|
|
mutilation for career development
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.BITNET)
Thu, 4 Jul 1996 19:33:10 CDT
/* What follows is a taperecordedforprebroadcast at this time of a */
/* public anthroevent featuring an address by Adrienne Dearmas on The */
/* Male Eunuch (not suggested in any way by Germaine Groor, Elsewise */
/* there's Royal Royalties To Pay). With great gnashing of teeth, A. */
/* has prepared the lecture notwithstanding the Literature being, uh, */
/* excuse my French, *FUNCTIONALIST*. The audience attending this */
/* Gauloise event, reflecting a donation by the Republic of France */
/* Tobacco Authority, consists of members of the Washington DC NOW */
/* Chapter and Gun Club. There is a real explanation for this, which */
/* Adrienne Dearmas will be happy to provide you with if you ask her */
/* politely via offline e-mail. */
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrienne -
You've *no idea* how highly I respect your judgment, at least compared to X,
as of Wednesday evening, who persisted in delusional thinking as to my Career
Development Prospects notwithstanding (a) official Social Security Administra-
tion Cripplehood for purposes of Criteria for Miscellaneous Unemployability
Not Otherwise Classified; and (b) my solemn declaration that, under the
Prevailing Institutional Forms, what she was suggesting I induce in her the
Direct Experience of having induced in her the wholly Subjectively speaking
spuriousness of the Initiative, allowable solely, under other circumstances,
given her five eleven to my five nine and a silly milimeter taller, yet was,
more germanely, the strongest taboo in this realm of human(?) behaviour known
to this culture [note: please don't annoy me about what culture is just right
here & now], incest running a close second due to surveillance impracticalities
whereto must be added the incompatibility between Child Sexual Abuse and False
Memory Sydney, New South Wales. Both of these are formidable growth industries;
both proudly sport hickeys, where not the odd discreet tatoo, in honour of the
Direct Experience undergone by each, where, as previously noted, the usage
Direct Experience is Truth to New Agery; [barnyard epithet], real or faked, to
yours oh so truly. While Pregnancy endures nine months, the Expectancy Effect
in the human female lasts so many minutes only, depending on the severity and
complexity of e-hallucinations as well as the more commonplace cyberdelusions.
[*NOT TILL THEN* did X, as all the others had, groan, nonverbally, olordwhat've
I goneanddone?! with the mathematically predictable consequent pursuance there-
to, that the Full Astrological Workup, initially free, donated to the cause of
love, was charged to my account, inclusive of couch rental per hour (roomie's
got bedroom), less overstuffedness for two, $30, leftovers my parting gift,
Mykonos Diner. I am barred from even the local railroad station for the rest
of my life, natural or Elsewise.]
We return you to e-hallucinations and the notuncommonly-associated-therewith
cyberdelusions, already in progress over many of these same stations. $ TO PBS!
.........
Whereof, for both, I've generated more than my share in the human female. What
I meant to write, so thus correcting myself, is The Normal Human Female. What
is meant by the Normal [ie, herewith the Unmarked [and Unmutilated for the most
part]] is operationalizable, for brevity's sake, not you, Adrienne: selfdepict-
ed as a bit short as you may be/have been, as a SOMETHING LOOKING UNLIKE ME.
Normal, to this writer, is a race-ish Thingie. Amongst my multiply-told tales
is the one where Richard Williams, the *brilliant* African-American of the
Stony Brook SocDept (of B.H., the other one, who claimed, ie, lied, to the
effect that he invented the word Multicultural, the most-exposed, if understa-
tedly, the better, as he went to his Last Reward, Dean of African-Armenian
Studies, at double his former salary, in a school honestly convinced of its
own stinginess! yet which cannot be identified here for reasons too oblivi-
ous...) published his highlytheoretical thin volume expert-comprehensible
howbeit nonuserfiendish short volume on Race and Ethnicity, contrasts of,
'twixt and 'tween. Literaturereviewed; all alas torntoshreds, New Departure
made VERY SOON, stay tuned. Oh, yes! Lest We Forget! R. Williams, Hierarchical
Structure and Social Value, Cambridge, 1992.
The part on Race, def. of, I read aloud. Somethng to do with "socially
significant body parts." I stared long and hard at the mirror. It returned
the favour.
"Skin colour, for example, is a socially significant body part; (p 15)."
"Foot size, in contrast, is *not* a socially significant body part; (p 16)
[-emph.in.orig.]" PURELY BY CHANCE, mind you, nothing *staged*, like the
Stuff I usually pull, at this Precise Nanosecond, four gentlemen from Beijing,
discussing, very mathematically, something of a physical, if inorganic, nature.
The cite from p 16 having fallen on open ears, there were guffaws, a textual
emendation suggesting itself as an urgent necessity, as reifications often do.
