Mimi (36 page)

Officers “too busy” to visit murder scene

Father faces life for murder of daughter, 5

Murders of partners by men rise steeply

Carpenter convicted of gruesome canal murders as police warn of more victims

Family grief over girl whipped to death

Women left widowed by violence

Secret video shows US air crew gunning down Iraqi citizens

Five campaigners for female MP killed in run-up to Afghan polls

Teenager raped five-year-old after being spared jail term

Man pleads guilt for locking nurse in trunk of his car for 10 days

Teenager who attacked woman with bleach gets detention

Football star jailed for sex assault

Pedophile ringleaders get jail for appalling attacks

Teenager remanded over schoolgirl rape on video

Hanged girl bullied for being “too pretty”

Family’s fury after daughter murdered by ex-partner who had repeatedly raped her

US death rate for women giving birth declared “scandalous” by Amnesty

Father allowed to rape daughters for 33 years

Fashion under fire as leading photographer is accused of sexually exploiting models

Police officers jailed for being cruel to woman in custody

Landmark US ruling to grant asylum to victims of severe domestic abuse

Stepfather guilty of raping two-year-old girl

School attack motive was “hatred of humanity”

Earthquakes blamed on “immodest” women

Sisters sprayed with acid by men on motorbike

Women’s hearts at risk from stress, study shows

Actor advises fan to “cut” ex-girlfriend

BP Deepwater slick now worst oil disaster in US history

Ordeal of Austrian cellar girl to be filmed

Female circumcision continues worldwide

Police hunt after rapist escapes from courtroom

Woman jailed for not testifying against rapist husband

Increases in eating disorders in women over thirty

Reluctance of women to ask for salary increases

Single mother and child, stabbed by ex—child died later

Drama in court as felon shoots woman judge

Woman accused of having “rebellious streak” ate at McDonald’s

Speeding police car kills girl, 16

Man battered twin babies to death: “They cried like sheep.”

Woman shot in the head for an affair

Man who killed wife and daughter then hanged himself had financial problems

Mel Gibson investigated for domestic violence against former partner

Police officer raped vulnerable women

Man who killed wife with hammer claims “momentary aberration”

Woman spent eighteen years in captivity

Jimmy Carter severs ties with Southern Baptist Convention over misogyny

Police find more bodies in search for serial killer stalking Long Island

TV sets girls up for lifetime of objectification

The gender pay gap starts with allowances: parents give girls less cash to spend than boys

Aung San Suu Kyi praised more for beauty than her politics

Police hunt father as bodies discovered in garden

“I feel buried alive,” says woman blinded by partner

Female crickets select which sperm fertilizes eggs

MANIFESTO OF THE ODALISQUE REVOLUTION

Manifesto

by

Harrison Hanafan

Cover illustration:
Reclining Odalisque
, by Henri Matisse, 1923. Museum of Modern Art, New York, © Succession H. Matisse / DACS 2012.

Table of Contents

1
. 
VIRTUE AND CHEWING GUM        
i

2
. 
ALL MEN ARE TERRORISTS        
vii

3
. 
FREE THE ODALISQUES
!        
xi

4
. 
WE’LL ALL HAVE CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS WHEN SHE COMES        
xiv

5
. 
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY IS A WOMAN        
xvi

6
. 
INSTRUCTIONS TO MEN OF FEELING        
xxi

1
. 
VIRTUE AND CHEWING GUM

My first rejection of a woman came at birth, when, in a tsunami of bodily fluids, my own and hers, I slid through my mother’s brutal confines, folds, and egress. Malehood had begun, and with it, my right to everything in the world:

Apocalypse, assassination, apathy, arson, type A personalities, Asperger’s, Adonis, Attila the Hun, athlete’s foot, architecture, the Army, the Air Force, the air itself, the alphabet, almanacs, Woody Allen, Aristotle, and the atom bomb.

Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, boners, barbecues, Bluegrass, business, brothels, bills, bachelor pads, the Boston Strangler, baseball, belching, bestiality, and bubblegum.

Capitalism, computers, confusion, Confucius, currency markets, castration complexes, cars, cheeseburgers, child custody conflicts, charisma, cuckoldry, catastrophe, and the cosmos.

Decisions, diplomas, discord, debate, disapproval, Dickens, Dohnányi, daggers, debt, deception, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, duty, deities, duels, dairymaids, drones, and dynamite.

Employment, eminence, edifices, enterprises, euphoniums, Einstein, ethics, entropy, extinctions, economics, equipment, enlistment, executions, education, excellence, and exactitude.

Feasts, fellowship, fraternities, Freud, fraud, firsts, fisticuffs, flatulence, fury, fireworks, flashing, fumbling with your fly, fatherhood, fame, force, fortunes, folly, fantasy, and the future.

Guns, guts, gals, gum, games, god, gall, gallantry, governments, granite, glockenspiels, the Gettysburg Address, gambling, global warming, gynecology, Gershwin, Guantánamo, geometry, Genesis, Giotto, and genocide.

Horror, homicide, heroism, Hitler, harlotry, hostility, hiking, ham sandwiches, hard-ons, hound-dogs, hangovers, hunting, Hemingway, Hollywood, highways, hypochondria, hors d’oeuvres, and heraldry.

Irritation, impotence, the internet, the Ivy League, the Industrial Revolution, ice cubes, ice hockey, institutions, the Infantry, importance, and irresponsibility.

