Welcome to Volume 5 of Stupid, Evil, Horny; where we pick 1 stupid, 1 evil, and 1 horny person that each tanned our bottoms red while we perused bell hooks. This week we have an abject failure at satirizing or trolling Justin Trudeau, Kirstjen Nielsen’s bullshit attempt to rehab her girl boss image, and Mistress Velvet, a black dominatrix who makes her mayo clients do feminist theory homework.
Stupid: The Orillia, Ontario Blackface Club
Awarded by: Carl Wilhoyte
America’s Canadian Boyfriend Justin Trudeau eeked out a re-election bid this week to a minority government in Canada, despite not 1, not 2, but 3 blackface images popping up like bad pennies. This is incredibly stupid, but not award worthy. That is just boring stupid that shows us white Western leaders have a, let’s say, historical fondness for bawdry minstrel stylings.
The real winners this week are the duo of teen dipshits responsible for the “Orillia Blackface Club” protest thing or whatever during the Trudeau’s campaign recent stop in the Ontario area. I guess the idea here is to own Trudeau by showing him how bad blackface is by doing it to him? “We dislike racism, so we’re going to do a racism.” I have no idea what the fucking point is here.
If it’s a troll, it’s just racism. If it’s irony, they’re just replicating the very thing they’re trying to satirize. Every single aspect of this bit fails so spectacularly as a troll or an ironic statement or anything meaningful at all. It just comes off as stupendously, hilariously, impossibly moronic. Kudos boys, ya really gottem!
Also Justin Trudeau got (narrowly) reelected, so where the fuck is all this cancel culture we keep hearing so much about? Bonus dumb points to everyone mad.
Evil: Secretary Child Kidnapper, Welcome to the Resistance
Awarded by: Jean Krill
In the era of Donald Trump, we see scumbags and collaborators from previous presidential administrations absolved of their evil acts and welcomed into the open arms of the #Resistance on a regular basis. From David Frum to the man himself, George W. Bush, anyone willing to gently criticize Trump is rehabilitated by credulous liberals desperately latching on to any symbol of the past, no matter how wretched.
In fact, this phenomenon has become so commonplace that former members of the Trump administration have banked on their own ability to rehabilitate their images by criticizing their former boss. After all, they were just following orders.
Enter Kirstjen Nielsen. Former head, Department of Homeland Security. Appointed to replace John Kelly on December 6th 2017, Nielsen was the DHS secretary who oversaw the engineering and implementation of the immigrant child separation policy that will likely be the evil best remembered once Trump has left office.
Nielsen has been making the media and speaking circuit rounds since her departure in an effort to cash in on her role working as head piece of shit at DHS, and rehabilitate herself into some kind of principled public servant. While being interviewed by NPR at FORTUNE’s “Most Powerful Women Summit” Nielsen claimed she resigned because “saying no wasn’t enough”.
The idea that the woman who oversaw the implementation of family separation was somehow opposed to it, that she didn’t believe in the efficacy or morality of family separation, and that she expected anyone to take her word for it is fucking horrifying. This wasn’t some sad duty she had no choice but to implement, she was given the job specifically to do this. She oversaw the program even while all of the horror around it was documented, even when millions around the world protested it, even when people were dying because of it, even when it was revealed they hadn’t kept records to reverse it, even when a judge demanded the end of it, even when the policy was effectively killed. Even then she stayed in the role. It was only when she was forced to resign that she left her position as DHS Secretary.
In no reality or alternate timeline does Nielsen have even the suggestion of an argument that she didn’t condone family separation. In fact, she’s even told the press Trump is going to appoint her to the National Security Council, and that she’s going to take the job.
To willingly and knowingly implement an evil policy, then to continue doing so until you’re fired, and then accepting another job from the very person you claim you opposed is some of the most shameless and cynical bunch of bullshit to come out of a DC psychopath during this administration.
If there was any justice in this world Nielsen wouldn’t be receiving this award because she’d already have been eaten alive by a flock of ravenous birds and feral dogs.
Horny: Dommed by a Master’s Thesis
Awarded by: Carl Wilhoyte
We have a rare treat: a non-horrific horny story! This one’s actually a positive tale of Mistress Velvet; a black, Chicago-based dominatrix who makes her white, cishet clients read black feminist theory as part of their sessions. So much of sex work is racially coded anyway in a bad way, much more focused on black male sexuality in the domination of white women as a vicarious thrill for racist white America. A 2018 interview in HuffPo with her is an illuminating, genuinely interesting read on the convergence of race, sexuality, and masculinity.
She’s very smart with her homework assignments in Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, and Jennifer Nash by not making it a humiliating punishment, but more of a sneaky way to assert good political thought into a ready-made receptive audience. I mean, these dudes are literally paying to be told what to do, so might as well have them do something intellectually nourishing while getting their balls whipped. One client got so pilled on Patricia Hill Collins he started an South Side Chicago organization for single black mothers. That is praxis. Gives the term “master’s thesis” a whole new spin, doesn’t it? BA-DUM-TISSS
This is such a good idea it’s kind of staggering in its simplicity. My favorite aspect of the interview is how she focuses on how black women are portrayed as trauma victims (which is true more often than not) and how consensual BDSM can, in some small way, be a healthy restorative act.
I find domming and sex work to be such a microcosm of the overarching systems at play. The things you’ll see happening in other jobs and other industries, you’ll see happening in sex work.
I’m not arguing that it really has systemic benefits necessarily, but I’m arguing that, in the sense that there is so much black femme trauma, to be able to be in a space for an hour, then you leave that space and go back to being one of the most oppressed group ― in that hour, it can be really liberating. It can be a form of self-care.
And that’s Stupid, Evil, Horny for this week, kids. I think we all learned a valuable lesson. Don’t do blackface, don’t kidnap kids, and learn sex work is work, especially if you’re a postgrad woman of color whipping some knowledge into pudgy hedge fund managers. Have a good weekend and communism will win, friendos.
Carl Wilhoyte is the co-editor and co-founder of Zero Balance. His work has appeared in Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel, Abomination Magazine, Bourbon Penn, and Farmhouse Magazine.