So I’ve been reading Reddit’s CreepyPMs subreddit a lot lately, where the recipients of bizarre and, well, creepy personal messages share them with the world. As you might imagine, some of the creepiest come from complete strangers on dating sites, like the following message received by a young woman on MeetMe, who put up a profile stating that she was looking for friends only (she already has a boyfriend) and that she would talk to anyone.
Well, one young man didn’t quite believe her, and sent this message:
He doesn’t judge, huh? That’s the most judgy non-judgemental message I’ve ever seen.
If you haven’t already checked out CreepyPMs, go take a look. You can lose hours in there.
So do I and I think that is why some guys insist on it . I think a guy that likes it for a change but likes it either way is not the same guy that would think a woman disgusting or call her nasty if she has hair where its SUPPOSED to be .
I heard its because it makes their hot dog look bigger .An illusion .
Yeah, I side-eye the whole insistence from men that women should be shaved. It may just be from porn – which is bad enough – but I can’t shake the suspicion that the prepubescent issue is involved. At any rate, it’s one way of finding out if he’s a PoS you don’t want around. Man who reacts with disgust to an adult female body looking like an adult female body = waste of time.
Felisha:
I entirely agree with Kittehserf, the ‘you have no sense of humor’ line is a general scumbag standby. Middle school bullies used that one too. Granted, that was close to 12 years ago for me now, so I may not know if it’s still popular there. But the line still holds as little merit.
Several people now have weighed in saying that they didn’t appreciate your joke. Nor did I, for what it’s worth. So, either admit you made a mistake and refrain from using that word in the future, or just shut up and kindly leave. I think you’ve already proven you feel you did nothing wrong, so an apology at this point would be insincere at best.
Another thing I have heard of which may or may not be true: I heard someone say that porn started featuring shaved pubes so the audience could clearly see the penis sticking into the vagina. No hair blocking the view.
But of course, it does have an influence on viewers. Kids are not the only ones who want to copy what they see on the screen.
On a side note, it amuses me when a guy uses “hygiene” as a reason why women should shave their pubic areas and armpits. Haha, it’s bullshit, I know! But yep, they have used that.
——
As for the usage of certain words: I don’t personally share everyone’s exact opinion of what words are and aren’t offensive. But to simply refrain from using a certain word, at least when you’re here, and especially if said word is a known derogatory one, is much easier and more considerate than telling the offended person(s) to get over themselves. The English language has a wide enough repertoire that you can still get ideas across in different, creative, and much more acceptable ways.
Eight unicorns, four horses and one very teal deer. Do deers like carrots, apples, hay, oats and/or sugar cubes? Cuz that’s what y’all have provided for my herd so far.
Off any topic, is fat and loud how one lands a redhead? I can handle loud just fine, but fat is something my body just doesn’t do — even living off junk food and pasta I stay in the normal weight range…so how do I manage to hook up with a redhead (for more than a drunken groping session, fun as that was)
Exactly. And why is the British example even relevant? How many British or British-born people post here besides myself and Cassandrakitty? I can think of a handful, but not many.
For the record, while the C word might have slightly wider application in British English than it does in American English, in that it’s not invariably used as a gendered slur, it’s still the most taboo word in mainstream discourse.
I still remember the first time a British newspaper printed it in the late 1980s and the cultural shockwaves that reverberated from it, even though it was perfectly justifiable in context (namely, reporting exactly what the English cricket captain had said to a Pakistani umpire, in the process establishing that he wasn’t actually being racist – some people read reports of “c***” and assumed he was using a different four-letter word beginning with C). Even to this day, its appearance on British television is vanishingly rare, always after 9pm when children are notionally in bed, and I believe the producers of TV shows have to apply in advance for permission to use it, which isn’t always granted.
And of course if you do use it, you take context into account. If I used it as a slur here (regardless of whether it was in a gendered context) and people took offense, I wouldn’t play the “well, I’m British and it’s part of my culture” card (with that unpleasant undertow of “…and criticizing me is racist!” attached), I’d apologize profusely and promise not to do it again.
