The Patriarchal Subtext of Sisyphus Autopsy

 

My name is Morgan Chesty - a proud moniker I gave myself in fierce homage to the famous stripper and exploited Woman Chesty Morgan, and I am a radical femme-feminist, a practitioner of the Wiccan religion, a winner of the Mylar Vulva award for excellence in lesbian science fiction writing (i.e., "science licktion," NOT “bi-fi” - which implies bisexuality), and a model of fetish wear (and no, that doesn't mean that I “flash my cookies” for pay. It simply means I understand the dialectics of passion-play intrinsic in the Pleasure/Pain dynamic).

I first came into contact with the music and philosophy of the band Sisyphus Autopsy while acting as a hostess for a cross-coven, Maidenhead Cleansing ritual. Maidenhead Cleansing is a celebration of the vagina, and a means of declaring its supremacy over the penis. Fanciful, gold-lamay douchebags are fabricated and publicly employed by the participants, freeing them of any emotional stain inflicted upon them by men, and thereby reestablishing a spiritual state of virginity. The ceremony is NOT meant, as some have suggested, to signify the dirtiness of the womb-space, as the waters that flow up into it are being blessed by their contact with a Woman’s internals, NOT the other way around!

And this particular show was no exception.

It was going better than expected. One by one, each of the Douche Divas mounted the stage, demonstrated their particular style of vaginal consecration for the wildly appreciative audience, and then walked over to me to be wiped down with rose-scented swatches of paper-towel. During the intermission (entitled: “Inter-emission” - my idea), I retired to the snack room backstage to prepare more swatches. It was there that I met one of the show’s sponsors. He was a gay man who specialized in handcrafting dildos to resemble the hot-pink and inflamed units of animals, particularly otters and orangutans (as no self-respecting dyke would want to put even a facsimile of a human penis inside herself), and - knowing that he wielded a significant amount of influence in my community - I made sure to treat him with respect. Besides, it is my firm belief that lesbians and gay men must maintain an allegiance with one-another for their sexually radical stance, in spite of the fact that they have almost nothing else in common.

At first he complimented me for my wiping talents, and I blushed appropriately. Then, with no provocation, he giggled, and handed me a CD entitled: “The Unshoeing of The Ass - The Best of Sisyphus Autopsy.”

“A gift for you,” he said.

Upon its cover was the picture of a wagon wheel comprised of four penises with attendant balls, and though I was offended by the mere image of that, I kept my rancor to myself in deference to his status, and thanked him. It was only after the show that - back at my apartment - I realized what a compelling piece of patriarchal evidence the little fairy had endowed me with.

“The Unshoeing of The Ass” claims to be a greatest hits CD of a band called “Sisyphus Autopsy.” What it in fact is is a treatise on the true, male character at work in the modern world. It contains ten songs, separated by ten “rants” (or spoken word tracks) - made by the two members of Sisyphus: Orlando Furioso and Gargantua Pantagruel. And while I found the songs to be unnervingly entertaining (one could say they fall into two previously non-existent musical categories: symphonic metal and doom rap), it was the rants that caught my mind’s ear, and made me realize the CD’s true value.

For instance, on the first rant, Orlando Furioso - sounding like a cross between Mammon and a drunken Gene Hackman doing a voice-over for a Volvo commercial, sneers the following:

 

“The Sisyphus Autopsy comes to represent The Death - The Death of Manhood. All the men are dead. They’re half-men, they’re little sniveling half-men, and they get sucked up in the cunts! What was it that Rossetti said? He said: ‘all sniveling half-men die a thousand deaths, each one having to do with asphyxiation and cunt-lips!’”

 

Notice how the father-figure of Rossetti is invoked when Orlando wishes to convey what he perceives to be a major truth (a political aetiology, or a hint at greater paradigms). It is my belief that Orlando is actually individuating The Patriarchy in the form of the notorious misogynist-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whom The Autopsy inexplicably worship. For the first time, my sisters, we actually catch a glimpse into the real motivations of the gray-haired, male ghouls who run the world from their secret, geriatric enclaves of pomp and privilege, through The Autopsy’s oft-enumerated viewpoint.

Allow me to explain.

Orlando and Gargantua are great admirers of masturbation. At no point do they ever advocate contact with the fairer sex (a fact for which I’m grateful), or even other men. Their sexual vision is restricted to self-stimulation, beyond which there can be no greater sensation. And while, in this age of state-sponsored sexism and anti-female bias, that can be said to be admirable in the abstract, it is their wholesale rejection of The Feminine that gives their philosophy a demonic spin. That, in my studied opinion, reveals them to be the first honest men in the herstory of the world.

