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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Which "March" makes sense to you?

Jill Stanek's column, March of the Penguins vs. the "March for Women's Lives", says it all, describing the amazing penguins and their struggles to keep their chicks alive before and after hatching. Stanek imagines the film remade from a "March for [Penguin] Women's Lives" perspective:
The movie would open with militant feminist penguins marching to their ancient political breeding ground, where lusting, self-centered males waited. There they would all serial-mate, despising the prospect of producing babies. Should the unthinkable happen, close-ups would show frenzied penguins pecking open eggs and ripping babies apart...

Well, Jill's right about what the penguins would do if they were Marching for [Penguin] Women's Lives. But she's wrong about what the film would show. It would show the militant feminist penguins serial-mating with the males, then rushing back to the other feminist penguins to complain about what pigs the males were. Then the female penguins would march to the beach and have a bulimic feeding orgy, in which they sneered that they were catching more fish than the males, then vomited up the fish so they didn't get too fat to attract the males.

If one of them did lay an egg (which after the mating, they'd be bound to do), she'd keen and carry on as if Fate had singled her out for incomparable horrors. The other females would gather around and commiserate with her, while a mixed-sex group of penguins would, off-screen, peck the egg and incubating chick to bits. One of them would return to the traumatized female and inform her that she was FREE! All the militant feminist penguins would give high-flippers to the females among the egg-pecking penguins, thank the male egg-pecking penguins for being so understanding, then they'd return to their fishing orgy.

Should the penguin whose egg had been destroyed stumble across the remains of a shattered egg and the chick it had been protecting, and reaized the enormity of what she'd done, the other penguins would snub her. Should a militant feminist penguin see a penguin chick and realize that having a chick was a lot of work but maybe worth it, the other penguins would snub her.

The regretful penguins would become distracted and make easy meals for seals.

Of course, the militant feminist penguins would need to set up public schools for the chicks of the normal female penguins. After all, the new generation of boy penguins need to know what jerks they are, and the new generation of girl penguins needs to know that the worst thing that can ever happen to you is that you reproduce and have a chick of your own.

And, of course, the mothers of the surviving penguin chicks would be snubbed and dismissed as retrograde.

Thus the militant feminist penguins would be able to pass on their ideology without having to go to the trouble and sacrifice the normal penguins put into giving the world a new generation of penguins. And they would live happy ever after. Except the ones that got eaten by seals.

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