Katze mit Wut

"Is communication un-sexy?", we asked last week, pretty much en passant. Somehow, the thought got stuck in my mind though, and indeed, as a young girl, that was exactly what I was led to believe — that in that perfect, romantic love, the love of my life would know what to do, would have the empathy to sense how I feel, what the right thing to do just now was — in fact, that was not just the hallmark of the True Love, it was the litmus test. If the person couldn't sense, couldn't feel you, you should drop them like a hot potato because obviously, they weren't Mr(s) Right. Of course from there, it's only so far to the rape-glorifying genre of forced seduction, and from there on out to Asshats of Gor.

Well, colour me bollocks.

If you wanna bring up both sides of the conversation anyway, get a smegging RealDoll, yo.

And then as mass media go? You get those weird-ass dominance games and fight fucking (also a bit of a dominance game, but possibly also the result of the thought, violence is exciting, sex is exciting, why not mix the two, bonus!, or maybe it's a result of the mainstreaming of pornography which also seems rather rife with all three). You get movies like Sleepless in Seattle which some argue are little more than glorified stalking, the distinction likely being that while fighting for your love is arguably commendable (and a staple of the genre), there should be a pre-existing relationship. And then romance was cast mostly as uncertainty — will they, or won't they? (Strangely enough, I see that in relationships a lot — once the "hunt", the "chase", the uncertainty are over and people are an item, all activity ceases. Of course people get much less attractive that way, and often enough, that seems to spell death for the relationship.)

Not that I'd knock the excitement of the first year or two, of course. The overindulgence, the all night phone calls, the all night sex, the overwhelming emotion and its sometimes expression in art. The rush, the surge, the blur, that feeling of perfection when it's all new, not routine yet, when you don't know each other enough to see all the little imperfections. I guess I can see those aspects.

But maybe mixing the lies in with the truth just makes the lie stronger.

Passion and love, sex, money, Violence, religion, justice, death — I'm pretty much at a point where I'd like to find one thing I wasn't lied to about. You'd think you'd get out of childhood with a suitable world-model — in fact, it would seem that that's the entire point of childhood, so how come you have to do it over all the time? I don't have time for this, I have a doggone day job to do.

---

When trying to call up the page for RealDolls to link to it, instead of typing the correct shortcut, wiki, I typed iki realdoll. Go figure. A lot of truth in typos, I guess.

More to the point, I also looked up their definition of romance, and while it got a lot longer since I last looked, I'm not sure it necessarily got any better. If anything, it's more inconclusive than ever. Interestingly while there, I learned the following facts:
— via romance novels and chick lit: Hamish Macbeth (the novels) were apparently a major influence on chick lit. Damned if I can work that one out from seeing the show.
— via chick lit: there's also "dick lit", and one of its heroes is Chuck Pahluniak (of Fight Club fame). Now I don't know his other stuff, but Fight Club doesn't seem to have a lot of romance, sex, or dicks in it. What does dick lit make, male bonding alone? Wikipedia doesn't say.

On a related note by the by, I'd been thinking for a while that romance might be the female equivalent/opposite of porn, as porn shows unrealistic women, and romance shows unrealistic men. In reality, it's not quite the same, as men become ideal, and women become objects. If that implies that to men the ideal woman is an object, that still says very different things about the two groups. One is uplift, the other degrading.

And yes, extra long neck in comic, I presume you don't know the Sarah Silverman routine on that, then. I'd also really like a countryman microphone (pictured), but I don't phone from home enough to fix something up. So, if and when I'll make more music again I might. But first things first.
This article tagged for rewrite.

As you see from the picture, I was going to write about this NHS campaign that says that 1 out of 3 women who were raped (by men) were intoxicated at the time, trying to imply that alcohol made you unsafe, but really only saying that you're twice as safe drunk as you are sober. This neglects to ask what the rapists were on, and fails to acknowledge that if all women stopped drinking that would just mean that 3 out of 3 women who were raped (by men) were sober — this would again imply that you're safer drunk. Using a fraction rather than an absolute number of cases is rubbish. Much more so when you cannot prove that that 1-in-3 state or lack thereof had any bearing on the event anyway. (All rapes already do have one well-known common denominator though: the presence of a rapist!) Consequently, this seems more about diverting the attention from the rapist and towards "better ways of blaming the victim." Way to go.

