Jack "Macho Slut" Donovan slings mud at SlutWalk, qPDX, women everywhere but he can still manage a sneer
An editorial note:
Right wing homosexual blogger Jack Donovan (otherwise known as Jack Malebranche) has spent a lot of his summer trying to discredit women who believe that suggestive attire does not invite rape. His histrionic rants are so blatantly misogynistic I’m tempted not to even address them. But he calls out Portland, he calls out individuals that have contributed to qPDX, and he calls out qPDX itself, so how can I not?
What strikes me most is his need to consistently ridicule the efforts of self-identified sluts across the US and Canada, even creating a new blog dedicated entirely to cataloging the Slutwalks. He proclaims how useless these efforts are, claiming they wouldn’t benefit the “average woman,” (as if there were such a thing) while simultaneously spending his entire Saturday making “WhOregon” t-shirts. My instinct as a blogger tells me that spending a lot of time railing against the “useless” is particularly useful in increasing his page views.
He equates not being taken seriously with rape, but between assault and a bit of mockery, I’ll take the latter. Most of us have learned to deflect hate speech, though that doesn’t afford physical safety. Even I have, on occasion, laughed at the ass crack bearing plumber, but it would sound absurd to suggest that he should have some something hard and painful shoved up his nether regions for the crime of bearing skin. So, of course, I won’t do that.
What I will say is that not everyone’s standards of beauty match Donovan’s, and all kinds of people experience sexual violence.
I will say that Portland, and any other city, is entitled to have as many parades for “lesbians,” “sluts,” “women,” and any other group, as we want.
I will acknowledge that though our writing is not always perfect, our efforts are sincere. And our ability to call each other out and yet work together again in the future may be seen as a weakness, but it is also one of our greatest strengths.
And I will give space in this blog to hear from my colleague, Perry Eising, as well as you, the reader, and my whole, diverse queer community, of which even Donovan is, for better or worse, a part.
-Alley
Perry says please note: the following opinions are mine except where indicated.
Ah, well, I suppose it was only a matter of time until the naysayers arrived, churning up dust with their hoofs while noisily bleating into the wind. I just didn’t expect the most ardent critique of Portland’s SlutWalk would come in the shape of Portland local Jack Donovan, principal writer for THE SPEARHEAD, which extolls itself as the savior website for poor repressed American men because their voice is “barely a whisper in the traditional media, we are consistently portrayed as worthless buffoons and advertisers ignore us.” When Donovan, the androphilic mouthpiece of this “movement” isn’t crying into his protein shake over being ignored, he likes to take aim at anyone who is not like himself, which so happen to be fae faeries, women, gayboys, people of other religions, twinks, fags, homos, dykes, chubby people, queens, boys, girls, trans* people, sex workers, femmes, people of color, democrats, and probably cats, bras, frilly things, clothes that are not rugged, shoes that are not boots, glitter, your mom and, oh, well, you get the picture.
Whores are welcome in Oregon and in my bedroom any time. Wait, my bedroom is in Oregon. sweet!
Jack Donovan, author of ANDROPHILIA (I’m spelling this in all caps for increased manliness) newest target is, wait for it:
SLUTS. Oh, and US.
I don’t generally read articles on THE SPEARHEAD – it’s tough for me as a bleeding heart queer homo activist socialist genderfucker feminist intellectual-in-training (thanks for the full ride scholarship) to justify sacrificing the brain cells, but when I logged in to my email this morning I was alerted to a pingback (basically, someone has blogged about us from THE SPEARHEAD) alerting me to his posts about Portland SlutWalk, SlutWalk in general, and, yours truly, qPDX.
If you read this blog, Jack Donovan probably already dislikes you, but if you are woman-identified and possibly also slut-identified then he is really, really displeased with you and may want to take your candy away.
In his article:”How many lesbian parades does Portland need?” published for The Spearhead, Jack freely spouts against SlutWalk, qPDX, and, well, anybody who is not like him.
Let’s do some sampling, shall we: “Heartiste at Citizen Renegade noted early on that SlutWalkers tended to be fat or ugly hags and their proudly moobed fags” and “I’ve been keeping an eye on developments concerning Portland’s SlutWalk. I even donated a Saturday afternoon and designed “WhOregon” t-shirts to help men welcome the sluts to Oregon.”
