sexism easily become–if not outright monsters themselves–monster-LY.”
While monster-LY may not be a real word I think the structure of the sentence should be pretty obvious…. to most people.
While most people have probably realized this already I suspect many of them are simply too gentle to correct you.
Way to fuck up an insult, though.
Uh, so the structure of a sentence is a reason to make up a word?
I’m not sure it is obvious actually. Did he mean:
And those who fight monsters like sexism easily become — if not outright monsters themselves — [at least] monster-LY.
?
In which case ‘monstrous’ would be better.
or
And those who fight monsters like sexism easily become — if not outright monsters themselves — monster-LY.
?
In which case ‘monstrous themselves’ would be better, but so would a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.
I’m not necessarily condemning the invention of words, just the invention of inferior replacements to perfectly good words.
While most people have probably realized this already I suspect many of them are simply too gentle to correct you.
Yeah, that must be it.
Huh? my em-dashes worked in the preview.
It needs a semicolon after “mdash” for it to work in wordpress.