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Saturday, June 26, 2010

TWIFI: Porn Comments!

Sometimes I feel bad doing the Twisty posts, because she's not much of a real-life threat, is she? The effects of sexism can be felt in daily life; the effects of Internet radical feminism seem rather safely contained to a little circle of crazy-person blogs. I feel like I'm arguing with flat-Earth believers: yes, they're wrong, and if anyone listened to them it would be very dangerous, but they're not doing any harm, sheesh.

But hey, I'm not exactly dictating public policy either, am I? So I might as well have fun. And oh is there fun to be had. Let's read the comments on the porn post.

I’m so sick of (dudes using) Danish people as the measuring stick of “healthy “progressive” European freedom. Yes, they can smoke do heroin and look at prostituted women in red-lit windows drunk on Guiness after smoking expensive hash in a cafe. Therefore they know everything there is to know about life? Durr.
Ladies and gentlemen, Denmark.

"And their wooden shoes and their dikes and their stupid little windmills too. Just because they have tulips and Gouda they think they're soooo special, those Danish people."

When people argue that sexology research is actually kind of important, Twisty replies:
I remain unmoved by this romanticized mystification — it’s so “wondrous” and “complex” — to which sex is constantly subjected. Whatever bangs your box, of course, but to me orgasms lack the nuance and sophistication of other human pursuits (such as playing the autoharp, or reading to the sick) and so fall a bit short when you’re talking about high moral purpose.
Well that's nice for you. But you know what? I don't play the autoharp, but I would never tell anyone else not to, or talk as if autoharp mastery was some sort of forbidden knowledge. How about you devote yourself to autoharping, and I devote myself to the study and pursuit of sex, and we live happily ever after?

Don't tell me "whatever bangs your box" and then tell me that my form of box-banging is rape and won't exist when you get your way.

Alas, this is why I prefer to hold up women’s intuition, which is actually a rational scientific tool of reasoning, over dude science any day. That doesn’t mean science is bad, it means that woman’s intuition is often far superior.
I have asthma. It's not the worst, it only comes up occasionally if I breathe really nasty dust, but when I get an attack it doesn't go away on its own. In any time or place that didn't have albuterol (or at least epinephrine), I would never have made it to adulthood. And albuterol, I am led to believe, was not developed through intuition and the deep wisdom if the Earth. It was made in a lab, by scientists, and it's the reason I haven't painfully choked to death.

So if it's all the same to you, I don't want to assign intuition to women and science to men, because science is really really useful and women contribute to it. I mean, am I really the one on the side of sexism here? You're the one telling me science is some dude thing and that ladies should just stick to having feelings! Christ!

I hate how ‘free speech’ is used to silence the most undebatable research and arguments. That phrase has no meaning or value. It’s ridiculous and is used in every rebuttal to complaints against sexism. ‘free speech’ is starting to sound more like an insult every time it’s used.
Okay, you know that thing you just said? How other people are able to see it and you will face no adverse legal consequences for saying it--probably no adverse consequences at all? That's your meaning and value, dumbass.

A man can’t gag, strike, humiliate, abuse, rape and physically punish a woman legally (ok…he can’t nominally), but if he records it and calls it ‘porn’ suddenly he can. What’s the difference?
Oh come on, would you people take the tiniest effort to learn what porn actually is? I have to shop around to get good humiliating and physical punishing. (Which, of course, I enjoy not because I hate the actress but because I assume she's having as much fun with those things as I do.) Most porn just has fucking. And fucking, I hate to tell you, is pretty much legal in all 50 states and Denmark.

Never in my life have I known a woman to seek out porn to get her through a lonely Saturday night.
Well hi. My name is Holly. You know me now. Stop making sweeping assumptions about my gender.

They like watching it because it degrades and harms women, and women don’t like it. Else porn would be full of women doing things that delight us sexually, none of which would include being choked by phalluses, receiving ejaculate on the face, being anally raped, or any of the other myriad “harmless” porn activities the dudes so frantically defend.
Well hi. My name is Holly. I delight in these things. Stop making sweeping assumptions about my gender. (Actually I have trouble with the "choked by phalluses" part because I have a really tricky gag reflex, but I love sucking cock as long as it's not a choking thing, so I'm, like... a human being with preferences and quirks that you can't know just by looking, how 'bout that.)

