Googled

Like many others (Danger Theatre and Cyndi Wilde have posted about it) I got a TOS warning from Blogger about adverts to adult sites. Well, not a problem for me per se but a quite sh*tty thing to do to those two fine women, as well as others I might not be aware of. I don't post my musings here as a cheaper alternative to therapy. I do intend, ideally, to communicate and also to read what others have to say on DiD topics. If Blogger makes life intolerable for them, they'll do it to me, too. I am thinking of Tumblr, folks. Yeah, yeah, I know, but still....

The Anti-Damsel

OK, I have to torture the theme of today's post to get it even remotely close to topic. And in doing so I  risk creating a huge misunderstanding. But this really got under my skin, in an annoying, non-West Nile mosquito kind of way, and I think sorting out the potential misunderstanding in my title, "The Anti-Damsel," might actually elucidate something.

Maybe some of you have already come across this video of a woman at a Dunkin' Donuts trying to cash in on a company pledge to give each customer a receipt or to make the order free of charge. What follows is an 8 minute rant that eventually turns racist for... no particular reason, as the poor employees were being a lot nicer to this rude trash than I would be.

Now, I am sure most people find the woman unpleasant, low-class, entitled, lazy and just plain nasty and rude lonnnnng before she unveils her lovely racist rant. Nevertheless I bet most people would be able to at least endure her until she starts calling the employees names -- that's the moment where she unambiguously crosses the line from "obnoxious" to "I-can-throw-you-out-of-my-store."

The racism is appalling, and I do not mean to suggest in what follows that my that-tears-it moment is worse than the racism, just that it comes earlier. My line-crossing moment comes a lot sooner than the vile, stupid  hate at the end. It's not the lack of the word "please" in anything she says -- the overwhelming sense of entitlement this idiot has. It's not the the laughingly incredible assertion that she has, like, a business degree, so she knows how things are supposed to work -- the unsubtle threat (well, maybe subtle for her) that she can get the poor minimum wage sap at the counter fired (the hilarious 'this is all under video surveillance' comment as she holds up her smart phone). It's not even the harassment of another customer, who just tries not to get involved (and I don't blame him, although I don't think I would remain neutral for that long in his place.)

It occurs around the 6 minute mark in the link above. The woman, one Taylor Chapman, originally from Indiana or Kentucky but apparently deported to Florida for crimes against civility, starts suggesting that the workers in the rear making up her (free) food order are hacking up spitballs into her food. Then she says, "That's why I'm giving this to my boyfriend. I don't trust them."

What a lucky guy.

Now on one level it's just disgustingly amusing. I laughed at first at the hideous mendacity and selfishness. However it also speaks volumes as to what this girl-thing thinks of her boyfriend, how she conceives her "empowerment." She doesn't have to put up with any inconvenience -- that's what her bf is for. Note: not her besties. Not her sis. Her boyfriend.

This is the Anti-Damsel: what makes her the anti-damsel is not her "empowerment" -- plenty of strong, capable, brave and smart women can er, serve as damsel-fuel. It should not be assumed that a damsel "needs a man to rescue her" - a rescue fantasy is not the same thing as a woman's always requiring it to be seen as attractive. Not in the least.  For me, a woman constantly requiring bailing out would get pretty tiresome, even in a fantasy world, after a while.And we'll always cheer a heroine who triumphs through her own abilities. A damsel in distress is not an object, until you expand the notion of object to encompass anyone merely spoken to.This confusion is one of the reasons I tend to prefer the word ""heroine" -- a lot less baggage, and a lot closer to the identification even I, as the fantasy villain, experience.

No, what makes her the Anti-Damsel is that her lack of compassion makes us unable to feel any compassion for her. She cannot see the difference between "empowerment" and "privilege." Her world, without her knowing it, is ultimately the most base, Hobbesian zero-sum culture imaginable. Who would even want to save her? Leave her tied to the tracks. I'm going to go
get a donut.