But as you see, many clever women beat me to it, so you'll get a best of various articles review instead. So sioux me.

Twisty has a good article on an article which tries to pit a sexy-fun woman against a "no sex till marriage" "feminist" that points out that they're not really opposites since, you know, they're both still defined in terms of sex. I don't think there can be a more succinct illustration of the concept of a sex class.

But first, there's my Don't hate me because I'm beauti-- er, thin — reloaded (and, alas, in German), wherein happens much blaming and questions such as, Why are people so concerned with whether young women pick skinny models as, well, role-models, when the question is why they choose models at all? are asked. Part of the problem of course being that as a member of the sex class, you do not get to opt out of the hawtness contest entirely. More so when these days, you exist to the degree that you exist in the media and your primary currency (as a member of the sex class) is self-pornification.

When the white male is the default human being, the standard, you're set up to fail at that standard. When by those standards the only thing males aren't supposedly better at is "female hotness", the results are somewhat predictable. In the same vein, twisty has this on feminity:

Behold the neat trick. First, you make women act like simpletons, broodmares, janitors, mannequins, and sex slaves before you grant them social approval. You call this behavior “femininity” and explain that it is their essential nature, and that any deviation from the program will be punished. Then you infantilize and ridicule the ones who get it right, and vilify and abuse the ones who get it wrong (you can also vilify and abuse the ones who get it right, because, let’s be honest; the world is your oyster).

With so much riding on it, whether femininity is performed right or wrong is an issue of enormous concern to women. That’s where the Empowerful Pink Marketing Juggernaut comes in.

and

Femininity is a set of practices and behaviors (boob jobs, FGM, "beauty"™, the "veil"™, the flirty head-tilt, pornaliciousness, BDSM, fashion, compulsory pregnancy, marriage, et al) that are dangerous, painful, pink, or otherwise destructive; that compel female subordination; […] that are overwhelmingly represented by ‘girly’ feminists as a ‘choice’; and that are overwhelmingly represented by [conservatives] as ‘natural instincts’. In fact these practices and behaviors are nothing but inviolable cultural traditions in abject compliance with which comfort, contentment, and personal fulfillment are [available], and from which deviation is discouraged by the threat of ingenious punishments ranging from diminished social influence, to unemployability, to ridicule, to imprisonment, to rape, to murder, to the policing of feminist blogs. […] The flipside […] of the concept of femininity as-self-policed-subordination is femininity as-survival-skill.

Another fallacy is to assume that just because the feminine role is problematic, the masculine role isn't. Patriarchy hurts everyone — just to different degrees, depending on your intersection of privilege (based on race, sex and gender, wealth, age, …).

I think transcending those (false) dichotomies may be a good way to an epiphany or two.

Nachdem wir uns beim Vorbeigehen mehrmals wunderten, was denn das für ein komischer PC Laden bei uns um die Ecke ist der nicht mal Schaufenster hat, kam letztens die Erleuchtung.

This article is broken in that it is about mystical unicorn porn. That is, it bends over backwards to give porn-users a "fair shake" in that it is about porn that is not obviously degrading, vulgar, or gross, and I'm not sure such material even exists (aside from that fact that if it does, it by some definitions would not count as pornography in the first place). Hence this article needs work. It might also go away until these issues are rectified. Until then, I suggest you go read something else — there's got to be at least one good article on this log — or, if you wish to stick with the topic, you may wish to read about pornography elsewhere.

Way back when I wrote a paper called Pretty in Pain. ("Rape culture, by any other name —" You'll have to excuse the style; it was one of the first things I wrote at university, and went online because it predated the plethora of much better papers you'll find nowadays by several years.) Anyway. Back then I mentioned to some people that I'd love to ultimately write a treatment on porn, but given that "both sides" had studies and treatises and what-not, it would take quite some time to do the research — time I sadly didn't have. It's been years, and I still haven't found the time. And perhaps more importantly, better researchers and more insightful people than I am have. So I'll offer a — by now terribly biased — opinion instead.

