I‘m beginning to wonder if Chateau Heartiste isn’t so much a “Game” blog as it is an elaborate unannounced contest to see who can say the worst possible things about women in the most pretentiously incoherent prose. My evidence? Heartiste’s latest choice for “comment of the week” from an aspiring ladykiller (hopefully not literally) who calls himself burke.
Burke’s grand insight into the female of the species?
if you could grind a woman’s entire being to dust with your dick, like a mortar and pestle, that’s the oblivion she is searching for
Well, that’s pretty good, as far as pretentious douchebagginess goes, but it’s almost coherent. I mean, dicks are roughly the same basic shape as pestles, and it’s not hard to visualize one grinding away in a little stone bowl. Hell, there’s probably some porn video out there featuring just that.
But then Heartiste comes along and offers his own comment on the comment, and shows burke just how it’s done. And by “it” I mean “awful, pretentious, incoherent misogyny.”
Insight elevated to sheer poetry by the breezy lack of punctuation. Women secretly desire their oblivion at the insistence of an imperious man. As the vessel sex, they must be filled with the life force of another — a powerful man, or a child — to fully experience sublimation of their souls. Thus it is that surrender is encoded in the gristle of woman.
The gristle? It’s “encoded in the gristle?”
Gristle is cartilage. The tough stuff in meat that’s hard to chew. The stuff that sharks have instead of bone. Nothing is “encoded” in it. Animals don’t store all of their genetic material in their gristle.
The somewhat archaic phrase “in the gristle” means “not yet hardened into bone or strengthened into sinew” or, more broadly, “young, weak, and unformed.” It’s not a fancy synonym for “in the genes.”
Here’s the phrase in a sentence — that is, in a sentence written by someone who actually knew how to use language.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Well, come to think of it, that’s a sentence fragment, not a sentence. But at least Edmund Burke understood why that particular metaphoric phrase made sense in that context.
Heartiste, not even competently pretentious.
My aunt’s an OB/GYN in Vancouver. She’s got patients who haven’t menstruated in twenty years because they’ve used hormonal birth control continuously. It’s no less safe than using birth control for three weeks on, one week off. There’s no health benefit to allowing yourself to bleed while using birth control.
Re: that yucky feel of inserting a dry applicator-free tampon. Yeah, it’s the pits. SO awful. It makes positioning the thing impossible for me too. Sometimes if there’s sufficient friction I’ll be pushing the tampon in, it’ll get stuck and FLIP SIDEWAYS. It SUCKS. I was skeptical but the SilkTouch cover on OB’s Pro Comfort tampons does make all the difference for me. It’s comfortable and easy to insert. Even when things are relatively dry, it slides right in. That said, OB only makes Pro Comfort tampons in their most prolific selling tampon sizes so you’re still stuck with with the unpleasant texture and difficult insertion if you’re using super plus or ultra. Solution: KY jelly. A drop of that on the top on the tampon (I swirl it around the top half centimetre or so of the tampon with the tip of my finger) and the highly unpleasant tampons insert with comfort and ease!
Womyn’sWare, my sex toy shop, did this review on a product “Absorbshun” that purports to make women feel tighter by drying them out and in doing so make fellas feel bigger and it’s awful:
“A customer asked us to look into a product called “Absorbshun” for reducing vaginal moisture during sex. We looked, we saw, we assessed the sample and the marketing support materials and we say: “Buyer Beware: do not purchase, use, or sample this product! It is a health risk, a deceptive gimmick, and a banner example of products that play on pathologizing healthy sexuality by labeling normal sexual reactions as ‘sick or abnormal’ “.
For starters, the Absorbshun Natural Powder label tells us how dangerous the product is:
“Use of this product in any quantity may cause temporary tenderness and micro-abrasions to the genital area”. What they don’t tell you is how serious a micro-abrasion can be, putting you at risk of infection and transmission of STDs.
And here is a product that can do this when used in any quantity! But there is no surprise there, since the only ingredient that Absorbshun contains is Hydroxyproplyl distarch Phosphate … something used in Wallboard Joint Compound! The packaging and applicator even looks like something you’d find in the hardware department, kind of like a large container of super bond glue. We don’t even want to speculate on what prompted the makers to think that they should add it to their sex, let alone recommend that women apply it on their genitals.
It reminds us of those experimental drug advertisements that you see on TV … the ones where a couple is running on the beach and the voice over calmly states that “side effects can include internal bleeding, diarrhea, dehydration and in some cases, for Black Americans, death …” The picture message says one thing while the disclaimer tells a whole other story.
The rest of the product support materials fall into our “SICK LADY” zone, that is products that market by pathalogizing normal sexual response. A deceptive way of roping in a lot of normal customers by suggesting that their sexual experience is abnormal and can be corrected. The web site uses slogans like “Drive your man wild with a tighter vagina”, “makes men feel bigger, sometimes makes them last longer. No Pills”.