If gang rape can be a quotidian scenario in porn, how long until children, animals and murder become the new lows to meet the insatiable desires of the masturbating consumer?
Oh Nonsensical Slippery Slope, my old friend. "If we allow Dr. Pepper at soda fountains, how long until they start serving human blood?"

But you want someone to prove they have the right to dictate “meaningful consent” so okay let’s go there. My definition of meaningful consent is consent without the presence of socialized brainwashing since birth.
Well great, now no one can consent to anything ever. Big help there.


This shit is like Kevin Bacon; it takes less than seven steps from any topic to explaining why women can't consent to sex. Ugh. Now I remember the real reason I feel bad after I write these posts.

52 comments:

  1. I wish I had a steady partner at the moment so I could go consent *right now* just to rub it in. Ooo.

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  2. "Dude Science" isn't just "Science done by men", rather it's the entire scope of "Western materialist science" with it's supposed scientific method. So it's not that women can't participate in it, it's just that (supposedly) they're degrading themselves and playing to the patriarchy when they do it.

    *sigh*

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  3. I wish we had a world-wide totally anonymous virtual reality network where we could all log in, leave our material bodies and experience the most bizarre, pansexual pleasures the mind has to offer. Being raped in the forehead thirdeye pussy will bring these idiots round.

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  4. Statistically, don't kinky men outnumber kinky women? And, for whatever reason (financially the industry belongs to men, men are more socialized to consume porn while women aren't, whatever), most porn is directed at men, right? At least, most of the porn I flip through to find what I want has a "by men, for men" feel that just breaks it for me. It's very cool that you're kinky, I love your blog, I'm sure there are many more women like you out there. Still, there are many, many more women who aren't.

    And that's OK.

    I mean, I'm all for restructuring the porn industry, but I admit that a lot, maybe most, of what's out there isn't for me, and I still love porn. I do think it's a little... unhealthy? Unappealing? That so much porn is tied into this thing I can't relate to at all, this passive-woman-gets-fucked semen-in-the-eyes business, but I feel the same way about thin thin thin women. Thinness is fine, it's just disturbing to me to that there's this one standard (and maybe a little disappointing that the standard isn't to my taste).

    This was badly phrased, but essentially, I think the problem with porn that so many misguided feminist have is that it's a male-driven industry, so they only see the male point of view, so they assume it's inherently male. And, to be fair, I have to search long and hard to find porn where the women look like they're enjoying themselves. That's not an inherent problem of porn, though.

    Blah blah blah.

    : )

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  5. Slippery-slope arguments aren't necessarily fallacious, and the argument presented above isn't entirely nonsensical. But slippery-slope arguments in general are really weak without a lot of evidence backing them up. Has the increased availability of porn in general resulted in a disproportionate increase in demand for illegal underground stuff like bestiality, pedophilia, and snuff porn? Probably only in the fevered imaginations of anti-porn advocates.

    But let's say it was true. The only way to be certain would be sexology research - something which a lot of anti-porn advocates are against too. Without that, we're just left with "intuition" - intuition may be an excellent decision-making shortcut, but for truly major decisions like sweeping policy changes there is simply no substitute for actual proven knowledge.

    Otherwise one may find that well-intentioned rules may end up doing more harm than good - or even that people refuse to find out whether or not it happened, just for the sake of ideological purity.

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  6. Anon 6:48 - Being raped in the forehead thirdeye pussy will bring these idiots round.

    No... really no. Let's not have any "but it's a funny rape threat!" here, alright?

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  7. Perlhaqr - Oh, I know. It's the whole idea that we should really be living in quaint little villages sustainably farming cute little chickens and gathering the eggs in the most adorable wicker baskets that we made ourselves.

    (Please ignore the children choking to death and other minor inconveniences in the background of this image.)

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  8. Mother-earth-love-women's-intuition arguments bug the fuck out of me more than just about any other type, I think.

    Intuition is a legitimate decision-making tool. It's often at least based on logic on a subconscious level, which is why it tends to improve with age and experience. Men have it too, and it's not a freaking replacement for modern science.

