Over on A Voice for Men, the paramount meeting place for the brave warriors of the Leading Human Rights Movement of the 21st Century, a commenter calling himself Laddition has some uncharacteristically kind words to say about feminists (in this thread). Well, “kind” may not be the right word for it. But Laddition tells us that as awful as the awful feminists are, they’re not quite as bad as are … the rest of the world’s women. Sorry, the “rest of the fem-herd.” He explains:
Naturally, the readers of A Voice for Men greeted these pearls of wisdom with upvotes.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, can someone explain GirlWritesWhat and TyphonBlue and the rest of AVFM’s little FemMRA, er, herd to me again? What exactly draws women to hang out with, and make 45 minute-long videos on the behalf of, dudes who not only hate women but who offer new proof of this hatred on a daily basis?
BTW I’m not sniping at a preference for people you consider intelligent in general – people are entitled to have whatever sexual preferences they please. It’s the specific way that “sapiosexual” as an identity is being constructed that I think is sketchy.
Okay, I had a brain fart. I read ‘sapiosexual’ and started thinking of being attracted to sapient pearwood, which would be dangerous to say the least.
The “sapiosexual” discussion is interesting. I like labels, I have given myself a bunch that I mostly hold close to myself because they are important to me, but so irrelevant most of the time. But sapiosexual seemed… wrong… to me too.
But sapiophillic (or something denoting intellectualism/simple passion for critical thinking rather than just sapience) is awesome. I am horribly attracted to such things – when I was in the Naval Reserve I had a guy in the Airforce tell me at a pub, embarrassed, that his thesis had been on mating habits of sea cucumbers. I was sooo turned on. Obviously he communicated well as well but a higher education in obscure topics in biology? *swoon*
@CassandraSays
I can understand that and I am more careful to always cut away from my body when peeling oranges and such. But I think it’s a calculable risk with onions and other vegetables, granted that you’re guiding the knife along the back of your fingers like you’d do with a nakiri or any other wide knife. I just sort of like the additional weight they bring to the chopping board. Makes cutting a bit more effortelessly.
@hrovitnr
You’re not the only one. I get very aroused and swoon-y around my boyfriend when he does complicated mental arithmatic. (Also, god help him if he ever gets a postgraduate degree because for some reason that would be very, very hot.)
I don’t immediately go “brains! *swoon*” but if that person is someone I like and am attracted to already, then “brains? mmm, sexy…”
I have a similar relationship with long hair on men.
OTOH, I’ve never thought of it as an inherant part of my sexuality, just an interest and preference. ‘Sapiosexual’ just sounds pretentious.
I think part of what tweaked me about the ‘sapiosexual’ thing is that, well, I live in the Boston area. There’s a lot of casual racism and classism committed by liberal intellectuals here, and I’ve become hypersensitive to anything that smells of it. ‘Sapiosexual’ is such an example, for reasons that CassandraSaid very well.
This discussion of ‘sapiosexuality’ is really interesting to me, because the only person I’ve known who uses the word regularly is someone who explicitly identifies as not sapiosexual. For her, pants feelings are based on physical hotness, and while she can be impressed by how smart someone is, it doesn’t do anything for how sexy she thinks they are. (Which is not to say that the people she dates are stupid. Just that intelligence in and of itself does not produce the cartoon eyes-popping, jaw-dropping response that physical stuff does.)
I’ve had both reactions – some people are, physically, just amazingly hot. And some people are sexily smart. But my exposure to ‘sapiosexual’ as a term has been basically non-judgmental of other sexual approaches, and you all are bringing up really good points that are making me think about it in different ways.
I have NEVER heard of sapiosexual before. Huh. Not a big fan, but that’s because I find the concept of ‘intelligence’ in general kinda useless. I wish it’d go away.
But this is beside the point. The IMPORTANT thing is David banned Thermos before I could find out whether JB returned the affections! I AM SO SADDENED BY THIS. 🙁
C’mon, Judgy, did you like Thermos? This is very important to me.
Precisely! On all points.
