Operation Swift Kick

WARNING:
While I do not like to use vulgar or foul language on this blog, the subject at hand fills me with a rage that makes it inordinately difficult to stay calm and erudite. I also find that sometimes a little vulgarity is necessary to adequately communicate the level of bile one feels. So there’s a little vulgarity in this blog entry. Sorry about that.

About 3 years ago, a supremely boneheaded misfit known as The Ferret posted a little bout of asshattery dubbed the Open Source Boob Project on his blog (the original post has since been deleted and reposted after seeming to have been sanitized at least in part to spin it more positively), all about how he and others at a particular con (or 2) had decided that it was perfectly okay to ask total strangers to touch their tits, and that women should not only not be insulted or made to feel like valueless pieces of shit about this, oh no, we should all feel honored and revered because some fucking dumbass wanted to touch our mammaries, and that in no way did the whole thing in any way color the world in a way detrimental to all women. I mean, gee, men never have problems understanding where sexual boundaries lay, so this sort of crap could never cause problems for other women, right? What could possibly go wrong with spreading the word that it’s totally okay to go up to random women in the world and ask them if you can grope their tits or ass or crotch? Wouldn’t that just make a perfect fucking world of wonder? What could possibly go wrong?!!!

As you can see, this still pisses me off, years later. Not only because I’m a girl in a male-oriented world full of dicks, but because in my comparatively short life, I have been subjected more times than I can count to jerks who felt it was perfectly acceptable to grope my person or comment on my ass or breasts, and thought I should consider that bullshit a compliment. And I wanted to punch every single one of them. I did punch some of them, but when you’re at work, your employer tends to frown on the fact that you slugged a guy at the bar or table or across the desk, so you generally have to grit your teeth and act like it didn’t bother you, while the dillweed in question gets a pass and is able to pat himself on the back for being able to pad his frail and fragile ego and the need to fuel his own powerlessness in the world by fucking with someone even less powerful than he. I realize all men are not jerks, but so many of them are, that they sometimes ruin it for the whole bunch, at least in my estimation.

Anyhow, tonight, the OSBP came up again on the interwebz, and along with it, something called the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP). That was written by a girl named Misia on her livejournal on April 22, 2008, and it’s hilarious. It’s since been deleted, but I was able to find a reposting of it, and I’m reposting it here, because I think it makes a valuable social commentary, not just on the asshattery involved in thinking it’s okay to reduce a woman to her sex organs and that she should be perfectly fine with that, but also for its comment on the way society looks at women in general and sexual predation of them in particular.

It’s sharp, well-written, funny (at least if you’ve read the OSBP), pointed, and probably not a little poignant for some of us. Props, Misia. You freaking rule.

A Modest Proposal
As we all know, many women long to give a swift kick in the balls to some male person or other. Yet all too often women are prohibited from doing so.

Sometimes this is due to our culture’s repressive attitudes toward female violence or because of societal pressure for women to behave in “ladylike” and feminine ways. At times women must censor themselves from administering a good solid boot to the greater masculine crotch due to historically justified fear of reprisal. At yet other times it is nothing more or less than men’s self-serving, self-glorifying attitudes toward their precious little patriarchal testicles that lead them to cravenly avoid supporting women’s emotional and political expression.

All in all, we live in a culture that routinely prohibits women this useful and healthy outlet for the outrage that almost every women eventually feels as a result of living in a sexist patriarchal society. Indeed, we live in a culture which punishes women for even thinking or talking about expressing their rage in this way.

This must change, and men, who after all have an obligation to help redress thousands of years of unearned patriarchal privilege, also have a moral obligation to help solve this problem.

To this end, we propose a community-based Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

Like other Open Source projects, the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP) relies on a wide pool of volunteers working together for the common good.

The Project has very simple parameters and it basically works like this:

Men who are open to being given a swift kick in the balls need do nothing. Women will simply assume that any man not clearly indicating his position vis-a-vis being kicked in the balls with an approved OSSKBP badge or pin is open to being kicked in the balls, as any progressive, free-thinking, feminist man ought to be, by any woman who wishes to do so.

However, we also recognize and affirm that not all men will be so willing to serve. Therefore the OSSKBP provides two other options.

1. Men who would like to be asked for permission before a woman administers one or more swift kicks to their balls shall wear the offical OSSKBP “Ask First Pin” at all times. This is a black lapel pin with a lavender question mark on it.

Because of the serious and comprehensive respect with which women’s desires vis-a-vis having their bodies touched by others are uniformly greeted in our culture, women will sometimes abide by any given Ask First Pin wearer’s stated preference about getting a kick in the balls at the time that he is asked. At other times, however, women may make their own decisions as to whether or not to give him a quick kick in the nuts regardless of the male’s expressed preference. Fair’s fair.

2. Men who do not wish to be kicked in the balls at all must wear a large visible official “No Kicks, Thanks” badge at all times, including when swimming, showering, and sleeping. They may also wish to avoid areas where large numbers of women are present, particularly at night. Some men may also wish to invest in assertiveness training, sympathetic female bodyguards, body armor, or sessions with a personal self-defense trainer to increase their ability to resist undesired kicks. As these methods have long been considered completely adequate for women who wish to avoid sexual predation we feel that they are all that is necessary here.

Men choosing the “No Kicks, Thanks” option should be aware that they will be ridiculed publicly for their sexism and misogyny and their indefensible, self-serving, anti-female pursuit of their own selfish bodily autonomy. (It’s not like getting kicked in the nuts does them any lasting harm, for heaven’s sake.) Men who comply with all of the above and still end up getting kicked in the balls will be advised that they were asking for it, and that women can’t be blamed for what happens when a man walks by with his crotch just hanging out there where it becomes a target of opportunity. (Besides, if a man weren’t really willing, deep down, to get kicked in the balls, he wouldn’t have stood still for it. Everyone knows that.)

Thank you for your participation in the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

Originally posted on the web at
http://misia.livejournal.com/1055120.htm

For an overview of the outrage this whole thing sparked on the net, see the Femiwiki article here.