Bad Kitties and Despicable Things

I wasn't going to blog this story, but a bunch of people have now emailed it to me, so I figured I'd better say something about it. The gist is that Thai police officers face a new punishment for minor offenses like littering or tardiness: Wearing hot pink armbands emblazoned with "Hello Kitty." Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan explains, "Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor. Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps." But no worries—they won't be forced to endure the heinous humiliation of being associated with something girly in public; they only have to wear the armbands in the privacy of the police station.

As I've noted before, there's a real irony in punishing with pink the very macho wankers whose misogyny and homophobia give pink its power to degrade them in the first place. If pink is the color of girls and gays, only straight men who have problems with girls and gays will have a problem with pink. Funny how that works.

So, in some way, I quite revel in idiotic straight men who get their very manly boxers in a very manly bunch over being forced to wear an icon of girlhood on their arms; it's really that they imbue it with the power to shame them, not that girlhood is inherently shameful. But, in another way, I know all too well that men who are so easily shamed by being associated with the feminine inevitably try to reclaim their very manly manliness by treating girls and women and feminine men like shit—and that sort of ends my revelry.

At which point, I'm back to feeling the steep incline of the Sisyphean task of undermining sexism, bit by infinitesimally incremental bit, and the crushing weight of the madness that sees so many straight men casting the objects of their most fervent desire as despicable things.