While perusing some of my site statistics this afternoon, I grazed through a list of where my visitors were coming from… I found the usual suspects, all the best n’ brightest: Oliver Willis, Eschaton, Free Republic, the Nielsen Haydenses…

- waitaminute. Free Republic!?

Yep. There it was. Hundreds of hits, in fact. Hmmm. Had I somehow put forth some sort of witticism that even resonated in the one-lane highway of the Freepers’ minds? Or had the thunderous liberal impact of my biting satire forced them to condemn me with a devastating barrage of right wing invective? I ambled over to the hellish honeycomb to see which was the case.

Neither. They just think I’m pretty.

It turns out that we liberals in the media are “feminized,” “girly” “metrosexuals.” Along with photos of Noah Adams and Neal Conan, a picture of me has been offered as an illustration of this point. Needless to say, I was so stunned by this baseless accusation that I nearly dropped my eyeliner.

It’s kind of hard to reply to this one. My first reactions are:
1) It isn’t true, and
2) I wouldn’t really mind if it was true, and yet
3) It’s clearly meant to be an insult.

So it’s a tough charge to wrap one’s mind around. It’s as though someone has whirled around, pointed at me, and sputtered, “You, you… damned Lithuanian, you!” I just don’t know where to begin…

I could tout my excessive manliness, of course. I could point to my copious body hair, which has to be plucked, waxed, and lasered away with alarming frequency. Or I could mention my avid appreciation of the feminine form - frequently, I can be spotted on postprandial constitutionals, walking-stick in hand, eyeing all the attractive mademoiselles that pass by and uttering wolfish appraisals like “Hubba hubba!” and “You are quite the mamacita!” and “That blouse is to die for!” I could even point to my mastery of the manly arts, such as hoisting barbells, whacking a polo ball from atop a mighty steed, indulging in shirtless Greco-Roman wrestling, or simply running down the beach, my well-oiled torso gleaming as it is kissed by bright Apollo’s rays… er, where was I?

And if I were to point out that some of the icons that they keep citing as paragons of manliness really aren’t, well, what good would that do? If I mentioned that the President, for example, actually comes across as a bit prissy, then I’d be endorsing the idea that there’s something wrong with that. There isn’t. The fact that President Bush has a thin, alto voice, likes to dress up in pretend military uniforms, has a delicate little half-chuckle that is suspiciously like a simper, and seems unusually preoccupied with keeping gays at arm’s length from himself and America… well, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’d be wrong for me to imply otherwise whilst defending my own masculinity.

Similarly, touting my machismo is a non-starter. It also implies that there’s something wrong with being “feminized,” and nothing sounds more pathetic than someone arguing that they are, in fact, very manly, virile, and popular with the ladies. I’d might as well just say, “Sure I have a girlfriend! I met her at camp. Last summer. No, you wouldn’t know her… uh, she’s from Canada…”

Finally, mentioning that the Freepers seem a little too interested in analyzing the appearance of men in the media, while true, seems to imply that there’s something shameful about their sexuality, whatever it may be. There isn’t. It’s okay. And curiosity is healthy.


[Your Feminized Felber, as seen at Free Republic. I might have lost this
particular election, but I apparently turned a few conservative heads
back home. Sorry, boys, he’s married!]

Naturally, this accusation of being “feminized” and “girly” carries with it the implication of homosexuality, at least in the World of Freep. But these are Freepers we’re talking about, so if you read the comments in that discussion over there, you’ll see that this implication is manifested in subtle statements like, “I think they’re all totally gay.” If there were a God of Nuance, he would surely smite the Freepers with his mighty backhand. [Of course, I suppose a blow from the God of Nuance would inevitably sail right over the Freepers’ heads. Also, I’d imagine that his name is really hard to pronounce and you can never get good directions to his temples. All-in-all, not a terrific god to hitch your wagon to. But I digress…]

The gay implication is probably at the root of it though, and it brings me right back to the Lithuanian Dilemma enumerated above. I suspect that it’s not coincidence that this particular kind of attack on liberals coincides with the prominent gay issues in the news these days. Be it about marriage or bishops, the Freepers (whom I rarely visit) are having a full-scale fear-of-a-gay-planet freakout over there, so their 100+ post nonsensical rumination on liberal “girlyness” is probably a kind of overflow.

So what to do? Despite all this long-windedness, nothing. After all, at least someone thinks I’m pretty. What more could a girl want?