There’s a famous scene in 40 Year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell’s character inadvertently reveals his complete lack of sexual experience with women (not that there’s anything wrong with that) by suggesting that a women’s breast “feels like a bag of sand.”
I sometimes find myself wondering if some of the guys I write about here have ever actually been in the presence of a naked woman. I mean, sure, it’s not really that surprising that a committed vagina-avoider like the legendary Man Going His Own Way known as Christopher in Oregon would write about women in general, and their vaginas in particular, as if they were stinky alien creatures from Planet Yuckygirls.
But it’s a little weirder when someone who claims to be an expert on the female mind and body describes, for example, the human vagina in ways that seem to suggest that he’s never actually been in the same room with one.
I’m referring to our old friend Heartiste, the smug, racist piece of human trash who presents himself to the world as a pickup artist extraordinaire, someone who in his glory days “slew pussy like the Quim Reaper” (his words, obviously, not mine).
In a recent post, though, Heartiste cast aspersions on a fat woman’s alleged “sticky, bulbous, pitcher plant vagina.”
Bulbous? Bulbous?
Dude, you do realize that vaginas are, er, concave, right?
Heartiste, a somewhat overenthusiastic fan of metaphor, has previously suggested that vaginas are less like pitcher plants than they are like a shark’s toothy mouth, describing how “alpha” males find themselves “staring into the maw of an excited vagina aroused by the scent of cock in the water.”
In other posts he’s written of “poon petals flower[ing],” rhapsodized about “pussy waterfalls … sprayed in fine mists over jungle canopies,” described the vagina as a “fetid, humid mess” that no true alpha would want to go down upon, and suggested that the vulvas of “aging women” regularly become “low-hanging hammocks” needing plastic surgery in order to compete sexually with the less-hammocky vulvas of younger women.
He’s talked about “vaginal gusher[s],” exploding pussy, and women whose desire “erupt[s] like Mount Vaginius.”
Taking his cue, perhaps, from Frank Herbert’s Dune, he’s described male desire for a world in which “the snatch will flow.”
The word “labia” seems to send him into a veritable paroxysm of excited metaphoring. He’s described labia as “flowering,” “flapping,” and “pulsating.” He suggests that a sexually aroused women will need to “shift a little in [her] chair to make room for [her] engorging labia.”
In one post, he warns his readers that if they can’t pull off at least a reasonable impersonation of an alpha male, their girlfriend’s “labia will wither like rose petals in a Texas drought”; in another he suggests that if a fella can successfully ape an alpha, a woman’s “labia [will] begin to flower like a Desert Lily after an August deluge.”
He laughs at the thought of a “loser … jab[bing] a few tepid spurts into sea cucumber labia.”
And even more weirdly, he’s referred to the phrase “hey you” as “the symptomatic verbal goosebumps of the warm chill caused by her engorging labia.”
Wat.
But no variety of labia seems to excite him quite so much as feminist labia. In one post he attacks the “crooked labia of feminist ideology,” whatever that means; in another he happily predicts that his opinions will cause much “gnashing of labia”; in still another, he imagines his writings causing “a million fatties and fug feminists [to] sprout martyrdom stigmata on their marbled labia.”
And in an even stranger bit of metaphorical overkill he once referred to “Manboobz Fatrelle’s porcine labia,” which is evidently his somewhat baroque rendition of the standard Manosphere taunt that I’m a fat “mangina.”
Your challenge today, dear readers, is to draw a picture of what Heartiste must think vaginas look like based on his various descriptions of them. I recommend using MSPaint.
minilizzy,
You were totally right to feel nervous. That a guy would make that type of comment unsolicited, and then try to ‘correct’ you on what stop was yours.
RED FLAGS. ALL THE RED FLAGS.
If you can pull off the scary “leave me alone or I’ll delight in dismembering you” face or the awesome “Oh, hi jerk! Have a snickers to defeat your creepy-hunger” thing that Bina suggested, that’s one way to go.
If he seems like the type to get violent, don’t.
One thing I’d add is practice screaming loudly. At people’s faces. Use yours in a mirror if you have to. We’re really well trained not to scream loudly at people, but if you ever have to get away or alert folks that something’s going on, being able to yell loudly could really help.
At the very least, at least one person might look around like “WTF? Who’s the jerk yelling?”
Pick a word, any word, that you can remember to scream as you break a grab if he ever tries to actually lay hands. You’ll be more likely to get out if he’s kind of distracted by the sudden noise (do them simultaneous, not one after the other).
Thanks for the Vagina Dentate gif 🙂 Dude clearly has some issues.
