My mom once muttered something to the effect of, “All these feminists going on and on about women in the workplace — I know plenty of women who’d like a day off once in a while.” I said, “Yeah, Mom, that’s a legit critique of mainstream feminism.”
Later, on a rainy afternoon over this past Xmas, my family played Trivial Pursuit with the Genus I Edition, which is so old that the answer to “Who is the Secretary of State?” is someone nobody had ever heard of and half the Entertainment questions are about L.A. Law. We gave up, and everybody left the game to watch a different TV.
These two things seemingly have nothing to do with one another — but they do now, and all because of a clever and hilarious new Tumblr, Ladies Against Humanity. It is both a feminist jab at and potential complement to the deliciously un-P.C. but somewhat dude-centric Cards Against Humanity — which is itself a slash-and-burn take on whitebread old Apples to Apples and dull, family-friendly games generally. Now, you can scroll through academically-inflected, pop-saturated cards like “The Bechdel Test,” “Turning the tables on Katie Couric about her genitals mid-interview,” and “Sort of wishing the baby on the plane would die.” Hey Girl, if you like Feminist Ryan Gosling, perhaps you might join the bandwagon for Ladies Against Humanity to become the next expansion pack for the actual game. (“Ryan Gosling’s Taint” is a card, by the way.)
Ladies Against Humanity creator Kate Stayman-London is a screenwriter and political consultant, and while the individual cards are crowd-sourced, she grasps the danger of sharp satire and clearly edits accordingly. Her pithy remark to New York magazine beautifully crystallized this awareness: “I’m not afraid of being offensive, but I never want to inadvertently reinforce the systems I’m trying to undermine.” Genius! Ladies Against Humanity isn’t the anti-Cards Against Humanity. It’s the anti-Seth MacFarlane.
And even though Ladies Against Humanity is not (yet) a game, it’s surprisingly playable. The first time I encountered Cards Against Humanity, I wound up holding onto “The Jews” through the end of the game because I didn’t quite know everybody yet and that card is a hand grenade. There’s no real risk of going beyond the pale here, because Ladies is basically pitch-perfect every time.
I would never, ever think of playing Cards Against Humanity with my parents under any circumstances, but Ladies Against Humanity – possibly, maybe. Not that I expect my mother to play the “Bandying Vampire Bill about the head and neck until he chooses Laura Benanti like a sane person” card with confident aplomb. But I would like to be partnered with her if she were ever to anti-mansplain “A vagina mint. A mint for your vagina” to my stupefied father, and claim victory for the team.
Images via Ladies Against Humanity