    The way these people use it is more along the lines of 'all women are secretly psychic'.

    Porn doesn't really do much for me, but that's really a failure of execution in most cases. If women make the decision to have sex on screen for money, well, they're grownups and as long as nobody's forcing them into it, it's not my place to sail in on a white horse to save them from themselves.

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  9. (Porn doesn't do much for me because my reaction to being exposed to other people having sex is to want to apologise, back away, and close the door.)

    One of the things that gets me about these rabid anti-porners is the way that they seem to think that porn is a big deal. I mean, totally important, something that I should really care about. I blogged about this a few years ago, when there was an explosion about it - just, wow, of all the things you want to really start frothing at the mouth about, porn? Really?

    I can't help but feel that it comes from a position of shocking levels of privilege, from people who haven't had to deal with actual problems. And I'm sure that a lot of the folks over there have been, e.g., sexually assaulted, just because the odds are fucking depression about assault rates in any group of women, but ... porn? Porn more than rapists? Porn more than health care? Porn more than medicalised ignoring of women's health concerns? Porn more than the assumption that women will just drop out of work to have kids but men having kids will carry on without family responsibilities? Really? Are you shitting me?

    (I want to break the faces of the ones who say that porn causes rape, because I have no patience for rape apology.)

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  10. I would say "Dutch" like in "Netherlands".

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  11. "Porn doesn't really do much for me, but that's really a failure of execution in most cases."
    That could be the TL;DR for my blah-blah in the last thread!

    In all fairness, Twisty has been fighting the good fight for science since the anti-science contingent reared its head.

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  12. "prostituted women"

    lol

    because, you know, they were ALL forced into it by those damn wooden-shoe-wearing danish sons of bitches! no reasonable woman would actually choose that herself.

    *siigh*

    porn directed by women and aimed at women is hard to find, but it IS there. (have you heard of belladonna? i'm not sure if the stuff she makes and acts in is aimed specifically for men or women, but it's awesome.)

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  13. Ok, first off, my life-long partner is getting her degree in Chemistry (all forms, she's pretty sharp) that is, I guess, dude science? I don't know, but she loves it and loves to tell about MY cooking, and how I'm not making things right, chemically. I guess the point of the digression is that she's awesome, in dude science, and would be pissed if anyone said anything against her.

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  14. @anon 1:08 - The term "prostituted" exists under the assumption that no reasonable person would want to take such a job, and people only do it because of bad circumstances (which, of course, may occasionally mean being forced into it by others). This is true, in a sense - at least in regards to "streetwalker" type prostitutes, which is what most people think of. But that's largely because being a streetwalker is usually a really crap job. There are a lot of other "really crap jobs" which no reasonable person would want to do if they weren't forced to. Most of them are even legal. So using the word "prostituted" in that way is usually a sign that the speaker is too narrowly focused.

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  15. The country apparently being discussed is Holland. The Netherlands. Inhabitants: The Dutch.

    The Danes and Denmark have -nothing- to do with the above.

    Also, in Holland, Heroin is not in any way, shape or form legal for a Dutch citizen. The line is drawn at weed.

    Prostitution has been legalised in 2000. Motivation of this is that -prostitution will not end if you outlaw it-. So it is deemed better to be out in the open where it can be regulated and (cough) taxed.

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  16. D'accord, brother Anon.
    Just that people here are not interested in facts and Geography because it's a science, and they would prefer to freely intuite.

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  17. Note that Twisty spent several later posts explaining why intuition is not superior to science. Some caveats are that you almost always use intuition to come up with good hypotheses to test; that people often think that scientific experiments prove more than they do (especially when they are about human behavior); and that there is sexism in academic and industrial scientific institutions.