On the morrow, I presented myself at Prof Williams' office, ostensibly for
Deep and Far Ranging Discussion of "Just what might turn out to be a socially
significant body part?" Yet of course, you know me, with a HIDDEN AGENDA. For
our Jewish subscribership, think of the HIDDEN AGENDA as some Thingie like the
*afikomen*.
What I was there for was for Prof Williams to take a good long hard look at
me. Which he very discreetly did. Mind racing through all possibilities and a
few un-possibilities, he shook his head, no. Be it noted, I had not ASKED FOR
IT. There were many considerations, too many for me to grasp. Like the vast
majority of the Real People in the Stony Brook SocDept, RW regarded me as at
best Mentally Retarded and at times much worse, viz, DRUGDERANGED PSYCHO OF
DIMINISHED CAPACITY.
Thus&thereby I was consigned to the residuum-detritus of the white Degenera-
tes, to find resting place in the New Jersey Jukes & Kallikaks Museum, that is,
should the corpse not get overriddled by hot lead fired at the behest of
Commander Schwartzkopf, absolute ruler of the NJSP; since then known as Father
of General Normal Schwartzkopf, author of It Doesn't Take A Media Maven (Drell
Books, paperish); and to this very day the radio voice of THE FBI IN PEACE AND
WAR.
Long Island is best regarded as a piece of New Jersey which floated too far,
so far not even The Little Engine That Could could.
I wanted you to know, Adrienne, how digressive even so wretched a specimen
as I, that is, me, in Spoken English, may get in aversion to discussing the
removal of the male organ....
"PRICK!"
"[You sexist asshole], PENIS!"
"Iz in altkontri *schlong*."
"Iz f'r unfucked biddies like you, MAIDEN AUNT! By me'r, iz *schvontz*!"
"<gasp>. Und you kolly'rself Joosh!"
"PUTZ, PUTZ, dammit, PUTZ!"
"Excuse me, sir, but are you a member of the NOW Chapter?"
"Hudafogiz YOU?!"
"I'm terribly sorry sir, but you will simply have to leave."
"Twerp, 'I'm terribly sorry sir' is Carol Gilligan's Island. Difference
Feminism. Don't go no more, lamesister. Let me shake your hand, it's a
Thingie of mine before theoretical arguments."
"OW OW OW OW!"
"Hurts like a real man done it, don't it. That, you poor effeminate sap, is
Katha Pollitt Feminism, ie, 'taint no diff'runts twixta two'."
Now, our featured speaker, Adrienne Dormouse, uh, excuseme, that's Alix, or
wuz it, Anastasia, in Wonderkind, on her topic tonight, *Cut it off, cut it all
off: Unless a simple gelding will do*.
From earliest times....Shuddafogup, willya, I hate to get outta character
like this, but, fuckman, SHUT UP, and your seductee of the evening, i'm making
wildly stereotypical inferences from her AIRHEAD SLUT look, as advertised in
Xi'an Yellow, China's premier, or is that premiere, fleshmag, winner gets her
shot at Finalist from Sha'anxi Province AIRHEAD SLUT league competition, winner
for beheading by Commander Chong according to techniques developed by himself
on Fourth Century High Society Noblewomen & Aristocrats, onnacounta he's a
Certified, by the Ministry of Cults and Popular Religous Affairs, as a Daoist
Immortal, #5 Seeded among alltime top forty Illuminated Masters. My point here
is, sooner will your ladybug, I mean, fiend, give up her crowning glory than
you, buster, will part with the dangling ugliness down there....
"<uh>...."
"There is no truth to the alleged & socalled Naturalness of this stupid
crap. Surgical removal of the penis, or the less-invasive castration-gelding,
is *consistent with reproductive success*, in the sense of gene-proliferation,
weedlike, as some sick, uh, some sociobiologists would have us construe the
*telos* of the gene, as defined by itself. I repeat. TAKING THIS BASURA AT ITS
WORD, IN ITS OWN TERMS, you do vastly better, genewise, or shall I say jeans-
stupid, as a Court Eunuch than as your basic *nung* transplanting rice seed-
lings...."
"....?...."
"Well, look it the fuck up, don't bother me."
"If, I mean, they can't, that is, you know what I'm trying t'say, that is,
if it's cut off, how...."
"Relatives. Lots and lots more where those came from, crying of lots forty-
nine lots, f'r crying out loud, they are, believe me, *lousy* with your genes.
Not each one's got every last one'a'them. Mixemup is Nature's way."
"SERUTAN!"
"You, buddy boy, gonna die. You got no idea who I work for."
"Nyah nyah."
"BLAMMO...BLAMMO...BLAMMO....ah, that wuz gooood, hey Adrienne, you gotta
coupdegrace'im. Blowabackofisheadoff, got that?"