And the packaging just keeps it up, suggesting that vaginal lubrication is a problem and that this “powder” will fix that up. Claiming it “helps with embarrassing excess wetness”, the implication being that (1) vaginal lubrication is an embarrassment, (2) something you need ‘help’ for and (3) there is a proper amount of lubrication (the not excessive amount) and an improper amount of lubrication (that’d be the excessive amount). Then with all their ‘driving men wild’ ad copy, they go on to imply that a dry vagina leads to better sex, contrary to trusted medical/research information and a host of women sexuality writers’ experience that says the opposite.
This kind of sick lady marketing is so frustrating when marketers use it to make people feel badly about something that is actually normal and a good, natural outcome of happy, glorious sexual arousal.
Well, the fact is that we make a point of staying away from any products that market themselves on the basis that something is wrong with the way women’s bodies work and this one at the very least does just that. Every woman is unique… and the amount of mucous that she creates is just right for her.
Absorbshun claims to “make him feel bigger!” How? By causing small punctures in the vaginal wall creating a raw and swollen environment that is unable to soothe itself with its own defense mechanism against such a scenario … by drying up natural, protective mucous. Heck, if you can’t enlarge the penis, just shrink the vagina. How demeaning to both sides of the couple!
We should have known by the way they spelled the product’s name: “Absorbshun”. Right …
Shun: avoid and stay away from deliberately; stay clear of
And that is exactly what we recommend you do. Stay away from this one.”
@marinerachael – That’s great to know! Thanks! My main concern was just related to the fact that my lack of menstruation sans birth control was apparently putting me at higher risk for things like uterine cancer. Also, umm, any way I could get your aunt’s practice info? I’m in the Vancouver area, soooooo… Perfectly fine if the answer’s no; but no harm asking, eh?
Fun KY jelly story: My younger sister had a really hard time with tampons when she first started menstruating, but she needed to use them because she was on the swim team (also lots of other sports). So my mom bought her some KY jelly to help with the whole situation. I then proceeded to purloin my sister’s KY jelly for my own, shall we say, personal use throughout the rest of the month. I have to say, I kinda wonder whether my sister ever realized her supply seemed to deplete much quicker than it ought to have been doing…
This is another one of those “this pizza tastes too good and that’s why I’m not eating it” comments. Does not compute.
I had EIGHT DAY periods. I do not miss them. The cup was a fairly new thing last time I menstruated. And I could never get those OBs to feel “comfortably in place.” The blessings of cronehood…
“Embarrassing excess wetness”? My husband has yet to complain!
You have discovered my super sekrit plan! ::gnashes teeth::
Yeah, that’s what I’d have thought. Unless they’re lubricated just enough for it not to hurt them? I always suspect that half the goal is to hurt the woman.
marinerachel – that is utterly appalling. I didn’t know there were commercial products for this. I bet there’s a racist element in how the whole “put stuff in your vagina to dry it out because that’s what your man demands” business gets reported here as if it only happens in some African countries.
I’d dump a man who’s so fixated on FEELING BIGGER that he’d either not think to ask, or not care, about what would to me. He could walk on sharpened Legos forever.
Ditto here!
I can give you her info but you’ll need a GP to refer you to her and she’s got at least a six month wait list and tends to take on patients with extreme cases these days so in all likelihood it won’t do you any good.
The fastest way to get OB/GYN care in BC is through Options for Sexual Health. You’ll be seen by a team of volunteers, RNs and OB/GYNs. They’re all colleagues of my aunt’s. They’ll all be sympathetic to your desire not to have monthly periods. They gave me Depo Provera for 2.5 years of period-free bliss. They also inserted my IUD and have provided all my gyne care since I was twenty-ish.
It sucks that young, healthy women can’t just walk into a gynaecologist’s office and recieve care in BC but it’s nice that we have sexual and women’s health clinics we can get treated at quickly while the specialists’ day practices are booked for the next half-year with urgent cases.
If you have a vagina and the person you’re having sex with thinks that it getting wet is a bad thing, you don’t need some weird powder to dry your bits out, you just need to get rid of the person who’s making you feel embarrassed about said bits operating as designed.
Seeing how a wet vagina is often associated with female arousal, that sounds uncomfortably like a product made to appeal to guys who don’t want women to enjoy sex.
I was simultaneously mortified and amused by that awful product. There has been precisely one time my partner noted a lack of lubrication of my part and said “Baby, you don’t want it”. I don’t know why I wasn’t producing lubrication but I wasn’t and it didn’t turn him on. It didn’t make him “feel bigger”. I certainly didn’t feel more like a woman or less ashamed. Both of us LIKE when I’m producing lots of mucous! I’m trying to wrap my head around a dude feeling how dry a woman’s vagina is and being turned n and a woman thinking “Yeah, vaginal tearing!” It’s just so completely ridiculous.
Isn’t it more like a product made to appeal to women who think that men hate vaginal wetness, probably because some guy has shamed them about their body in the past? It’s an onion of wrongness.