This post/thread says it all, so, rather unusually for this weblog, I'll let the quotes speak for themselves:

The conservative-sexist metaphorical framework of sex is Sex As Conquest. […] Sometimes the struggle over the pussy is between men (ex: jokes about fathers guarding their daughters’ bodies from young male interlopers) and sometimes women themselves are tasked with defending the pussy from sex. If sexual intercourse happens, by definition, the man who gets to fuck the woman has won and the defender (father or woman herself) has lost. Sex happens when women surrender, in this model.

The liberal-feminist view of sex is that it’s not a war or a game, but more of a mutual collaboration, less like a battle and more like playing music. In this model, to be a sexual person is to be a musician and sex is playing your instrument. Sometimes you play by yourself, sometimes you get with others and jam, and sometimes you actually have a band that you have a long-term relationship with. There aren’t winners and losers, but there can be good and bad sex, just like there can be good and bad music. […] Homosexuality creates a lot of grief to those who have a fairly strict conservative view of sex because you can’t even tell who’s supposed to be the offense and the defense. It’s simply outside of their model, and it creates cognitive dissonance, which often makes the person suffering it want to wipe out the source of the dissonance. […]

The conservative-sexist model of rape is the same one used to define a foul in basketball. Basically, when sexual intercourse happens, the man team has scored a point against the woman team. Each team is allowed some strategies and disallowed others. In basketball, you’re supposed to snatch the ball from the other team, but you can’t cross certain lines or you’ll get a foul. This explains why rape trolls are so eager to find out what the “rules” are, i.e. when they are permitted to force sex. (”Is it rape if she’s drunk? What if she says yes and changes her mind? Is it okay to bully someone into it, so long as you don’t actually hold her down and force her? Are guilt trips okay?, etc.”) If there’s some ambiguity when the referee calls a foul, your teammates (other men) are supposed to clamor to your defense, regardless of whether or not you actually fouled. If the foul is called, then the woman team scores a point (or a free throw in basketball, but you get the idea). The idea that it’s wrong to have sex with someone unless she really, really wants to do it makes about as much sense as saying that you should only be allowed to get the ball in basketball if the defense hands it to you.
[Amanda, continued below the fold]

"Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town"

Briliant summary of Melissa's posts. So next time some asswipe claims that men get the same kind of harassment online that women do, you know where to go for examples. But speaking of Melissa, and to get the obligatory modeling bit out of the way, see the brilliant rape's no compliment, a must-read treatise on wonky media-related sex phantasies:

Rape as a fetish is packaged and marketed to men and women as a steady stream of images which blur the lines between rape and the kind of passionate sex we’re all meant to want. Movies show us a man and woman fighting, then suddenly fucking. Two bodies slamming against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, walking the line between sex and violence. Her head, pulled back by his hand pulling her hair. She tries to run, but he pulls her to him and she collides with him, sobbing yet horny (of course). … These scenes are decidedly different in tone from those that seek only to represent the desperate yearn and clamor of a passionate fuck, as fight-fucking is infused with a sense of both force and yielding, and suggestive that both are necessary components of any “real” fuck. It is within these scenes, where an attractive woman is overwhelmed either physically or pheromonally (or both) by a powerful man, that we begin to understand the unsettling association between ravishing (beautiful) and ravish (rape).

And while we're at it, let's earn this article a language tag as well, shall we?

If you're a man planning to read any of this, Ilyka may have a good introduction for you: Don't get all defensive; if you're not the problem, this isn't about you. This was not written with you as a primary audience in mind.

Also if you're a man, you may be under the assumption that I'm posting this because it was a particular shitstorm of a month in the girlzone and I've cracked. Nope. Sorry. Drop in any week of the year. When you're not looking, I blame the patriarchy. And dudes, that's the setup that disenfranchises you too.

Likewise, you may assume it's only in those silly Americas that people routinely make themselves look like woman-hating asswipes. Not so. Seriously, I commend you for not reading the Guardian on the grounds of being a zionist, but their assault-related articles really aren't so bad.