You see, Sisyphus Autopsy doesn’t regard Women as vehicles of masturbation, to be revved-up and lubed whenever there’s a full moon about, and their lycanthropic hearts grow a little hair around the valves. If they did, that’d just make them another sad example of the delusionary gen d'armes of The Patriarchy. What they actually do is reveal The Patriarchy’s hidden agenda, by admitting that they see Women as the antagonist in their masturbatory mission! Almost as if The Feminine is a great wave that ever-threatens to crush the tiny teepees they’ve “erected” on the beach, and they have to beat it back by beating off! By invoking the pagan god Priapus to protect them - more than likely by standing side by side along the lip of the surf, with their trousers around their ankles, and tugging on their beleaguered plumbing in grim, ghastly unison - all the while chanting some terrible hymn, but NOT something along the lines of a military limerick:

 

In days of old

when knights were bold

and ladies were particular,

we shoved them up

against the wall

and we screwed them perpendicular!

 

Nothing like that, but instead, maybe an all-too telling quote from Rossetti. Perhaps even this one, as stated by Orlando:

 

“Rossetti knew. Rossetti patterned his life by these beautiful sentiments of hatred! ‘Cupid looked on Helen’s breasts’ - the majesty! ‘Saw the heart within its nest’ - the tremulousness!”

 

What would ordinarily be a simple, squalid, sexist line of poesy about Cupid leering at Helen’s bustline, transforms into a mocking screed against the whole idea of feminine beauty when snarled by the ferocious Furioso. And here at last we have an example of the true, patriarchal perception of Women - one where we’re not only placed in a context of objectified putrescence, but insulted utterly, as the entire process of objectification is both admitted to be a hoax AND GLORIFIED FOR ITS EFFECTIVENESS.

Turns out, objectification is nothing more than a means to control Women by damning us to a self-referential, narcissistic hell! They don’t even get aroused by us - only their POWER over us!

Or, to quote one of my own short stories, they are “the unfeeling, tyrannical Mandroids of dispassionate pump and thrust.”

I, myself, had a sad encounter with this form of petrified misogyny when, one summer, I got a job as a topless shoe-shine girl in Amsterdam. I considered it to be a bold declaration of my sexual freedom, and was immediately disgusted by the lewd remarks of the businessmen I knelt before. Being that they were men, and therefore wholly ignorant of the negative discourse - in a sexual, Realpolitik sense (congruent with the astrological axis of the ancient Aztecs) - of the sadomasochistic equation, they actually rushed to believe that, simply because I was half-naked, on my knees, spit-shining their delinquent footwear, and professionally compelled to call them “sir” with a pathetic, cockney accent, I might somehow be genuinely subservient to their detestable whims!

Everyone knows the submissive is actually the dominant! Duh!

I found the overcompensation of these recalcitrant, Euro-heathens both pitiful and alarming, and so, whenever one started masturbating, I would spitefully mount his shoe and begin grinding away, content in the knowledge that I was not only reconfiguring my dominance (by firmly impersonating submission), but would probably also get a big tip out of it.

But Sisyphus Autopsy is unique in that their philosophy boldly rejects Women’s inclusion into their self-manipulating realm. In fact, the impression that one is left with is that, while masturbating, they’re only fantasizing about themselves masturbating, which - while impressive - has frightful, monomaniacal implications.

Or, as Gargantua states:

 

“I tell you now that the best thing you can do is touch yourself - and I’m talking, feeling the manhood of it, stroking it, caressing it - watching the veins fill up your hand like a balloon filled with water!”

 

How soon we forget in these modern, aeronautical times, but - at one moment in our herstory - the balloon, and not the airplane, was the primary symbol of quick and expedient travel. So does this mean that Gargantua wishes to “inflate” his overworked member for the express purpose of floating away on the wind of his sexist oeuvre? And where will his air-buoyant penis take him, I wonder? Maybe to a world where Woman is NOT the dominant sex?!? Fat chance, buddy!

But that doesn’t mean we should underestimate our enemies (men) in this - the Ragnerok of The Sexes. Men, being the mechanized, self-aggrandizing (and self-caressing), heartless monsters they are, have diabolically used Women’s greater sensitivity, sensuality, compassion, and conscience against us, by attenuating The Media to inundate us with messages and images that tell us we’re only valid if our bodies fall into a certain preordained set of fleshy dimensions. Now, it just so happens that my measurements are perfectly suited to this expectation - a trick of bad luck which has caused no small amount of resentment among my sisters - regardless of the fact I barely workout more than ten hours a week to retain my taut shape. But even from my sinewy vantage, I can see that the only way we'll ever be able to break free from the mad spell of "lookism" is by acquainting ourselves with the true Mangenda, and now we finally have a clear example of what it is, in the form of “The Unshoeing of The Ass - The Best of Sisyphus Autopsy.”

 

I recommend its purchase to all my sisters, as a vital means of self-education, and preparation for war!

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