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  18. Strange to see you mocking Twisty, like in this post and the previous one

    Twisty Faster vs. Porn. Oh, and also science, a little bit.

    when she has recently written SEVERAL posts DEFENDING SCIENCE and laughing at fairies, magical intuition, witches, etc. She is not crazy. I've read you for a while and her much longer and enjoy her sense of humor and going over the top style. As for "dude science" - check this short post to see what she means:

    http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2010/06/18/at-last-the-end-of-science-week/

    I just feel a bitter taste in my mouth at Twisty being ridiculed as being "anti-science" and your asthma medicine, when she is the opposite and tried to make some of her readers see light on the issue in the last past week (or 2). She even called it Science Week Project. Now she will do Arts Week. Imo, it's cute. As for her readers, well, she doesn't tell them what to write. It isn't her fault some fairy-believing people will comment. In this world filled to the brim with mysoginists, Cosmo, articles "how to make your woman do anal", is Twisty - a lesbian (I mention this since the culture isn't friendly to real lesbians, unlike making out for the boys variety) woman with a unique sense of humor, who is not less than you pro-science, see here for the ultimate proof:

    http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2010/06/17/spinster-aunt-beats-dead-horse/

    Is she the best you've found? It's not personal attack at you Holly, just I was sad some readers not reading her would get the wrongest impression possible.

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  19. Anonymous at 4:34 and 5:22: You are aware that everybody here is mocking the original Twisty commenter that had the Netherlands and Denmark confused, right? That's why irrelevancies like wooden shoes are being dragged in, to continue the joke.

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  20. Cat and woman reader - Direct quote from Twisty:
    This spinster aunt continues to advocate feminist revolt, which revolt would necessarily include a total annihilation of the dude-based science industrial complex.

    ...But I vigorously agree that putting any faith whatsoever in current dude-dominated science cabals is not the path to feminist triumph.


    Sounds kinda anti-science to me. Or at least anti-science-as-it-currently-exists, which is very very close.

    This whole "feminist revolt" thing, I just don't know what it means. Does she mean, like, with guns? Who exactly is going to be shooting whom and how will this be organized? Or is this some sort of purely cultural revolution--in which case, how exactly will it be effected? Governmental takeover?

    A revolt isn't some magic psychical sea change. It's an event, in reality. And usually--particularly when the ideals advanced are not popular with the majority of the population--a violent one. And that doesn't fill me with warm fuzzies. It makes me worry very, very deeply.

    Have you ever seen a bullet wound? They're real ugly.

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  21. I was sad some readers not reading her would get the wrongest impression possible.

    Trust me, woman reader, Holly has had zero to do with my low opinion of Twisty. That was all Twisty.

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  22. I remain unmoved by this romanticized mystification — it’s so “wondrous” and “complex” — to which sex is constantly subjected...to me orgasms lack the nuance and sophistication of other human pursuits (such as playing the autoharp, or reading to the sick) and so fall a bit short when you’re talking about high moral purpose.

    Awesome. Clearly, then, I should go ask Twisty whether "squirting orgasms" really exist, and where the liquid comes from and what it is and why. In return, I can explain to her that reading to the sick is a process by which people use their vocal cords to shape the words written on a bunch of bound pieces of paper (in the presence of someone who is ill). The words on the paper form a story, which the brains of readers and listeners will turn into pictures using something called imagination.

    No, seriously, sex is thought of as mystical, etc. because we don't know things about it. There are so many rumours surrounding sexuality (especially women's sexuality and comparatively few facts, and it drives me insane (especially because guys always want to know "can you do this in bed? Can you do that in bed?" and I'm like "Those aren't even real things, dude. They only exist in porn. Or, wait. Do they?").

    I blogged about my frustration, a few weeks ago: http://perversecowgirl.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/wtf/

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  23. Punctuation fail. I got so pissed off I forgot a closing parenthesis. :P

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  24. Is it twisty or you that's confusing the Danish with the Dutch?

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  25. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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  26. Holly, re: bullet wounds. Honestly... You take some things too literally. Imo she says it half-jokingly and actually means cultural revolution. Women in first world countries gained many rights - vote, not being married against your will at 13 like they still do now in other places, hold a decent job, sexual harrasment laws, no illegimate children according to the law, etc. But centuries of tradition don't die completely in a moment.

    We've passed a long way, but there is still room for improvement even in USA, let alone in third world countries. How is it done? I know in USA religious nuts want to outlaw abortion and some even target contraception.