Yeah, pretty much. Outside of any context it’s interesting, but based in reality I can’t see any way it’s not going to be classist as all hell.
@LBT
Sorry, I didn’t really notice Thermos. Warm and insulated, I assume? I’m married.
I’m now amusing myself with the idea of calling myself long-haired-sexual. It makes more sense than “sapiosexual” in that at least it’s a clear and specific description that isn’t prone to all kinds of potential biases – someone’s hair is either long or it isn’t. Though we might then need a new category for people attracted only to men whose hair is sort of in between short and shoulder length.
RE: Judgy
Aw man, you know what this means? YOU SUNK MY BATTLESHIP! I’m so depressed.
Also congrats on your happy union.
RE: CassandraSays
*snrk* Hubby’s hair’s reaching shoulder length… I like it, but I dunno enough to append it to my (already clunky) orientation labels.
Also, can I call myself pretty-sexual? Because I’m pretty attracted to pretty people of all genders. The term “pretty” is kind of on a par with “intelligent” in terms of how subjective and influenced by biases it is.
I know as feminists you’re all superhappy to pursue a policy of silencing / marginalising / ignoring men’s voices, and instead putting words into their mouths / assuming men’s motivations.
Oddly enough, I’ve gotten so used to it, I almost forgot. It’s just how it is. Meh.
And then – Futrelle goes and does the exact same thing to Girlwriteswhat and Typhonblue and my residual internal feminist (the blue pill wears off by degrees) was outraged!
“HOW DARE YOU MINIMISE AND SILENCE WOMEN’S VOICES!!”
Here’s an idea – if you want to know what Girlwriteswhat and Typhonblue’s motivation is – WHY DON’T YOU ASK THEM!?
or, even read / watch their output, where they have explained their motivations more than once (even I’ve come across it from my cursory intake of their stuff).
Oh wait, it was just a rhetorical set-up for more circle jerk snark. Hypocrites.
I also noticed that on this, oh, so PC blog, that NOT ONE OF YOU called out this gender-shaming BS!
[quote]Sweet Dreams 893 | November 16, 2012 at 7:54 am
Also…I’m not convinced that GWW is actually a girl.[/quote]
^Congrats, Manboobzers on showing your true colours.
i.e. petty dogmatic political tribalism.
So what you’re saying, Joe, is that you can’t read when you’re in a snit, and that’s how you missed the comment in which someone did explicitly call Sweet Dreams out.
That’s true. MORE THAN ONE person called it out. Go back and reread the comments.
It’s true, I haven’t read that much of either of them, nor watched more than a handful of their videos, largely because
1) GWW is one of the longest-winded people on planet earth. I know she said some horrible shit in one of her recent videos but I haven’t written about it because her video is 45 fucking minutes long.
2) TyphonBlue is off on her own little planet; I can only take her in small doses because so little of what she says makes any sense by normal human standards.
Joe, shut up, and take your faux outrage with you on your way out.
Oh, ok, you did call Sweet Dreams out on that? Jolly good.
No, I certainly won’t go back and re-read pages and pages and pages of verbiage. I’ll just take your word for it.
The rest of my post still stands.
Hell, Futrelle, here’s an idea: why not EMAIL GWW and Typhonblue and ASK them.
It’s a radical suggestion I know.
Of course, that would assume you had ANY genuine interest at all in their motivations.
I feel like GWWs response might be a bit like this, but with “MRA” subbing in for “Christian”.
Yes, the horrific problem of the silencing of men. That’s why they are so underrepresented in print and on TV.
@katz – oh there’s lots of men *there* but they’re only permitted to put forward a very limited set of opinions, pre-approved by the Assholes In Charge and run through the PC filter.
Yeah, a blog run by a guy and that has quite a few male commentators is TOTALLY all about silencing the men.
So what you are saying is, you want to move to Athos.
@hellkell – You do struggle with the whole “irony” and “sarcasm” thing.
I expect you even sing along to that one song by Alanis Morrisette without cringing at all the non sequiteurs..
Joe, you’ve just proven that you DON’T understand sarcasm.