Ok, I have totally slammed “Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress” here and on podcasts.  I find the excerpts I’ve read to be banal, vapid and irritating to the point that they make me want to hit something.  I’ve called it twee, I’ve called it awful, but one criticism you will NOT hear me make is about the attractiveness of the author.

A. I have no idea what she looks like.  I mean, it is entirely possible I’ve met her, but I couldn’t tell you because I don’t know.  I haven’t sought out any pictures of her, and here’s why:

B.  How attractive she is has absolutely no bearing on how well she can write and how well I am able to withstand her written “personality.”

Seriously, how attractive to you a given woman is has absolutely no bearing on her intelligence, nor should it have a bearing on whether or not you find meaning in what she has to say.  Personally, I find the tendency for most people to judge the weight of someone’s opinion by how they look to be one of the stupidest, most inane tendencies of the human race ever.  If there’s a programmed racial suicide in the future of the human race, that is it.   And that goes for men, too.  I swear, if I had heard one more idiot tell me that “George W. Bush looks like the kind of guy you could have a beer with,” I was going to truly get medieval on their ass.  Fortunately, the egregious behavior in his second term managed to put paid to most of that crap.

And before they get started, “Hey, Evo Psych guys, suck it!”    Twice. 

There, got that out of the way.

Yes, I know, studies show that people are more inclined to give jobs to, be nicer to, blah blah blah, people that they find attractive.  If you really want, google it.  There’s millions of them from quickly and badly done “experiments” by the media, to actual scientific studies with actual protocols and standards.  The thing is, it is your job as thinking, intelligent beings to tell your lizard brain to shut the hell up when it starts in on that crap, regardless of your gender or the gender of the person talking to you. 

Seriously, Ann Coulter is conventionally attractive to many people.  However, she’s also raving batshit crazy and wouldn’t know the truth, compassion or good judgement if they ganged up on her in an alley and took all her lunch money.  THAT is why I don’t listen to Ann Coulter.  Not because I do or don’t find her attractive, but because she’s a fucking loon. 

And as far as Shelly Mazzanoble is concerned, I  continue to have no idea what she looks like, but I know without guaging her attractiveness that I don’t want to hang out with her.  At least if she is indeed the person she portrays herself as in the book.  Believe me, I like a good pair of shoes as much as the next girl, and I’m sure that some people find my insistence on organic, cruelty free beauty products just as annoying as I do her apparent lack of concern in that arena.  But none of that has anything to do with her physical attractiveness quotient.   

Recently, I have seen critiques of Ms. Mazzanoble’s looks bandied about the intertubes as part of the criticism of her book and subsequent articles, and that’s just wrong, stupid and when it’s done by women, even more egregious.  Seriously, we’ve already got ranks of mouth-breathing tools spewing misogyny from every pore, do we really need to be tearing each other down as well?  The answer to that is no.  I’m not a big believer in the solidarity of sisterhood, because I’ve seen it self-destruct too many times under the weight of the different personalities involved.  But we do not need to be complicit in the misogyny heaped on us by the unwashed masses. 

We’re supposed to be smarter than that.