NICE! THANK YOU for donating your otherwise WORTHLESS SATURDAY AFTERNOON and blaming us for it. You could have been enjoying yourself doing something loving, compassionate, open minded, thoughtful, progressive and/or original but instead you scrunched up your little brain and came out with WHOREGON. Wahaha. DOOD. Like, let’s have shirts that say WHOREGON. get it? Cuz they’re, like, WHORES?
Next, Donovan goes on to rail against Sophia St. James, Sterling Clark and Ryan Basille who are taking on the Slutwalk, and attempts a character assassination by cobbling together information from Myspace, Twitter, and personal websites, sneering at their personal history and appearance the whole way. Hey Donovan, guess what, we know these people. And we know they women of true courage and integrity to be putting themselves in front of your stubbly gun, not to mention that of society-at-large which still raises women to be silent, to be victims, to not be in control of their sexuality, to not set clear boundaries, and to not be vocal about sexism, sexuality, size-ism, sexual violence, queer violence and transphobia, which are all causes that SlutWalk champions.
I guess when you don’t have a well formulated critique, you do a smear campaign. How Republican. And you just provided everyone else (including moi) a bona fide reason to do the same. Also: Step off, bitch. Those are our sisters you are talking about.
As if that weren’t enough, Donovan decides to take on qPDX for supporting SlutWalk, as well as Aslan Leather (they make stuff for dudes too, just sayin) and Casa Diablo for sponsoring the SlutWalk team. For Donovan, SlutWalk has become a “lesbian parade” (what is wrong with that?) because of qPDX’s support, along with that of Aslan Leather. That’s like saying gay pride becomes a vodka distillery by sponsorship by Absolut or a sweatshop factory because of sponsorship by Nike.
Donovan finishes up with a thoughtless critique about how “If SlutWalk was a movement for average women, spurred by a deeply felt need to comment on a persistent social problem, it would at least be interesting.” Interesting, huh. Personally think that anything that does SOMETHING to address rape culture and sexual exploitation is interesting – and more than that, necessary.
that pig looks like a lovely person, err, pig, actually.
As if you, Jack, give a shit about women’s issues, whether they be straight or gay. All women have the right to healthy sexual expression, and all people should not expect to get raped and killed, regardless of the way they dress, regardless of body size and appearance, regardless of the work they do, the city they live in, and the politics or religion they support. Regardless if they are “average” (huh?) or not. And also, regardless of whether they identify themselves as sluts, or as feminists.
He also fails to mention that people who don’t fit within Jack’s narrow definition of “attractive” get raped every damn day in every country and every city under every religion and every system of government. But his size-ist and narrow views only fuel his fire. On his personal site, Jack mentions that he has lovingly created a “a sub-blog here to help SlutWalking feminists embarrass themselves”.
It’s called SummerOfSluts. He also sells lovely t-shirts featuring fat pigs wearing lipstick. (I actually know people with cute chubby pig tattoos, so this may not work, Jack)
Damn. If I didn’t know better, I would say that kind of anti-woman hatred must come from a man deeply spurned by all female-kind through years of bad dating to plus-size man-eating bitches with twinkies and failed marriages to sirenlike gold-diggers in slutty bikinis.
But, wait for this, in case you didn’t know…Jack’s a fag. He’s gay. A queen. A homo. A poofter. A fairy. A dirty little bent batty boy fag with his face bashed in. A little tomboy dyke. A big fat femme, ashamed of her size. A young transwoman who got killed and buried in a shallow grave. A 7 foot drag queen getting pushed in the gutter. A mother of two who got raped twice, once as a child, once by her husband. An 18 year old with the tears slapped out of her eyes because she asked him to be gentle, and he said “you’re a slut.”. You are one of us, whether you like it or not.
I’ll say it again, and then again. Rape won’t stop with a change of attire. Rape won’t stop if women (and queers, and people living on the streets, and sex workers, and and transpeople, and people of color, and everyone) stop talking about enjoying sex, and want to have more and better sex.
Rape will stop happening when rapists stop raping.
Jack Donovan wastes his rare saturday sun insulting people and/or gaily smoking! What a nut.
