Quiet, Piggy.
And I'm not fucking talking to a journalist, here.
If you’ve been on the other end of an abuser, you know exactly the derision and vitriol that “Quiet, Piggy” triggered in all of us as that festering pile of incompetence poked his fat vienna sausage finger at a journalist last week. The fucking audacity.
What’s worse, every single media outlet seemed to just…glide on past that. It’s days later and I’m still mad as hell.
Why? Because it’s the perfect example of the slow frog boil that has gradually empowered an entire generation of red-pill-swallowing, entitled, arrogant misogynistic assholes to continue to treat women like receptacles instead of human beings and speak to and about us as inanimate objects, animals, or worse.
And don’t even get me started on the fucking tradwife bullshit; some woman on Threads the other day posted a picture of her in a cute little kerchief, holding a baby next to a rustic butcher block with the caption “The feminists would say this is oppression” or some shit. I replied with the fact that feminism is about her ability to make that choice instead of having it foisted upon her, but cult members who are enthralled by their own oppressors because they’re scared to death of their own power don’t really hear you when you try to point out nuance.
Look, I’m not saying anything a thousand other people haven’t already said, but every time the limp-spined and eviscerated fourth estate glosses right the fuck over this kind of inexcusable and utterly impotent vitriol from the sitting fucking president of the united states which I will not capitalize in this context, they are NORMALIZING this as the expected behavior and intimidation of everyone from that smug dickhead at work who speaks to women as if they’re his personal servants to “husbands” who condescend, abuse and berate their own wives behind closed doors. And the more it gets normalized, the more fucking women are UNSAFE.
And let’s be very fucking clear: this has been the way Black and brown people have been treated in this country since its inception, and the result is the state-sanctioned violence we see against them every day, much of it completely unchecked and available all over the internet right now in the form of videos of ICE raids across the country alongside our standard-issue police brutality. Now that the venom is also loudly and spilling over into caucasian communities at the hands of a microwannabedictator with dementia, it’s emboldening every basement-dwelling schoolyard bully with mommy issues, including the ones in Congress and in the cabinet, and everyone seems to be sitting around in shock but somehow trying to excuse this as the ranting of a man not to be taken seriously instead of the leading indicator of exactly how much this administration and the cult that props it up absolutely hates women.
The result is that I’m fucking angry. AngrIER, maybe. And on a call this week, a man on a video call about a book project made an incredibly condescending remark with a sneer, and so I simply looked calmly in the camera and said “Did you intend to be incredibly condescending or would you like to try saying that differently?” Had the context been different, I might have actually pulled out “Exactly who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” (Needless to say we will not be working together on my book, so if you know a good nonfiction agent, hit me up).
So I guess this is my shout into the void:
Whether you’re in the press pool unfortunately having to stand within arm’s length of the narcissist-in-chief or in the boardroom or in a classroom or literally just sitting at a bar somewhere when the equivalent of “Quiet, Piggy” shows up in your midst, stop letting that go unchecked.
I’m tired of these fucking small, weak, impotent men being the barometer for what is acceptable behavior toward women. Whether it’s the workplace or the streets of the city or the community spaces we inhabit, I don’t know about you, but I’m about to make Quiet, Piggy a whole entire problem in reverse.
We outnumber them. We do. But that only matters when we’re unwilling to continue to move the goal posts of what we will tolerate, excuse, rationalize and let go of.
Let the rage be your fuel, friends. Keep fighting.
PS - I will say it was a little bit satisfying watching Geriatric Joffrey fawn over Mamdani so hard this week, and the gentle parenting way that Mamdani charmed while somehow also deftly pitying this addle-pated cave troll in front of the cameras.
Art.