1521: Stuck at the kitchen sink

Grabbing the electric cable of the hot iron, Deidre swung the iron around and around her head like she was swinging a dead cat by the tail, and killed her husband with a slap-bang on the side of the head. There was blood everywhere and a slight whiff of scorched hair.

Miscreant, she screamed, damned useless effeminate wombat. You are the antithesis of toxic masculinity.

And then Deidre chortled; it was a merciless, cold giggle. She took on the visage of a drooling hyena. This, she sniggered, is what is meant by striking while the iron’s hot.

Today I can get on with my life, mused Deidre. I’m sick of the way people think this planet is made for ironing, and vacuuming, and standing at the kitchen sink. At last I’m liberated from such enslavement. No more base behaviour. No more subservience. No more humiliation and slavery. No more pretending to appreciate a husband who couldn’t stop doing the laundry and ironing and cooking and house cleaning and dishes and getting the kids ready for school. This is the end of the liberated woofter. Now to go online and find me a real man.

1327. Potatoes

News Report: Mr and Mrs Stanley McBride are so proud of their daughter Mary (pictured). She had just come fifth in a Grow the Biggest Potato competition at her school.

“We are so proud of our daughter’s efforts at growing a potato,” said Mr McBride. “She just stuck a sprouting spud in the dirt and voilà! Look at that beauty!”

“There’s no doubt that our daughter takes after her late grandmother,” added Mrs McBride. “They both have green fingers as can be seen by the size of that potato. And she’s only nine! There were four boys ahead of her, but she beat eighteen other boys and two girls with her potato.”

Letter to Editor I: I am shocked and horrified that the parents of the “girl” who got fifth in the potato growing competition have already determined the gender of their child. She is only nine, for goodness sake, and already she is having her parents’ old-fashioned definitions of sexuality rammed down her throat. Who said the child wants to be a girl? Who determined at such a young age that she should be female? While I congratulate the child on getting fifth with her potato I am sure the child shall come somewhere near the bottom when it comes to coming to terms with its own sexuality.

Letter to Editor II: How dare the school run a competition. A competition exists to make those who do not win feel bad about themselves. The school could have had instead a Celebrate the Potato Week. But no! They have to go and tell most of the students that they are losers. Even the little girl who got fifth is a loser. There can be only one winner in a competition and that is the person who gets first. The girl is a big-time loser and that is all this potato competition is telling her.

Letter to Editor III: Why did we see a photograph of the girl who got fifth in the potato growing competition? Was it because she was a girl? I would like to have seen pictures of the boys’ potatoes. A couple of the boys holding onto their potatoes would’ve been much more stimulating than seeing a girl holding a spud and getting fifth. What is the world coming to?

Letter to Editor IV: I would like to join with others in congratulating the little girl who got fifth in the potato growing competition reported in your paper last Thursday. The photograph of her is stunning, and she looks wonderful in her summery frock purchased, I believe, from my shop on Duke Street. I am putting this brand of children’s wear at half price during this week as a way of celebrating. But be in quick. They will sell fast – Like a hot potato!

Letter to Editor V: I hope the girl’s potato was grown organically. These days too many gardeners grow their potatoes using sprays. We eat only what we grow ourselves. I haven’t sprayed my potatoes now for five years. My wife says, Oh for God’s sake spray the potatoes this year, because she’s hanging out for a boiled spud, but no! I refuse, even though Colorado potato beetles decimate my crop every year. I really hope the little girl at the school, and the boys too, learn from my example.

Letter to Editor VI: I always piss on my potatoes. The same for lemons. The potatoes love it. I think the little girl who got fifth in the potato competition should get some extra points. It’s a lot easier for boys to piss on their potatoes than it is for girls so she’s at a disadvantage from the start. Judging from the size of the girl’s potato I wouldn’t be surprised if she got her father to take the occasional slash out the back of the garden shed.

Letter to Editor VII: My little girl didn’t get anywhere in the potato growing competition. She grew a sweet potato and was disqualified. A sweet potato is apparently not a potato in terms of the competition. They said the only reason my little girl grew a sweet potato was because she’s fallen victim to stereotypes. Being female should not be regarded as “sweet”. My son grew an unbelievably huge carrot. He didn’t get anywhere but he wasn’t disqualified. They said he was welcome to stick his carrot in the competition. There seems to be one standard for girls and one for boys.

This correspondence is now closed: Editor.

Poem 21B: In praise of Hannibal’s elephants

Phoebe was stuck on her doctoral thesis.
“This,” said she, “will be my nemesis.”
So her tutor told her to study something relevant,
Such as “The Feminine Side of Hannibal’s Elephants”.

Well this thesis got her a summa cum laude
(She was not one to hide her talents under a shroud, eh?)
It was a marvellous masculine presumption to derail:
Proving that not all of Hannibal’s elephants were male.

Females are tough; females are strong;
Those who think only menfolk are robust have got it all wrong.
Hannibal couldn’t have crossed over the Alps
Without the aid of non-male pachyderm helps.

Phoebe took up a lectureship
As a result of studying elephant bits.
She discourses full time in Women’s Studies,
Teaching men how to be emotionally honest with their buddies.

There’s a wealth of inquiry waiting to be done.
Phoebe’s next article has already begun;
She researches you see, as well as teaches,
So she’s writing a paper on “Feminine Endings in Churchill’s Speeches”.

To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.

935. An invisible epidemic

Octavia Pankhurst Gorring-Wilson had a mission in life. It was a calling; a vocation, if you wish. Octavia Pankhurst Gorring-Wilson was one of those relatively rare beings: a feminist musicologist. Her mission in life was to get banned every skerrick of music written in sonata form.

There was good reason for it. For too long Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and most composers since, had got away with blue murder. Not murder exactly; but they had disguised their misogynist bigotries in veils of invisibility.

Everything in sonata form – sonatas themselves, and most symphonies, concertos… – all followed the same course: they were designed for patriarchal subjugation and domestication of the feminine.

This may need a little explaining, but Octavia Pankhurst Gorring-Wilson delighted in explaining. A sonata has two tunes; each in its own key. The first tune is masculine and the second tune is feminine. BUT by the end of the sonata the feminine tune is in the same key as the male tune. The SHE has been vanquished. The female has been made to sing in the same key as the male. She has been made to stand henceforth at the kitchen sink. She has been cruelly subjugated by these composers who don’t and didn’t give a tiddlywink about women’s issues, but walk roughshod over the aspirations of half of society.

Octavia Pankhurst Gorring-Wilson was all for banning ALL music and starting again. Good luck, Octavia.

To listen to the story being read click HERE!