To put it simply, I AM TIRED OF TRYING TO EXPLAIN THIS SHIT TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT.
Especially
“jokes” like MacFarlane’s, which, to the layperson’s ear, barely
register above microaggressions (if the kind of people who see no
problem whatsoever with “We Saw Your Boobs” were the kind of people who
used the term “microaggressions”). I am tired of trying to have an
intellectual discussion about dog-whistle sexism in a culture where
prominent politicians are still trying to grasp what rape is, and in a
world where little girls are shot in the head because they want to go to
school. Asking people to think critically about some hacky jokes from a
dancing cartoonist? You might as well wear a sandwich board that says,
“Yell at Me With Bad Grammar.”
I
am tired of being called a shrieking harridan for pointing out
inequalities so tangible and blatant that they are regularly codified
into law. I am tired of being told to provide documentation of
inequality in the comments sections of a website where a staff of smart
women documents inequality as fast as our fingers can move.
Like, you
might as well write me a note on a banana peel demanding that I prove to
you that bananas exist.
I am tired of being asked to “cite sources”
proving that sexism is real (that RAPE is real, even!), because there is
no way to concisely cite decades and decades of rigorous academia.
Allow me to point at the fucking library.
We can’t cite “everything,”
and our challengers know that. It’s an insulting diversionary tactic,
it’s an attempt to drag us all backwards, and fuck it. Do your own
research like the rest of the grown-ups.
Lindy West, “Sexism Fatigue : When Seth MacFarlane Is a Complete Ass and You Don’t Even Notice” on Jezebel.