    Why such people can push their harmful to women ideas into laws, but the moment you hear "feminist revolt" you don't think about lobbying for decent laws, educating people, raising awareness or even peaceful resistance (demonstrations, organizations fighting for decent laws, family planning services, etc), but about bullets and attack this straw man? If you read Twisty, you should know her style.

    I am sure she isn't some deraged nut, collecting guns to shoot innocent people. If you want to talk about the dangers of bullets, talk about Right Wing dangerous fanatics, like the one who killed George Tiller, or think about that disappointed PUA who went and killed some women, remember? Those people and the ones supporting them [while taking zero responsibility, of course] with inflaming rhetoric ("he is a murderer!" / "women = low creatures you can't buy as a cow any longer, sadly. Trick the bitches!"), they're a danger to democracy and normal life, at least the kind of life I would like to have. Not Twisty.

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  27. Oh my gosh, everyone, I am aware that Denmark is the one with the Legos and the mermaid, and the Netherlands are the one with the pot and hookers. Give me some credit here.

    Woman reader - lobbying for decent laws, educating people, raising awareness or even peaceful resistance (demonstrations, organizations fighting for decent laws, family planning services, etc)
    These are great ideas and I never hear them come out of Twisty's mouth. She either advocates "revolt" in the abstract, or occasionally advocates a "femininity strike" in which women will give up having sex and being mothers and wearing pantyhose--which every woman will participate in because magic. There are times when Twisty seems to actively disdain ordinary regular feminism as useless before "the revolt," but many more times when she never even mentions it as an option.

    I get that she's sort of "funny," but she also talks about serious shit, and... like I said, I'm a literal thinker, and my small mind just can't tease apart her "when I'm right I'm serious and when I'm wrong it's ironic, you should just know that" way of speaking.

    It's funny, woman reader, I get the feeling that the two of us would actually agree on a lot of things, but we read totally different intentions into Twisty. I feel like you assume she's a regular feminist somewhere underneath, and I take her at her frequently-nonsensical word.

    think about that disappointed PUA who went and killed some women, remember?
    Quick nitpick: George Sodini wasn't really a hardcore PUA. He was much more of a hardcore psychopath who had some PUA literature and leanings but was basically regular crazy. He's undergone a very creepy posthumous adoption by the PUA movement as "what happens if you don't play along, ladies, so watch out," but there was a lot more mental illness and a lot less Mystery Method in the actual guy.

    I don't like seeing him identified as a PUA because it gives credence to the PUAs who like to use him as an implicit threat.

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  28. Woman reader:

    "[T]hey're a danger to democracy and normal life, at least the kind of life I would like to have. Not Twisty."

    "Sometimes I feel bad doing the Twisty posts, because she's not much of a real-life threat, is she? The effects of sexism can be felt in daily life; the effects of Internet radical feminism seem rather safely contained to a little circle of crazy-person blogs. I feel like I'm arguing with flat-Earth believers: yes, they're wrong, and if anyone listened to them it would be very dangerous, but they're not doing any harm, sheesh.

    But hey, I'm not exactly dictating public policy either, am I? So I might as well have fun. And oh is there fun to be had."


    While I agree with you that there's still much work to be done to bring women's standing in the world to where it should be, well, this is a snarky sex blog. Some of us are here to enjoy Holly's lampooning of what she (and we readers!) find ridiculous. Twisty usually delivers that for us.

    I wonder if the original commenter who confused the Dutch and Danish was a Metalocalypse fan? "Dude, that guy you headbutted was totally a Danish prince!" "I would have done the same thing. The Dutch are scum."

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  29. Twisty says a lot of outrageous shit, and whether she's doing it for some sort of ironic bombast or because she really means exactly what she says is kind of beside the point. She's a grown woman and I am sure quite capable of taking both positive and negative consequences for saying outrageous shit, regardless of her intent.

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  30. "I remain unmoved by this romanticized mystification — it’s so 'wondrous' and 'complex' — to which sex is constantly subjected." Perversecow already said part of what I was gonna say, but: saying something is "complex" and potentially interesting does not constitute romanticized mystification. In fact, it's the opposite, since you're saying it can be explained by empirical methods. "Mystification" would be saying it's too mysterious and spiritual to be explained by such methods. Or that it's too gross and people should stop being interested in it (which seems to be the subtext in Twisty's comment). Ridiculing a particular topic of scientific research because you don't think it sounds high-minded or abstruse enough is basically the same tactic Sarah Palin used when she scoffed at those dumb scientists "wasting gov't money studying fruit fly larva." It's anti-intellectual & dumb.