Which is, after all, what any well-mannered person does if they give offense, even if this wasn’t intended.
It’s not like it was even an innocuous word that has nasty connotations one might not know about. It was a slimy sexual joke using a word known to be offensive to lots of people (some of them feminists! Some of them feminist women! Some of them right here!).
It was also a fucking stupid thing to say to an audience of cat lovers.
I have no idea what even looks good about hairless genitalia. Certainly not aesthetically pleasing to me! Whatever though. I just wish people weren’t made to feel as though, if they don’t, they’re filthy, disgusting creatures.
Ditto to both those points, marinerachel.
And it was a stupid joke anyway, because shaved =/= bald.
Mares eat oats and does eat oats, so I think you’re set. Unless you get a sheep or a goat. Little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy too.
Kim – yeah, that’s what I thought: dumb excuse to make a sleazy joke.
Deer like tree bark, don’t they?
I completely agree – this is a really pernicious trend that I find genuinely disturbing. Not least because I have kids who’ll become teenagers in a scarily short space of time.
One of the funniest things I ever saw online was my wife having an argument with a man over contemporary pubic hair fashion – it was hilarious because his observations seemed to come exclusively from porn whereas my wife was (and remains) a gynaecological ultrasonographer. In other words, she gets to examine twenty or more examples per day, over a period of years, and of women of all ages and walks of life. Even if this guy was the reincarnation of Casanova (he wasn’t: in fact, he was married and supposedly faithful), he couldn’t possibly match that for breadth of research.
Anyway, the argument was about five or six years ago, and concerned his claim that “the majority” of British women chose to shave off all their pubic hair. At the time, according to my wife (and I have no reason to disbelieve her), this was wildly untrue – she’d certainly encounter a bare mons from time to time, but it was comparatively rare.
But since then, it’s become much, much more common, especially amongst younger women, and she’s as disturbed about it as I am about what it’s saying about our culture. We both agree with the theory that it started out in porn as a method of making the close-up genital interaction more visible, and somehow it’s gained this extra baggage, some of which is completely nonsensical. (For instance, the “hygiene” argument – surely regularly putting yourself in a situation where you might suffer tiny cuts and abrasions will make the area in question far more prone to infection?)
Obviously, this is in no way intended as a criticism of people who shave themselves voluntarily – whatever floats your boat is fine by me (and it’s none of my business anyway, as it’s infinitesimally unlikely that I’ll ever see or interact with the end result). But doing it under peer or (perceived) cultural pressure is something far more insidious.
I’m reminded of a comment in the book Harem, by Alev Lytle Croutier, where she describes the hair removal practices in harems (and she was introduced to some of these by her grandmother).
“It was considered a sin to have hair on one’s private parts, and harem women, extremely observant on this point, scurried off to the hamams at the first sign of hair. They removed hair not only from their legs and underarms, but from all body crevices, even nostrils and ears. They spread themselves with a burning paste, which was later scraped off with the sharp edge of mussel shells.” (p. 85)
She goes on to say the paste in question was rusma, which contained arsenic and was corrosive if left on the skin too long.
The method her grandmother showed her was ada, which is still popular in parts of Turkey. It’s a paste of lemon and sugar, caramelised to the right consistency and spread like a putty on the hair. Then it’s ripped off and the hair with it, presumably the same as with waxing.
I really hate the whole “women must be hairless and it doesn’t matter how much it hurts or endangers them to conform to this requirement” thing. I like the current fad for it even more, since I heartily dislike mainstream porn.
*dislike the current fad. The Editing Monster strikes!
Wow, the thread has turned down an interesting path. From a medical perspective, removing pubic hair may not be a terribly good idea:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/04/war-pubic-hair.html
http://www.livescience.com/27996-pubic-hair-removal-waxing-sti-risk.html
From that second article, exactly what Wetherby said above:
“Small nicks or cuts in the skin, which could occur with hair removal, can make it easier for viruses to establish infections, researchers say.”
