It's about time I talked about Tucker...

I think I'm going to dedicate this post to some self criticism. Specifically, I'm going to criticize my previous enjoyment of Tucker Max. I don't know how in hell I could have been so entirely misguided.

I was first introduced to Tucker through his website. I think I was in high school at the time and a friend of a friend introduced it to the circle I hung out with. I read some of the stories, thought they were too long, and abandoned it.

In University, someone mentioned the name 'Tucker Max,' and I gave the website another shot. A couple of my friends read it as well, and probably because one of them was so enthusiastic about it and I saw this as a chance to bond over something, I started getting enthused as well. We'd stay up at night reading stories from the website over the phone to each other, and eventually we went on a day trip to Chapters and both bought copies of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

I read the book, I lent it to another friend, I read stories from the book to other people, I laughed at the term "Tuckermaxed" (my friends and I went so far as to make tshirts with this phrase on it to represent our parody drama-club), and I saw the movie when it came out on video (large apology to the person I made watch it with me.)

I'll admit, some of these stories have an element of comedy in them. Drinking stories are funny to me - especially when the person telling the story is the one who is embarassed in it. What I don't think is funny - and that I can't figure out why I EVER thought was funny - are the stories in which Tucker Max involves women in his drunken exploits. Because he doesn't respect them, and he dehumanizes them. He contributes to a flourishing rape-culture by acting the way he does and publicizing it as if he's proud of his behaviour.

Tucker Max maintains that what he does and how he tells it is "just a joke" and that rape "fucking sucks." Thing is, when a joke actually mirrors what goes on in real life... when the joke isn't just a verbal joke, but a story acted out to the detriment of a person or a group of people... and when, in Tucker's case, he objectifies, uses, humiliates, discards and then writes about women as if all women are just kleenex for him to ejaculate into... then it's no longer a joke, and it presents rape as inviting. A joke is funny. If it were a joke, no one would be hurt.

He's trying to be subversive, but in reality, Tucker Max is doing to women what mainstream (read: violent, heteronormative, made for men) porn does to women, what advertising does to women, and what a lot of men who buy into this shit would like to do to women. He's making a joke that degrades women and allows others to degrade them, too. How on earth he doesn't think this has a real-life impact is beyond me... especially being that he is actually committing the acts he writes about in real life (or at least claiming to.)

There were plenty of clues to this that should have tipped me off. Had I internalized sexism so thoroughly that this didn't even register?

To begin with, the ads for the movie featured Tucker Max with his arm around a blonde with her face cut out and the words "Your face here." Anonymous woman, suggestion that all women wish they were with Tucker, mysogyny... why weren't bells going off for me? This was pre-490, but fuck, seriously?

The second ad for the movie, "Because blind girls can't see you coming/Deaf girls can't hear you coming." Rape jokes, violence against disabled people, sexism, ableism... all over the sides of buses providing a roaming trigger for anyone who has been raped.... And somehow I still didn't notice.

Then the book - secretly filming coerced anal sex, secretly opening the door during sex with a drunken girl at a casino so everyone outside the door can peek in, harassing fat girls at parties... and these are just off the top of my head. I can't bring myself to go look for the book to find more examples. I think I've given enough. And I somehow thought this was ok enough that I kept that book on a shelf by my bed for 2 years.

The movie - "Fat girls aren't real people." "I'm going to carve another fuck-hole in your torso." And is it just me or do the examples get worse as the franchise expands?

And finally, I saw the movie. And this was post-490 and I didn't know quite what to do. In honesty, I was sickened by it, but I couldn't bring myself to just suck it up and admit that for years I'd been a patron to something as everything-ist as this piece of shit, Tucker. So what did I do? I tried to make excuses for it in my mind so that I wouldn't have to deal with the embarassment of liking - worse, publicly liking and promoting and reccomending to friends - Tucker fucking Max. In fact, I think I even tried to sell those excuses to other people. They weren't having any of it.

So here it is - in cyberspace - my apology. Tucker Max is a piece of shit and so is everything he's ever made. I'm embarassed to have not figured it out sooner, and to not have admitted to it when I did figure it out, and I feel god awful for suggesting that other people read this book. I contributed to rape-culture by promoting him. I feel like I did the world a disservice.