So, you may wonder, if this isn't a particularly bad month, does that mean I'm upset all the time? Nope. Because I'm not upset now. I might have been ten years ago, but you learn to understand that none are as blind as those who will not see. You stop being surprised. But the beauty is, if something doesn't hurt you, you can defend those who would be with relatively little effort. It takes so little to say, Dude, we don't do that in this tribe. I'm not upset. I'm not hurt. But I'm wary. And it's not quite the same wary you may feel about the surveillance state. Semper paratus.

Nachdem mir jetzt aus drei verschiedenen Richtungen angetragen worden ist, daß ich doch bitte mal Ethical Slut lesen solle und es auch noch auf Telepolis gefeatured wurde, habe ich nachgegeben. Zur Zeit lese ich gerade das Kapitel "Eifersucht", wohl ein Thema das zu erwarten ist in einem Buch, bei dem auch um Polyamorie geht. Das nun wieder erinnert mich an allerlei Gespräche die ich über die Jahre hatte, insbesondere auch mit Verheirateten mit Nachwuchs, die zu den seltsamsten emotionalen Verrenkungen und Kompromissen bereit schienen um zusammen zu bleiben — "der Kinder wegen."

Das ist ein eigenartiger Ausflug in den Realismus des Beziehungsalltags, den man sich als DINK oft nicht gibt — unsereins muß ja nicht jenseits von schwarz und weiß operieren, was durchaus seine Vorteile hat: herkömmliche Romantik lebt ja genau von diesen Absoluten, den unrealistischen Überhöhungen.

Die erste zu beziehende Position ist ja die zwischen Außensteuerung und Niemand ist eine Insel, die Frage also, wieviel Bestätigung von außen man braucht, und wieweit man das streuen möchte — wenn es schon nicht schafft, völlig unabhängig von der Meinung anderer Selbstwertgefühl aufzubauen, und das geht wohl den meisten so, wieviele andere sollten das dann sein?

May container spoilers for those several months behind on their DC lore; if you read translated comics, this might mean you.

I'm not too happy with Detective Comics at the moment; it's not just the killing off of my character (Poison Ivy, in Gotham Knights 61-65, Human Nature), it's also that rape in Identity Crisis (you know, that whole Women in Refrigerators² thing, a term coined by Gail Simone, formerly of You'll all be sorry-, now of Birds of Prey-fame; see also G.D. Schmitz' comment).
Scott Tipton sums it up thus:

I guess what it comes down to for me is this: before Identity Crisis, there was at least one happily married superhero in the DC Universe involved with an intelligent, competent woman. Now there isn’t, and I have my doubts that whatever comes out of the series when all is said and done is going to provide vastly better storytelling potential than that.

Do you really think we'll pull through?

Ich habe gerade im kleinsten Raum unserer Wohnung die Erstausgabe von Glamour eingesammelt (die gab es dereinst zum edlen Zwecke des Anfixens gratis), und diese hochwissenschaftliche Quelle weiß über die sexuellen Phantasien der Frauen folgendes zu berichten: "Selbst eingebildete Vergewaltigungen sind möglich, in denen die Frau aber nicht gegen ihren Willen genommen wird." Nachdem man zu Ende gelacht hat ("Nicht gegen den Willen, was soll das denn für eine Vergewaltigung sein," bzw. "Höhö, wie kann denn jemand der derart unbeholfen formuliert, Geld dafür bekommen?"), ist es instruktiv zu erwägen, wie es zu dieser semantischen Monstrosität gekommen sein könnte.

Dem Spiegel gab Angelina Jolie zu Protokoll, daß sie an unverbindlichen Sex glaube, "aber nicht mit verheirateten Männern."

Wäre es nicht irgendwie schlauer gewesen, für die "verbotene Zeit" nicht das weiße Höschen zu nehmen?

Über die konservativen US-Amerikaner zu lachen ist hip, ihnen in einzelnen Punkten zuzustimmen, verdächtig. Dabei gibt es vermutlich durchaus Punkte bei denen Konsensfähigkeit gegeben ist.

Die Boxweltmeisterin Regina Halmich, die mit Umbra et Imago einen Song mit SM-Thematik aufgenommen hat, verwahrt sich gegen Nachfragen.