    It's nice that Twisty is defending Science in the abstract from her more flat-earthy supporters, but you can make statements like hers & still be anti-science. If you vehemently reject any scientific results that conflict your preconceived, ideologically determined worldview, then you don't really believe in the scientific method. If you think certain subjects shouldn't be studied (even if we don't understand them well), because they're gross and boring, plus we might not like the results -- then you're not really pro-science. It's just like how a politician might claim to be pro-freedom, but support the PATRIOT Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a flag-burning amendment & a bunch of other oppressive laws.

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  31. I don't like seeing him identified as a PUA because it gives credence to the PUAs who like to use him as an implicit threat.

    Look, isn't it at least a bit like saying that George Tiller's murderer shoulders all the blame, while people campaigning "abortion = murder", publishing doctors' personal info on their websites' Evil Murderes Lists and praying for Tiller's death are A-OK?

    Sure he wasn't 100% normal, but even not normal people take clues from their surroundings. He should've been told how to work on himself as a person, including being at least moderately happy alone, cultivate friendships with other men, participating in some community. Instead he got - "women = foolish dirty bitches, here instruction manual how to fool model-looking 20-year-olds". Yes, I know he sought out such messages, but if dangerous mental women-hating criminal seeks out your messages, it's high time to check what those messages are. Isn't it funny how mysoginy is something normal guys do, but the moment somebody takes it a step too far, he is insane. Nothing to do with us. --> WE are OK. Woo-hoo! I thought may be somebody like Sodini would make people talk what messages we send as a culture. :(

    And when somebody identifies as PUA and doesn't distance himself from this vile murderer, it shows who the man talking really is. May be he won't do it himself (may be yes, who knows?), but he outs himself as somebody truly horrible from whom you should keep maximum distance. The PUAs using him as a threat out themselves and show why no normal decent woman should be with them.

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  32. woman reader - Your last paragraph about PUA and Sodini is a good point.

    The paragraph depending on the bolded point, "if dangerous mental women-hating criminal seeks out your messages, it's high time to check what those messages are", is not. Except for the identification of the hated group, this applies to every political message that is reasonably popular; some nut always picks your message. For example, Valerie Solanas does not prove anything about feminism.

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  33. Mousie00, I meant that one should check the ratio of normal people to mysoginist jerks /conspiracy believing/ aggressive more than average & potentially violent / etc. followers. Mainstream feminism isn't Valerie Solanas's kind, you know. I doubt many feminists defended her actions then, while many PUA were not above "poor guy" and using him as an implicit threat. Another unrelated example - you may think your political party is all about healthy nationalism, but if 25% of your followers are neo-Nazis... See?

    Another way is to see where lies the difference, in quality or in quantity (and how big is the quantity gap). The ideal world of Valerie Solanas is VERY different from the ideal of 99.99% feminists (I am 100% sure "even" Twisty wouldn't stand for Solanas's vision in RL), while Sodini's hateful on-line diary is unremarkable among PUAs, at least the sentiments inside it were frightenly mainstream. It's only when he went to do the deed, taking it to the next step...

    Btw, not long ago I read on Pandagon about another man, whose girlfriend dumped him, so he went & killed several completely unrelated women. After all, to him we women were all interchangeable, a view promoted by PUAs and wider culture. And it's only in the last 2 years, hard to believe they're the first or the last.

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  34. Forgot to say, George Tiller's murder is even better example. After the violent mainstream (in certain curcles) rhetoric, I mentioned in the first paragraph, killing the man was the logical next step.

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  35. It's amusing that the PUA community uses Sodini as an example of what happens when PUA doesn't work. Because (as PUA literature and its followers repeatedly tell us) PUA techniques always work - and if they don't, it's because you're not using them right.