There’s some horrific stuff in the first article. I mean, I find the idea of removing hair around the most delicate (except the eyeballs) area on my body horrific anway, but all those infections! Talk about a must-read for anyone thinking of doing it. ::hurk::
If teal deer are anything like whitetail deer, they’ll eat just about anything plant-wise. Leaves, plants, twigs, nuts, berries – they even eat fungus. They are especially fond of acorns, so I’ll send some acorns in case the teal deer them:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wu03KqdSZRQ/Tqdw8DV-ZuI/AAAAAAAAEZM/DUrFfZDPn4s/s1600/acorn+pile.jpg
For the record, trimming pubic hair may be safer for some people. I have suffered two Bartholin cysts so far and I would do pretty much anything to avoid another. (Google that at your own risk. I’ve never been in that much pain, and I’ve had two surgeries.)
Trimming /= shaving though. The implication of making women look like young girls by shaving creeps me out to no end.
I am not comfortable with blaming porn for people’s poor and unrealistic attitudes toward sex…that would be like blaming pro-wrestling for violence amongst kids.
Everyone knows that porn just like pro-wrestling is fake…um…maybe…nevermind…I can’t believe that people cannot seem to realize that the images of sexuality as portrayed in porn are realistic. But yes there are idiots out there who believe that porn is real, just like some idiots believe pro-wrestling is real.
But I really don’t think porn is to blame for the current trend of completely shaving off ones pubic hair. For that I blame Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Truthfully, all hints of any sort of pubic hair in their swimsuit models started to vanish in the early 80’s, a time when porn star’s still have pubic hair.
But how do you explain my wife’s observations that there’s been a really marked trend in the last few years, a period coinciding pretty much perfectly with the rise of easily accessible (and free) porn online? Because if you read my earlier post, you’ll see that she said that there wasn’t a noticeable trend circa 2006-7?
Obviously, this is anecdata – she’s not formally recording her findings in any way, and I suspect it would be thoroughly unethical if she were to do so. But this is nonetheless a trend that she’s peculiarly well placed to examine, since she examines so many women from all walks of life on such a regular basis.
I agree with you that blaming porn as the single definite cause is flawed for all sorts of reasons (not least because once it becomes a cultural trend spurred by peer pressure, you get people shaving down there who’ve never seen a porn film in their lives), but I really don’t think that it’s down to Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition either. At least not in Britain.
The trend evolved gradually and crossed national borders obviously. I believe that it started with the advent of the thong bikini and the Brazilian Wax.
When I was young, some would would trim so they could wear a more skimpier bikini, such trimming styles as the Landing Strip as it was called became popular then gradually all signs of pubic hair disappeared. The thinking went that if you wanted to look good in your new swimsuit this summer, then you better trim.
@drst
TMI warning: explicit porn stuff
I can see where Whetherby is coming from. One thing to bear in mind is that many (if not virtually all) allosexual* teenagers start watching porn from a young age. And over time, especially if they haven’t had any consensual sexual experiences with other people, they can internalize quite a few messages from porn even though they understand that it’s all acting. Of course, there are many exceptions, and porn is hardly the only negative influence on sexuality, but it still matters.
That’s because porn tends to impose a set of sexual ideals (for lack of a better term) on the people who watch it. Certain camera techniques are used to alter the appearance of female porn stars’ bodies, make the cis male porn star’s penis look much larger than it really is, etc. And then there are bizarre ideas like “squirting” being the One True Sign of a “good” cis woman’s orgasm.
Sure, there are some unrealistic attitudes about sex that aren’t necessarily from porn, such as the notion that penis size is the Most Important Thing Ever, but certainly porn has exacerbated those attitudes.
*That’s the antonym of asexual.
Remember the “oral is impossible” conversation with a certain stupid troll (I’m not naming him) and the Pierre comic it inspired? 😀
The blurbs to these things also seem to push the idea that this huge penis will hurt/punish the woman and that that’s what sex is all about.