A monograph on the exciting new directions to be taken by prodding boners in the new American century.
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If “momism” hadn’t been claimed already by Philip Wylie, I’d gladly snap it up for this modern cult of the mom. As I insufficiently described in IID’s first post, mom is rising up to replace wife as the default identity of women after feminism gouged away at the latter. This isn’t a critique of motherhood, or even of the slang term “mom” — but I’ve certainly noticed that being a mom implies far more in terms of lifestyle than old-fashioned motherhood.

Here, we see an ideal personification of the Mom — pregnant, young, white, chic yet modest, but with a sufficient dollop of pretended grrl power to keep one’s mom from crying in shame. “No men allowed” in this context doesn’t offer a safe space for women to be women — a goal I wholeheartedly support — but instead a way for women to cooperate in reinforcing their essential separation from but dependence on manhood.

For what it’s worth, this isn’t a comment on “CafeMom” or its members. I toil myself in the abattoir called marketing, and I’m keenly aware of the levels of separation involved. A cursory search of the site yields content ranging from the worst neo-momist trash to simple venting to enlightened commentary on identity on motherhood. I’ll end by linking this thread, which beautifully serves to demonstrate the worst in both male and female socialization — man as a domestically helpless penis-worm, and woman as a long-suffering eunuch for Christ. In this world, man is always doomed to be the pursuer, and woman the pursued; man fucks, and woman is fucked. There’s no place for men (straight, gay, or in between) who want to be fucked, or women (likewise) who want to fuck. As a man who sometimes struggles to keep up with the sexual demands of his partner, I am feminized; as a woman sometimes driven to fits of rage by a bout of abstinence, she is masculinized.

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I’ve a post on pie-throwing in the queue, and I hope to deliver it in a timely manner.

They tell us that / We lost our tails
Evolving up / From little snails
I say it’s all / Just wind in sails
Are we not men? / We are devo.
– DEVO, the world’s first postmodern pop band

Postmodernism and everything connected to and stemming from it took a harsh (and probably deserved) pummelling in the wake of Alan Sokal’s hoax on Social Text, but it’s not as if it enjoyed a better reputation before. Everyone hates pomo who isn’t a postmodernist. To the conservative mind, it’s a colossal waste of time and money, not to mention immature. A bunch of leftist ivory-tower con men sitting around and writing incomprehensible essays about some one-eyed Mick, postmodernism serves as a ready example for every right-wing slander of the academic world. From multiculturism to relativism, the unspeakable concepts of pomo philosophy saturate the reactionary vocabulary of slurs against the left.

While the right-wing hatred for postmodernism is unmatchable, however, the relationship between the orthodox left and the pomo left has been shaky if not outright hostile for some time. As an unapologetic adherent to a philosophy that would generally be described as postmodernist, I’d like to explain why much of this animus is misdirected. The leftist complaint against postmodernism is threefold: one, that it makes a mockery of orthodox leftism, even while purporting to embrace its basic tenets; two, that it’s hopelessly mired in worthless theoretical debates and inaccessible language at a time when a populist message is needed more than ever; and three, that it makes the left look bad.

This is the introduction to an uninteresting series of indeterminate length that I will be writing. This introduction is posted to ensure that you are not holding your breath.