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  36. Woman reader and Mousie00 - We're completely agreed that PUAs are pieces of shit and George Sodini was a piece of shit, but I believe that he was really much more of an ordinarily homicidally insane piece of shit and the "frustrated PUA" angle has been played up after the fact. And I don't want to go along with this both because it plays into the "this is what you get for not fucking him" message.

    If you look at his diary (http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/08/george-sodinis-diary-page.html), he certainly expresses hatred for and frustration with women, but he doesn't talk about alphas and betas or Game or any of that. He was a misogynist--duh--but he was not specifically a PUA misogynist.

    I think this distinction is important, as I said, because his weird little adoption by the PUA community highlights their creepiness more because it's not true, and because it imposes a false and rationalizing narrative on senseless murders.

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  37. To clarify, I don't think anyone here including Holly sees PUA and PUAs as remotely normal, harmless, or even defensible. We just don't think Tiller was one, just a garden-variety psychopath they happened to co-opt, because in their sick way, they see him as having had a legitimate grievance rather than choosing to self-terminate at the health club rather than his former place of business, against which he seemed to have just as much narcissistic rage.

    We're being pedantic, not trying to defend misogyny or PUA. Much as with Mousie's statement regarding political movements- he's right, any strong point of view will attract murderous nutjobs, not "there's nothing wrong with any strong point of view whatsoever".

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  38. I'll sign up for the role of actual existing woman who delights in "being choked by phalluses," as well as looking at porn on a lonely Saturday night.

    And your Nonsensical Slippery Slope analogy was priceless. L to the O to the other L.

    flightless

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  39. LabRat...

    "We just don't think Tiller was one, just a garden-variety psychopath they happened to co-opt,"

    George SODINI. George Tiller was a doctor who was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist.

    flightless

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  40. Dur, sorry Flightless, too many Georges and not enough coffee.

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  41. woman reader said, "I doubt many feminists defended her actions then, while many PUA were not above "poor guy" and using him as an implicit threat."

    I was just about to say you're absolutely right, and then I ran this search out of curiosity:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=valerie+solanas+site%3Aiblamethepatriarchy.com

    Regular holiday readings from Solanas's manifesto calling for the extermination of all men, as "Solanasmas". That's seriously fucked up. A lot of the hits are from commenters expressing admiration for Solanas, and they aren't called on it in the examples I read. Twisty Faster and Jill, at least, are fucking insane. They are horrible evil people. Do not dare to say it's just a joke and is OK. At least Sodini didn't call for the extermination of all women, and PUA Sodini jokes would not be OK in the least, especially if they came with no indication that it might be a joke.

    None of that excuses in the least the PUA response to Sodini. You discussed that in the paragraph I said made a good point, and it's still a good point. As you and Holly said, when PUA types refer to him without distancing themselves, they condemn themselves. Twisty doing the same thing with Solanas doesn't make it one tiny bit better when PUAs do it.

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  42. Holly, I have to disagree with your assessment of Twisty's views on science. Certainly I don't agree with everything she says, and in fact I found her through you, but still.

    I have been working in science for a while, and let me tell you, it is VERY white and male. There are many white male scientists who support white male pet theories that "prove" their superiority. With the way media reports science, this actually CAN be very hurtful to women.

    Now, as for science, of course I support it all the way. It's the best method we have for finding answers. However, science as implemented by people is FAR from perfect, and although I know you don't like to see the patriarchy everywhere, I can tell you from experience that it absolutely permeates science.

    Honestly, the way you respond to Twisty's posts is the most disappointing aspect of your blog to me. My views tend to line up more with yours than hers, and yet rather than actually addressing the issues with what she has to say, you take quotes from both her and her readers (as someone earlier pointed out, not her) out of context.

    I do agree that she sometimes claims that it's a free country and yet doesn't sympathize with those of different viewpoints, but I sometimes also have the feeling that you do a bit of the same. I don't know, but the amount you focus in particular on a woman you disagree with sometimes makes me feel as though you feel the need to police other feminists rather than actually focusing on feminist issues.

    I hope you don't take this as more critical than I meant it. I really do enjoy your blog.

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  43. Selina - To be honest, I think Twisty's just a jerk and in kind of a funny way.

