I was recently at a discussion of sexism in the media where the new "Women's Ghostbusters" was brought up. I wondered aloud about why even avowed anti-feminists gave a damn. I made some crack about Hemingway having never written about the manly bonds of ghostbusting on the plains of Andalusia. Why was Ghostbusting gender coded? Ghostbusting plays no role in domestic life or reproduction. Ghostbusting is not real. Just as I was starting to have a similar thought the moderator pointed out that "aggressive heroism" is coded male; and I realized that yes, that's it. I recalled the climactic scene of the Ghostbusters strutting up to the Gozor hotel while priests and rabbis led chants of "Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters..." whilea song called "Saving the Day" played on the soundtrack. It is something a a bachelor fantasy too. Bros with a fire pole. Bill Murray was a long damn way from sad old arthouse Murray he was still frattish drum role Murray.
The tellingly labeled "dickless" EPA man was completely in the right now that I think of it. Am I supposed to be so enthralled by glorious private enterprise as to trust drunken academic frauds with a nuclear reactor in Manhattan? And shouldn't sentient beings have some kind of civil rights instead of being summarily hunted down and crammed into a 6X6 inch nuclear jail? What about that jogger ghost who was just jogging but got sucked in to applause anyway? That's fucking livism. If simply existing after death is unacceptable then go blast the first church down the block with your atomic plasma sperm you tyrannical fucks.
Whenever I come across an internet thread about woman's basketball there is always without fail or prompt those who must point out that women's basketball is Just Worse, will always be Just Worse, that its mere existence is a PC affect of pretending that women can play basketball. Arguments against no actual opponents but ghost feminists, ghost liberals and ghost hippies while everyone else tries to discuss the Tennessee/Notre Dame game.
In reality the NCAA rents domes or big pro arenas for the woman's Final Four because crowds require it. Enough people sincerely care about women's basketball to require it. When Husker women's volleyball wins the national title we don't orgy on O street like we did for the football team in the nineties but its still a plaque we care about winning pretty strongly. When Title IX was passed in the seventies and high school girls were "allowed" to play sports there were some grumbles here but it was soon learned that this was actually a neat fit with our established rural jack-of-all-trades culture. In the Nebraska Sandhills there are muscled women who drink Busch wrench trucks and do not see themselves as the least bit gender rebellious. Anyhow it's one more team that might be good enough to make state giving everyone a party in Lincoln and a reminder to Omaha that they exist. The trolls carry on as if the legitimacy of women's sports is still in hot dispute when Nah. Not for many decades and not in the most conservative by-the-way place imaginable.
Even if it were somehow known that the realm of sports Belongs to men by dictate of God nature etc. then what of it? How would this make my own male being in any way grander? What meaningful validation could one suppose there to be here? I am led to think of the old hagiographic sports movies about Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Knute Rockney, the neverending ripe personality cults around quarterbacks, Charles Barkley's "I am not a Role Model" shoe commercial & the indignant replies that only dangerous fools could think they have the option of being athletes without being models for strapping young Lads. To this day we continue putting on the act of being shocked when a pro athlete gets caught acting like a twentysomething with money on a Friday night. There's no small amount of racism against "thug" athletes here and also a bullheaded persistence of Nike worship. The bizarre sense of obligation to presume a link between sporting victory and moral character. We have the sense that every contest between men that entails a bit of sweat is a symbolic Bunker Hill; a confirmation of the old idea that men do the most strenuous and dangerous work and are thus entitled to rule.
The sight of two near-equal opponents matching each other move-for-move while daring the other to do likewise in the very same act is indeed inspiring; be they women or men or dogs playing tug-of-war. It brings about a deep patriotic feeling for life itself and being of it.The intensity of this feeling can be sublime but that's not to say it is a feeling of great moral edification. It is only just fun. I say only just but fuck any righteous ass who doesn't think that's enough. We do not live to serve morals. Morals are servile to fun. We only have morals so that we can live longer and have more fun. We are born with a certain set of genitals not to command us who to be but to have some damned fun; or perhaps to have some kids so they can have fun if we think that would be fun. Womanhood is a hat. Womanhood is product placement for Kinky brand soft liquor in a late season episode of True Blood. Manhood is a hat. Manhood is an orphaned boxing glove at a garage sale that's marked for ten bucks but fuck that I'll give you two in quarters and you know you'll take it. Fun is God. Fun is Truth and it is God.
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