"Mon plaisir." <bang>.
<cough...cough>.
"WherewuzI. The manifest rationale of eunuchism is the safeguarding of the
monopolistic right of claiming paternity of each and every infantile organism
born to the denizens of a human zoo of women as found at the apex of society
in Imperial China, in Marathi or Rajput warrior castes in Rajasthan and the
Deccan of the South Asian subcontinent, in what to Western prurience is the
Lasciviousness, Indolence, and Sensuality of the southern tip of India, Kerala,
Karnataka. Southeast Asia, the fabled fleshpots of the Orient personified, were
nothing of the kind except for certain men and their male relatives. Yet this
was pretextual. As was the delusion--it was far too persistent historically to
allow us to accord its endless reitreration any seriousness, that as the eunuch
might have no descendants, he was secure, proofpositivefordamnsure, against the
temptation to acquire, be the acquisition that of luxurious finery or that of
control of the very ruler and state.
"The Ming, a most notoriously euchuchificated political regime, which ruled,
mainly nominally, from 1368 to 1644, not merely saw the proliferation of
salaried eunuch-staffed posts to the awesome figure of seventy or seventy-five
thousand, the comparison is with the posts in the regular civil service whose
total staffing, not counting permanent local clerks regarded as beneath scum,
never exceeded twenty thousand, declining relative to population since the Song
or even the Tang in Medieval times.
"The Ming Founder, Ming The Merciless, 1368-1398, whose rivalry with the
late Mao Zedong for the muchcoveted sobriquet (I use sobriquets for my barbecue
pit all the time, try 'em!), "The Most Bloodthirsty Tyrant In Chinese History,"
did indeed post a notice in his Palace to the effect that the eunuch caught
even in the slightest meddling in politics shall Surely Die, though he was
himself illiterate, found his eunuchry paying not the slightest heed; and if,
perchance, he asked a meddler of the sort prohibited, 'Wuzzamatta, cant'cha
read, asshole,' what might be more appropriate, yet this being *tianxia*, less
likely, than the accused sneering back, 'Nomore'nyou, *wansui* an' allatshity'-
know."
"By the midfifteenth century, the first eunuch dictator had taken power,
leading his hapless sovereign into captivity along with the half million
soldiers of the rapidly crumbling armed forces; the *wei so* system devised
by Ming The Merciless, to be sure, had been designed to Cost No Money, in
accordance with Confucian Thrift and White Lotus Asceticism. Which might have
worked, had Chinese been Mongols, the *wei so* having been a copy of the Mongol
armed forces. One major difference appeared early. Chinese did work, and could
not imagine not doing it, even if just the endless toil of ordering serfs what
to do at the crack of dawn. Mongols conquered China for the explicit purpose of
watching someone else do the work, a most commonplace motive to practice the
high and noble art of the Conqueror. Ask your local Spaniard for details. They
had a few other quirks, like loathing footbinding, not cheating on their wives:
one per customer, most unChinese (counting the Official and Legal Wife, the
concubines, the serving maids, and the rest of the <ahem> Inner Quarters), and
getting what we call *heavy into* faddish ideas. Like giving cushy jobs to
Italians who couldn't do a goddamn thing except Count Money, can y'imagine?
Nothing like the jobs Arabs got; they Counted Money lots faster. We've got
a word for Mongol "tyranny" today, *glasnost*. Why the Russians were afraid
to make it up, I mean, like, it's the Middle Ages, even, who knows."
"...an' the eunuchs?"
"Not much work, azzisaid. But comes the revolution, and it was your basic
Eat The Rich type revolution, subversive chiliastic-type religious-conspira-
torial syncretism, bit of this, bit of that, anything that Saves, like, with
Flaming Sword, you know, including Great Mother of the West, tough lady. They
had, get this, Red Armies. One Thingie everyone agreed on, all that came from
the West was Evil, which is why China is still catching up. With...."
"The eunuchs!"
"Oh, yeah, business was slow for the whole Mongol dynasty, and there was
lotsa catching up to do, which they did. You gave your eunuchs jobs which would
look morally, uh, dubious on regulation organizational charts. You know, like
Secret Police. Called Brocade Uniform Guard. Why you want garish looking secret
police is part of the Inscrutability of the Orient. The obesity of these people
was...truly off the wall. During one riot at the National University, a student
protester *whacked off a hunk* of a guardbeing's blubber, and *ate* it! Do I
hear an <ugh> out there? Yer all asleep, now I can relax.
"The eunuchs were charged with uprooting, without mercy, all known and yet
unknown political heterodoxy, like, from Cheng-Xi Confucianism, which was on
the test for the PhD. Fortunately, not on mine. They had special torture-
prisons, Eastern Pavilion and Western Pavilion. Anyoneatall, no matter how
[nominally] important, of the highest rank, you know, could be *desaparecido*.
