Can one satirise women?
Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 11:21 am
I was browsing the Guardian's current 100 most useful websites list and found The Onion, described as "the web's leading satire magazine, though with an American bias". The list changes, so I didn't post the actual story link.
Since the current issue is a Woman's Special, I thought there might be a satire or two about women. You would expect some flowery odes to women, solemn praise of every mother's intuitive sense of compassion, or even surveys of how volunteers are mostly female --- that end up pointing to exact opposite truths.
Would that not be in the spirit of the magazine? Or even the spirit of satire?
Yet, in the web's leading satire magazine (according to the Guardian, anyway), it seems impossible to conceptualise satire in relation to women.
It got me thinking. There are only two reasons I can think of for this case:
- that it's forbidden to satirise women, or
- that it is logically not possible.
The latter would be the case if women are not genuinely something, for only a generalisation has an opposite. So if women are nothing at all, or everything, then one can't very well satirise them.
But either way, both reasons are worrisome - that "women" aren't anything at all, or are forbidden to satirise.
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Since the current issue is a Woman's Special, I thought there might be a satire or two about women. You would expect some flowery odes to women, solemn praise of every mother's intuitive sense of compassion, or even surveys of how volunteers are mostly female --- that end up pointing to exact opposite truths.
Would that not be in the spirit of the magazine? Or even the spirit of satire?
Yet, in the web's leading satire magazine (according to the Guardian, anyway), it seems impossible to conceptualise satire in relation to women.
It got me thinking. There are only two reasons I can think of for this case:
- that it's forbidden to satirise women, or
- that it is logically not possible.
The latter would be the case if women are not genuinely something, for only a generalisation has an opposite. So if women are nothing at all, or everything, then one can't very well satirise them.
But either way, both reasons are worrisome - that "women" aren't anything at all, or are forbidden to satirise.
-