    I do agree that she sometimes claims that it's a free country and yet doesn't sympathize with those of different viewpoints, but I sometimes also have the feeling that you do a bit of the same.
    Hey, a free country means the freedom to disagree. (And to disagree with the disagreeing, and to disagree with that, and so forth.) But unlike Twisty, I support the continuance of a free country in which loonballs can express their loon views in perpetuity--her idea of what a "feminist revolt" entails doesn't sound free to me.

    I don't know, but the amount you focus in particular on a woman you disagree with sometimes makes me feel as though you feel the need to police other feminists rather than actually focusing on feminist issues.
    I don't see Twisty as "another feminist"; our disagreements go way beyond "different ways of accomplishing similar goals." She wants a revolt and in many ways only a revolt--I want the world I live in now to be better.

    Also, again, most weakly but most honestly, I just think she's unintentionally hilarious.



    All that said, I have been considering quitting the Twisty posts, because sometimes I do find myself on the wrong side of the fence just to disagree with her, and I don't want that. Also sometimes I get creepy "yeah you sock it to those FEMINISTS" emails, and that doesn't make me feel good about myself at all.

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  44. Holly - Imagine an MRA writes about how horrible Sodini was and how all men should repudiate him. Imagine a Twisty commenter writes him an email congratulating him. Imagine what that email would look like.

    It's not meant as a mirror image, just an illustration that having the wrong people congratulate you in the wrong way doesn't mean that you're wrong.

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  45. Hershele OstropolerJune 29, 2010 at 5:07 PM

    I remain unmoved by this romanticized mystification — it’s so “wondrous” and “complex” — to which sex is constantly subjected. Whatever bangs your box, of course, but to me orgasms lack the nuance and sophistication of other human pursuits (such as playing the autoharp, or reading to the sick) and so fall a bit short when you’re talking about high moral purpose.
    I have no problem with asexuals, as long as they're not all "I would never waste my time on such matters."

    Mother-earth-love-women's-intuition arguments bug the fuck out of me more than just about any other type, I think.
    Gender essentialism is gender essentialism, even when you promote it in the name of feminism.

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  46. Else porn would be full of women doing things that delight us sexually,

    That sounds like my porn collection.

    none of which would include being choked by phalluses, receiving ejaculate on the face, being anally raped, or any of the other myriad “harmless” porn activities the dudes so frantically defend.

    That sounds like my girlfriend's porn collection.

    She makes fun of mine. It's kind of embarrassing.

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  47. Selina, I first became aware of Twisty because of the phrase "funk-filled bratwurst". If you're not familiar with that one, have a Google.

    Whether or not she's taking the piss, her adopted persona is a gender-essentialising shithead with a crowd of slavish fangirls who are worse and egg her on to new heights of pandering revenge fantasy which has little relevance to the actual life of anyone I know.

    Man, if I had her kind of Daddy's money ...

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  48. The "funk-filled bratwurst" comment only bothered me insofar as it was presented as objective reality rather than one person's perception. But as the intended audience was reasonably intelligent adults, it's fairly clear it's one person's perception.

    I have no objection to my Vienna sausage being called a bratwurst.

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  49. Twisty is all about presenting one person's perception as objective reality and abusing those people who are different.

    I'm not emotionally invested enough in her to be actually hurt by it; at the time, in fact, I laughed my ass off because the only time I enjoy oral sex (as top or bottom) is in a D/S context so the entire premise was hilarious in a flat-earthy way. But I knew right from my introduction to her that Twisty's narrative wants me to not exist, which is a touch on the tiresome side.

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  50. hrithfrith - I don't think "just an opinion" excuses hateful opinions. If someone said "the vagina is a disgusting funk-dripping swamp clam, but that's just my opinion," I would not go "ohh, normally that would be offensive, but it's his opinion, I understand now." It's still offensive.

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  51. Dan Savage makes me laugh when he describes his revulsion at female genitalia - maybe because he's *so* clear that he's only giving his own reaction (not even "opinion" just REACTION). He routinely advises straight men that it is their absolute duty to perform cunnilingus, even though he also says he personally would literally rather die.

    I did google the bratwurst, and all those Twisty commenters about how awful it is just made me sad. Are some of them straight women who feel that awful about penises?

    flightless

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