Che Guevara love.

Excusing the fact that the man was all “murdering academics, that’s hot” and “omg it’s the guy in the beret on my shirt,” the dude was a sexist fuckhead who couldn’t write worth a shit.

I once had a course – Women & Political Violence – that basically did nothing but slobber all over the wunnerfulness that is Che.  I wound up withdrawing from the course because I felt like my head was going to fucking explode.

It could have been because I had to listen to a chick from Cheltenham babble about the proletariat struggle.

It could have been because I had to read Che’s awful, 10th grade writing.

It could have been because the woman we were focusing on for a good portion of the class – Hayde Tamara Bunke Bider (aka – Tania) – was being studied in relation to Guevara.

But I think the thing that set me off and made me withdraw from the class was this:

As we got towards the end of the book, Tania gives the whole communist spy thing the not so much.  She decided she wanted to come to Bolivia and omg! fight like the revolutionary war! omg!  So she gets down there, and what does Che, our wonderful, loving omg! revolutionary do?

Makes her do all the cooking and sewing for the troops.

How fucking revolutionary.

Please, let’s stick to the same old anti-feminist bullshit.

Now, I’m not coming at this from some sort of pro-capitalist, red-blooded moderate loving perspective.  I actually have read Marx & Engels.  (And not just the Communist Manifesto.)  At least they a) could fucking write and b) Engels specifically wrote some pretty feminist shit.  But Che, our great revolutionary savior, couldn’t bother to get past his Manarchist bullshit. And even if I could get past the rest of it, even if I thought it was a splendid idea to kill off any of your fucking intellectuals (despite the fact that communism requires a degree of intellectual circle jerking), as a feminist, I just can’t get behind that.

Oh yeah, and the fact that I’d wager most of the idiots who wear Che shirts have no idea who the fuck he is besides that like totally cool revolutionary guy with wicked awesome style!

But that class did give me one gem: according to the professor, there is a Che credit card. I want it for the deliciously hipster irony. [ insert obligatory joke about every card starting with the same limit, regardless of credit ]

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