Jesus, jism, Joyce, jail, jests, jealousy, jerking off, Jung, juntas, jalapeños, Jekyll and Hyde, Andrew Jackson, joyriding, jostling for position, jurisprudence, jilting, and self-justification.

Knowledge, know-how, knives, knots, knuckle-dusters, knighthoods, kinky stuff, go-karts, kites, karate, kick-boxing, Kennedy, Buster Keaton, Keats, King Kong, Kierkegaard, and killing.

Law, land, language, life, liberty, liquid lunches, license, luxury, lounge lizardry, logic, laurels, Lancelot, Lolita, learning, leering, Leonardo, Tom Lehrer, and getting laid.

Might, merit, muscles, medals, marching, manliness, appliance manuals, mystery, Marilyn Monroe, Melville, Machiavelli, metallurgy, machines, mountaineering, mischief, monuments, masterpieces, Molotov cocktails, museums, myths, monsters, mothers, mistresses, megalomaniacs, and the Marx Brothers.

Napalm, nations, nightclubs, nightcaps, naughty nurses, nautical talk, nuclear energy, Napoleon, Nabokov, necrophilia, neuroses, thick necks, nonsense, nerdism, and noise.

Oil, ore, onanism, 007, obedience, obligations, opinions, objections, sex objects, oysters, oligarchies, obfuscation, ophthalmology, Old Boy networks, offices, obituaries, and obliteration.

Power, pride, purpose, planets, pricks, prizes, prestige, priapism, pussy, profanity, polygamy, pedagogy, Proust, Puccini, Picasso, pianos, propofol, pulpits, parades, processions, possessions,
Playboy
, the police, policies, police policies, pedantry, pickup trucks, particle physics, poetry, and pointlessness.

Quotations, quotas, quips, quagmires, quandaries, quarterlies, Quasimodo, quarrels, quizzes, quests, string quartets, quarks, and quirks.

Rape, rights, reason, respect, revenge, rules, regulations, Claude Rains, rhetoric, rockets, rifles, razor blades, rumpus rooms, anything risqué, rodeos, rascals, rain checks, ridicule, retaliation, Reagan, rudeness, recollections in tranquility, riots, and radiation.

Superman, Stalin, spunk, smart bombs, sports, statistics, statues, squish mittens, solemnity, stilettos, the Stock Exchange, sadomasochism, soppiness, sloppiness, spy stuff, the space race, science, systems, soapboxes, strategies, satellites, stalagmites, stalactites, success, supremacy, snoring, simultaneous orgasms, and steak.

Terror, torture, trumpet fanfares, tyranny, technology, travel, transvestites, travesties, tragedies, Tolstoy, thrusting, threesomes, theology,
The Thinker
, tomes, toys, the telephone, and tinkering in the basement.

Unlimited mileage, uniforms, the universe, ugliness, underlings, untidiness, unctuousness,
Übermenschen
, underdogs, untold wealth, understanding, uselessness, and uxoriousness.

Vice, virtue, value, VD, vistas, visas, vivas, the vote, verandas, vacations, vessels, valet parking, vapor trails, ventriloquy, Vivaldi, Verdi, Valentino, violin virtuosi, vanity, veneration, vacillation, vixens, victims, vas deferens, and VROOM-VROOM.

War, the world, world wars, wine, women, witches, wealth, worth, winking, wanking, whaling, whittling, whistling, wrestling, weightlifting, wrong, Westerns, Whoppers, Fats Waller, wheat,
Webster’s
dictionary, whips, work ethic, arrest warrants, whoring, Walt Whitman, Walt Disney, and free will.

X-rays, ex-girlfriends, exoneration, Xerox machines, Malcolm X, X chromosomes, and xylophones.

Yawning, yearning, yodeling, Yeats, yachts, yawls, Yes men, yens, Ysaÿe, yuck, yellow fever, the
Yellow Pages
, and yo-yos.

Zippers, zithers, Zen, zirconium oxide, zoning out, zoos, zoom lenses, zucchini and zoot suits.

And I, a trusting little baby!

All my life I have been fed by women, loved by women. They have offered gifts, attention, sincerity—and in return I have ignored, pitied, and patronized them, avoided and forgotten them. I have rejected, neglected, denied, and deprived women. I have lied to them (lied to myself most of all!). I have used women for sex, and recoiled from their corresponding demands on me, which I saw as infringements of my liberty. I have dumped girlfriends without regret, showing no concern whatsoever for their future welfare—not even making sure they got home safely!

And yet, I’ve always thought of myself as A PRETTY GOOD GUY.

Falling for the notion that you must at all costs Keep The Supremacy, I perfected the ancient habits of malehood: the ability not to listen to women or understand them; the custom of mocking them; the indifference to their problems; and the assumption that women are here to do the shit jobs, and to serve us. Almost unconsciously (I
have
been almost unconscious all my life), I grew to inhabit a position of unspoken authority and superiority over women. And all this, while trying to be “fair” to them.

In my professional life, I have milked my patients’ insecurities, encouraging women to focus negatively on their appearance, and misled others into undue preoccupation with “beauty.” I have allowed my patients to embark on painful, expensive, and sometimes life-threatening procedures in order, supposedly, to improve their looks. And I have profited financially from this. I made a living out of preop and postop female distress and discontent. Just by participating in the beauty industry, I have pressured women from
afar
. What women need is
less
scrutiny of how they look, not more nose-jobs.