Porterism Law #1 It struck me that Porterism shou…

Porterism Law #1

It struck me that Porterism should have some binding guidelines to it, to help differentiate a Porterist philosophy to a non-Porterist philosophy. This philosophy is by no means fundamental, and you may interpret it as you wish. I’ve been toying with the idea of three laws to help guide people to the spirit of Porterism, and a general suggestion of what a Porterist is.
The first law has something to do with what I saw on the bus today, so I’m going to recount the story as I saw it…

I was taking the bus, engaging in one of my favourite activities, people watching, when this girl got on the bus, which I’ll refer to as Punk Rock Political Girl (or PRPG). You know the type of person I’m talking about: Dyed black hair, shaved on the sides, 10 pounds of mascara, smeared dramatically as if she doesn’t care how it looks as opposed to people who apply makeup that do care, black tank top, black pants, black canvas shoes, spiked wristbands and a dozen or so piercings and tribal tattoos. She stalks down the aisle, scowling at other women who dress like sluts or like they have jobs. Her tank top and low-rise black pants that expose her belly, cleavage and the crack of her ass are worn because she is a woman and proud of how she looks, so any man better not look at her body because that will make him a sexist pig. Other women are half-naked because they want to attact men. She dresses that way because it is a powerful statement on how she can choose to dress that way, not to attract the attention of men.

Her hair is dyed black because blond women obviously aren’t feminists. Neither are women who smile or laugh, because there is nothing funny in this world when white men own and dominate everything. The piercings and tattoos are there because only edgy, hardcore people wear piercings or tattoos. The other 80% of the population who have them are posers, they aren’t really edgy at all… they’re just trying to look edgy and hardcore, but none of them have the guts to wear all black or a Misfits t-shirt.

There’s no doubting her political stance because she has patches sewn onto her backpack, one anti-racism patch, one feminist symbol with the word WOMYN under it, and one for some punk band or another that’s so original and different from all the others because they have mohawks, are against the war and hate George W. Bush.

Her stance on race is clear because she is willing to go as far as sew a patch on her backpack to advertise her views. Nevermind the backpack, the clothes she’s wearing, the MP3 player she’s listening to and just about everything else was made by people who aren’t her race for wages that she wouldn’t bother to pick up off the sidewalk if she passed by it.

She’s no doubt a feminist because she uses the degendered form of woman, “womyn”, which sounds exactly the same as woman, but fogs the mind a lot more. When the woman in front of her tried to close her window, she opened it again with a defiant scowl on her face. Nobody was going to bully her… she’s a strong, confident woman which is clearly evidenced by being rude to perfect strangers on the bus.

She never listens to music produced by the big record labels, because they are a bunch of greedy whores. She only listens to bands from smaller, independent labels that are owned by big record labels.

I don’t mean to specifically pick on PRPG, but she is a good example of what I’m talking about. The way she dresses, her mannerism, her choices are all a part of her uniform. In Porterism, there are no uniforms. There are no identifiable ways to distinguish yourself as a Porterist, because when you wear a uniform, you adopt a narrow way of thinking and presenting yourself to the world. This will not do if you want to be a Porterist, because Porterism requires you to be as neutral as possible in front of other people.

You will not dismiss other people simply because they don’t look, act, or talk like you do. You will not be a fundamentalist. You must be prepared to abandon a tenet of Porterism when it no longer works, except for this one: NO UNIFORMS, NO FUNDAMENTALISM

~ by porterism on July 18, 2006.