@marinerachael – You have no idea how much worrying you just freed me from. So much thank you is in order. I just landed as a permanent resident in January, and I’m getting my Care Card any day now, and since I have hormone issues and PCOS, and my husband and I want to have a kid someday in the nearish future, I’ve been quite anxious about the whole business, since I’ve very little idea of how to go about things here.
Uh, when I was on T, actually, I lost my period but developed a LOT of wetness. Like, to the point that I actually stopped being on T, because fuck if I had lost my period only to have to wear fucking pads again! It wasn’t arousal either, my body was just a fucking waterfall.
That actually WAS excess wetness, but I was soaking through my clothes. And I didn’t use some stupid body-harming powder, I just went off hormones.
I just can’t believe they even tried to market it to women as if it benefits them in any way. It’s harmful to women! The only people it benefits are the men who are scared of women being sexually aroused and enjoying sex! The insecure men who need to “feel bigger” by having sex with women’s dry vaginas.
I love Womyn’sWare because they do these great Buyer Beware pieces. These nasty products need to be outed as what they are – misogynous.
THIS. Or worse, not just “not enjoy” but “be in pain”.
Huh, I wonder why that happened, from a medical perspective.
I read an account years ago by a woman who took steroids for body-building, and she mentioned being constantly aroused as one of the effects – I wonder if that’s at all related to the effects LBT suffered from T?
Here’s the Opt clinic I go to: https://www.optionsforsexualhealth.org/providers/opt-vancouver
Because they’re in BC Women’s Hospital in Vancouver they’re able to provide a lot more services than the Opt clinics in public health offices, which are sometimes just staffed by an RN. No wait list either!
I’m going for my Pap and breast exam plus STI testing in a few weeks. They’ll give me a referral for blood work for the rest of the STIs (you can only swab for two) plus a hormone panel. I probably need to be on hormonal birth control to regulate my stoopid testosterone levels and prevent further facial hair growth, which they’ll give me for cheap too. It allows me as a young, healthy woman to get prompt reproductive healthcare.
I also experienced an excessive amount of lubrication when my testosterone was higher, but not to the point of it getting through my undies, though those would often be uncomfortably wet. No idea as to the mechanism, though; I never brought it up with a doctor because I didn’t realize it was abnormal until it stopped.
wordsp1nner, I totally agree about sex ed not preparing us for that, haha! At least not where I come from. None of my friends could understand why I was having so much trouble figuring out tampons. For a while I thought I had gotten it, but really I was just doing this horrible uncomfortable diagonal wedging maneuver that didn’t really hold so well.. and consequently led to some embarrassing school hallway experiences, lol. Then I just gave up for a few years. I think I had an exam by a GP at some point before I started going to a real gyno; I wonder whether they could have pointed that out and saved me a lot of misery..
Having to take off work for that must have been so awkward! It reminds me a little of the time I was thinking about the US Navy, and of course when you call a recruiter to do as little as schedule an information session they immediately barrage you with really personal questions, including surgical history. The conversation went a little like this:
(Male) Recruiter: Have you ever had any surgery?
Me: Yes
Recruiter: What kind of surgery?
Me: Elective surgery.
Recruiter: What procedure?
Me: ..hymenotomy
Recruiter: What’s that?
Me: …surgical removal of the hymen
Recruiter: What’s a “hymen?”
Me: …….
That’s certainly one person American sex ed has failed!
And, tangentially, all these conversations about Nice Guys™ and misconstrued relationships and romantic “obligations” and coercions, have made me think that sex ed really ought to include advice about when and how to accept or reject someone’s romantic proposals (as well as their sexual ones), and also how to appropriately deal with being rejected. Just like kids who aren’t taught anything about sex in school will learn from popular culture and porn, kids who are never given relationship guidance outside movies might more easily adopt all these unhealthy and highly gendered notions about people “owing” other people love or sexual interest.
(Another random complaint about my sex ed as a kid: At one point we watched a video that explained with instructions and a little animation how (most, cis) boys can masturbate. Then it said “Girls can also masturbate,” and just moved the fuck on to the next topic. Jerks. And we were the ones who really needed the guidance. And the approval.)
Absorbshun sounds absolutely revolting.
…They showed boys a video about masturbation? I was under the impression that they mostly figured that one out by themselves.
Because I didn’t have any formal education until I was 16, I missed sex ed classes. My parents were also too embarrassed to teach me anything. So I ended up learning everything I needed to know on the internet. I actually didn’t mind teaching myself about it because I was able to avoid the birds-and-the-bees talk and because I had pretty good online resources for learning all the stuff.
The only really uncomfortable part of that sex ed period (for lack of a better term) was the day my dad expressed his concerns about whether my mom’s then-boyfriend had a circumcised penis. I would rather spill hot coffee on myself than ever hear my dad talk about genitals again. Thank god he never tried to teach me about sex.