Donovan: here’s a question that I’m inviting you to answer. As you are using SlutWalk and qPDX to drive traffic to your site (we have over 3500 fans on facebook more than you do, neener), I feel like you owe us this. When was the last time you did something loving, compassionate, supportive, that benefited all humans? All genders? All gender expressions? That came from a deep sense of connection between all of us? That aimed to unite, rather than divide? That aimed to validate all of us as equal instead of creating further divisions in society? That brought healing into the world, instead of anger? That wasn’t sitting in a comfy chair, safe and protected by your many-layered privilege, writing a book, writing a blog post?
Can you post a link to where Donovon makes the personal Portland-specific attacks? I couldn’t find them on his site (or sub-site). Don’t doubt they exist, but would like to be able to cite them. Thanks!
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/07/25/how-many-lesbian-parades-does-portland-need/
I just edited to the original post i wrote to make it more clear where we are pulling this info from.
that is jack’s original article. Please beware of the comments on this site. Some of them are really, seriously triggering, especially to victims of sexual assault.
this is his dedicated site..summerofsluts…http://www.jack-donovan.com/slutwalk/
this is another one of his blog posts:
http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2011/05/support-slut-walk-2011/
hmmm……
First: When you have nothing to say, it is easy to fall back on the tried and true. He is nothing new. Second: I feel sad for him. He is probably a raging bull dyke but too scared to make it happen. I find that those who spew unoriginal trite opinions are just really children hiding from the world. It. I had this friend who is a really talented artist but when we were kids she drew pictures of animals puking. Talent is wasted if you have nothing to say. Since the man does not have the balls to be who he is, to be honest about himself, why should I listen? Just another self hating scared little white boy with a blog. What makes him different from all the rest? He’s Gay? Aren’t they all?
And, as a gay man, what the fuck does he care about the average women? Is he a gyno for a day job? Does he work at planned parenthood? As a gay man whose life (if he so choses) could have nothing to do with women, why the concern over the “average” woman?
Also, qPDX should not waste their time on him. As hard as it is, he just wants the attention. He wants to get a rise out of people. You know what they say about children, if they can’t get any positive attention, they’ll take negative attention. So, really we should shower him in love and constantly invite him to all things dyke and woman. Maybe praise the little bastard on his sight about what a sensitive lesbian he is to look out for all the women of Oregon. Whatever, I’m over it.
Wait? Why do I care what some fool says?
“Rape will stop happening when rapists stop raping.”
Last time I checked, rape was a very serious crime in our society, and rapists are routinely punished with great severity (thankfully). So just what is the alleged issue here? That we don’t all live in a crime-and-violence free Utopia? Your blog post here would make sense, in a society where rape wasn’t one of the most serious & villified crimes imaginable…but it is, so you come off as some sort of buffoonish drama queen, motivated solely by a desire to score a few cheap, socio-rhetorical points off the fact that all human suffering (or whatever) has yet to be banished from the surface of North America.
In any event, my “bleeding heart queer homo activist socialist genderfucker feminist intellectual-in-training,” please feel more than free to continue LARPing as an annoying character from a bad Chuck Palahniuk novel, I guess. You can do or say nearly anything you like in the USA, circa 2011, but I suppose its no fun to acknowledge the truth of the matter ie., that you and your “sisters” are just so not-oppressed anymore, and that your pointless activism (which refuses to take that rather glaring fact into account), is so much oh-so-boring, narcissistic play acting that stopped being relevant ’round about the LAST TIME Jerry Brown was Governor of California.
Hi Kevin. Thanks for your comment. The “alleged” issue here is that women are still routinely taught that they are raped and assaulted because they were wearing skimpy clothing, in the wrong part of town, drunk, or not vigilant enough. Women are taught to walk around with keys in their hands, to fear parking lots, and to constantly monitor their behaviour.
This reasoning, that a woman can control whether or not she gets raped, still, by inversion, squarely places the blame for sexual assault and rape on the victim. She wasn’t vigilant enough, she didn’t fight back enough, she made the mistake of trusting someone while drunk, etc. The victim is taught by this logic that it was their own fault.
This logic also completely eradicates victims of rape who are married (and raped by their husbands), victims/survivors of rape who do not dress scantily, and so on. It also doesn’t take into account that most victims of rape and sexual assault experience these incidents inside their homes, by relatives, or other people they know and trust.
I am not suggesting that a crime-free world is possible, and even after a careful re-reading of my post I can’t see how it was possible for you to deduce that. I am simply stating that the only people who can prevent rape are the perpetrators.