You heard about the Singapore caning? They beat the victim on same part of the
anatomy, he rarely lived. Fifty strokes of the heavy bamboo, that's death; a
hundred was doubledeath.
"Fourth and worst of the eunuch dictators was Wei Zhongqian, who'd built his
own lavish tomb, rivalling that of the Son of Heaven. Alas, the Son of Heaven
died first, and this architectural treasure was dyscompleted in time to
squander the stolen billion-dollar fortune inside in a vain effort to save
the country from the Manchu, pronounce that <choo>, sneeze. Gotcher Kleenex
handy, good. Now, let's here it for the barbarous tribes we've gotta deal
with after 1644, Man<CHOO>! You're more heavy into the Mystic East than I
figured on, Else there is a flu goin' round something awful.
"Now, if all the manifest, selfevident reasons for eunuchification are so
much crap, really, why *is* the eunuch. For real and actual. The functionalist
explanation, which faute de mieux is the system default at this time, though
we all know, deep down, functionalism sucks. Not that I have anything against
sucking; and there's not even five people here who will admit to not sucking,
it's the semantic field is among the pardon my French, screwiest in the Anglo
tongue.
"I was saying. The cause of the eunuch, fondamentallement, is the establish-
ment as social convention of our notion of Paranoia. When there can be no doubt
on the part of the sanest of all that anyone equally sane is busily plotting
against themselves, whence the imperative for preemptive plotting countering,
in principle, the plotting plotted against you by inimical plotters who, as
they see it, are engaging in the Prudent, Conservative course of action, and
given that All Power is by common agreement if not by empirical verification
in the hands of the ruler of *tianxia*, minions are needed, not leastofall by
*YOU*, to whom they owe *EVERYTHING*. In return, you turn a blind eye to
certain living arrangements whereby Palace Ladies are put up in eunuchs'
mansions, given that a man's mouth is so much used in eating, there's no
prospect of its surgical removal.
"We turn, for a refreshing contrast, to the Empire of the Gross Moguls of
Holly...I mean, the Great Mughals of India. Here, the women's quarters were
guarded by ferocious female warriors, fertile and desirous of fleshly pursuits
as women usually are, barring with bare if armed to teeth bodies against
intruders. The sight of these women, under Islamic law, was so Sinful to the
observant Muslims who prided themselves as Stricly Keeping of the Sha'aria
that, should rougue males rush the harem, they would be overcome by their
sense of Sin, and perhaps suffer debilitating, ah, functionalist theory."
"<LOUD CHEERS>."
"Good grief, is the hall packed with marxistfeminists, freudofeminomarxists,
adherents of Phyllis Cheslerism, and the gathering of all the Fringes of the
Elementary Garment Center?"
"<Thunderous Cheers!>."
"I've always said, if we've done one single thing for the women of this
country, it's In Theory. And Purely In Theory. Collected in *Signs*. Which
is, after all, something. What, don't ask. Now, here's your chance for...
RHETORIC, I allude to the *** QUESTION PERIOD ***. Question?
"Whuddabout Dahomey."
"Whddaboutitis, I can give you a Referral to an Africanist. Also another
Africanist, if you wanna get a Second Opinion. Does your HMO cover it? Reason's
that everything African is controversial, and if you wanna get all the
conflicted mess involved, it costs you for the insurance. Or, you can look up
in your Yellow Pages under General Practitioners and Qi Gong Masters."
"You. Make it quick."
"Adrienne, you told me to never darken your mailbox again when I told you
I wuz a Degenerate, irremediably unemployable. Now, here I have got inna US
snailmail a JOB OFFER from United Arab Emirates, Incorporated, and they want
a eunuch with a doctorate in sociology. All I gotta do is prove I got no Jewish
ancestry for 'bout a thousand years. A snap, anyone can fake crapola like that.
Adrienne, I'd do it for love of you. Would you, if I took the job, THINK MORE
OF ME AS A MAN, FULLY GAINFULLY EMPLOYED, if I gave up what, really, I never
had use for inna first place. What I only had to work on to coerce into the
semblance of, uh, lesserdegreeofsoftness onnacounta, like, it was the Job of
a Man. It was, it was explained, a man's WOIK. You follow so far that, I'm
afraid to say this at a NOW Chapter & Gun Club meeting, but I'd like you to
think that, even in *your* gender there's Dregs. And, given the strict con-
struction of the hypergamy rule, the Dregs of yours gotta be even Inferiorer
to the Dregs of mine for me to be worthy of them and them to be just right
for me at going market prices. And I hate it! I hate it and always did. I
wanna do this for you, Adrienne! Whatcha say?"
"Cut it off. Cut it *all* off!"
<THUNDEROUS CHEERS>.
Daniel A. Foss
|