Religious women get raped. Nuns get raped. Sex workers get raped. Children get raped. Women in the country get raped, and so do women in the city. The only way the “very serious crime” of rape can be stopped is when it stops happening. who can stop it? Men.
“who can stop it? Men.”
So, “women” as a group are powerless to do anything to lower the rate of rapes, but “men” as a group have all the power?
Do you have similar theories about “Jews” or maybe “Bankers” that you’d like to enlighten us with?
I think what Perry is saying is not that women are powerless, but that ultimately, men who rape are responsible.
“…a bleeding heart queer homo activist socialist genderfucker feminist intellectual-in-training…”
I miss the days when this would’ve resulted in a full frontal lobotomy. Oh lordy…
At least you creatures are good for a laugh.
This article is so ridiculously immature and petty. Maybe Donovan and other people who don’t support Slutwalk will take you seriously if you stop insulting and calling them names and start presenting a valid argument? Not to mention he’s already responded to your vapid festering pile of cat vomit and did so in a calm, composed manner. There are a lot of things that Donovan says that I disagree with, but after reading his article I cant help but side with him. When I compare his article with yours it’s obvious you are more concerned with attacking him personally and trying to get him to be just as childish as you are to discredit him. Not to mention the very fact that you, a “bleeding heart queer homo activist socialist genderfucker feminist intellectual-in-training” writer for a queer website are responding to his article completely proves his point. Bravo.
Hello Lolwhut. My article is potentially immature and petty, but only so because Jack’s designing of tshirts and writing of slanderous blog articles and creating of websites is petty. He obviously has no other, more fun ways to spend his time.
I attacked him personally, yes, because he attacked qPDX personally, he attacked my friends personally. In many cases I would say, “eh, let it go, just the work of another bloated ego”, but this was too much. I personally don’t think Jack’s blogging was in any way calm. Anybody who blames rape on its victims for being “sluts”, and who presents himself as the Ann Coulter of gay guys is not being calm, even if he does not employ sarcasm. He is, in fact, simply being quietly hysterical.
I think it’s very entertaining that out of three negative comments (that all came on the same day…hmm…) you all seem to latch on to my tongue-in-cheek description of myself, and that this is creating more steam coming from your ears than pretty much anything else I have said. I’m wondering if this is based upon the anti-intellectualism your “movement” holds up so dear, or if you just don’t have much to say about the rest. My guess is it could go either way.
lol you feminists are hilarious. Also the author can’t humour….sorry
God I wish there will be a slutwalk where I live, the lolz of watching all these fat hairy lesbians ridiculing themselves in order to attract attention will be immense:-)
(Did you forget to approve my post? Because I submitted it yesterday morning, and yet you approved someone else’s comment over 13 hours later…did you sort of, ahem, “forget” to approve my remarks?)
“Rape will stop happening when rapists stop raping.”
Last time I checked, rape was a very serious crime in our society, and rapists are routinely punished with great severity (thankfully). So just what is the alleged issue here? That we don’t all live in a crime-and-violence free Utopia? Your blog post here would make sense, in a society where rape wasn’t one of the most serious & villified crimes imaginable…but it is, so you come off as some sort of buffoonish drama queen, motivated solely by a desire to score a few cheap, socio-rhetorical points off the fact that all human suffering (or whatever) has yet to be banished from the surface of North America.
In any event, my “bleeding heart queer homo activist socialist genderfucker feminist intellectual-in-training,”? please feel more than free to continue LARPing as an annoying character from a bad Chuck Palahniuk novel, I guess. You can do or say nearly anything you like in the USA, circa 2011, but I suppose its no fun to acknowledge the truth of the matter ie., that you and your “sisters” are just so not-oppressed anymore, and that your pointless activism (which refuses to take that rather glaring fact into account), is a load of oh-so-boring, narcissistic play acting that stopped being relevant ’round about the LAST TIME Jerry Brown was Governor of California.
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[…] Recently, I had the pleasure of having some of the distressed damsels and hopeful he-men of tomorrow from the SlutWalk “like” my Facebook page, so that they could share their feelings about my article “How Many Lesbian Parades Does Portland Need,” as well as my response to some criticisms of said work, posted to QPDX’s official web site. […]