It is amazing how women are socialised not to make a loud noise. I mean, I was in hospital once, with blood fountaining from my arm, and I couldn’t scream for help, just ask quietly.
Yeah, it’s been my experience that guys who pull really obviously obnoxious bullshit like this are often fishing for justification for a fight. Getting flippant is just as likely to tell them that you make a good target because you’ll fight back as it is to scare them off because they want an easier target. It depends.
There’s not a single answer here. It fucking sucks to be a woman. In my experience, the best way to deal with creepers is the same way you deal with internet trolls; remember that they’re trying to get some sort if rise from you and treat them with bored indifference. It’s not perfect, but the lack of fear, anger, or interest tends to take the wind out of their sails. //shrugs//
@dhag85–This is a long comment in response to your story, but I hope you’ll read it.
As a woman I’ve grown up with the male experience through books and movies and television, although I still try to understand it more in order to make sense of my own experience too and to extrapolate from that common experiences of women as a group and all people in general. I can only think that the denigration of all things female–and, if not denigration, the “othering” of women by describing them as in someway exalted or different (benign sexism)–leads many men on a subconscious level not to want to immerse themselves in the experiences of women and find out about this exciting unknown world of the beings to which so many of them are attracted (it’s like a sea-lover somehow failing to explore or read about the ocean, perhaps through some strange assumption that he or she already knows everything to know about it and its exactly like land). I suppose we are all selfish and blinded to our personal privilege to a great extent (I have only recently begun to seriously delve into the world of people of other races–I won’t say minorities, because there are many countries, some of which I have lived in for extended periods, where people of different skin tones than me are not minorities). Despite having lived abroad I think it’s only recently I’ve begun to try not “other” people in my mind, and to recognize such thoughts when they happen. It’s funny the little things that cause life-altering revelations, isn’t it?
A revelatory experience for me recently was crossing the U.S.-Mexico border by bus and seeing how I (and everyone else on the bus) was treated (I was interrogate like a criminal, despite being a card-carrying US citizen and a university professor in Mexico; I was also asked where my husband or boyfriend was–I’m single, not that it matters). Seeing the way they treated the Mexican families on board the bus–who had all been very kind to me and whom had befriended me along the way–how cruel they were to these people legally entering the country was an eye-opener and an outrage. Illegals don’t tend to cross the border riding on major bus lines that pass through immigration. Asking for papers and searching bags once should be enough. I also remember the experience of my ex-boyfriend many years ago (also Mexican), who was constantly tailed by police and stopped on the highway when he came to pick me up and we went to his place for the weekend (we lived in different towns). They always wanted to check the truck for illegals (he speaks perfect English and has a green card) and once I was asked if I was okay, as if the officer thought I had been kidnapped. I witnessed these events in passing, as an outsider; imagine how life was for him all the time when I wasn’t there, not to mention the messages of otherness and of being lesser he must have received on a daily basis through the media.
All this is to say that I think it’s important to read about and believe others’ lived experience, and not just watch movies either; reading fiction delves’ into characters’ minds and science has shown that the part of our brain that plays our own personal narration lights up while reading (we effectively become the protagonist, just as the olfactory center lights up when smells are described and the visual cortex when images are described, etc; the human brain is fascinating).
When I was a younger–if I’m to be honest, until recently–I would rant openly on the internet about the plethora of sexual harassment and assault I’ve experienced throughout my life, although I think now what weighs on me more heavily is simply the message of being lesser and the lengths I go to in order to please, a habit it is so difficult to break myself from. My ability to have relationships with men has been greatly compromised, however, by the violence I’ve experienced, at the hands of partners, friends, and strangers alike. I am trying to find peace in myself so I can be open to new experience going forward.
Your post made me re-realize something (just as the recent bus trip home for my sister’s wedding made me re-realize something; it’s been years since I dated Efrain). Part of my earlier semi-constant experiences of assault and harassment–especially of assault–had to do with the fact that I thought I didn’t matter. That has to do with childhood experiences and familial issues as well as with the dominant culture and my own personality and sensitivity (some girls handle it better, and some girls have better lives; some women also have significantly worse lives, and for them it takes a truly strong and wise person to not believe the messages received through early trauma, and strength and wisdom can be hard to come by in youth for many of us). Basically the chemical cocktail of background and innate self that makes everyone an individual. So for a long time I thought I didn’t matter. I actually had that thought: “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.” Funnily enough, it mattered what happened to other people; I defended other women on numerous occasions. But it didn’t apply to me for some reason. Either I wasn’t really there–wasn’t really a person–or maybe I deserved it. It’s hard to know what my mindset was back then. I think I also assumed that such experiences at the hands of men were simply a fact of life and I had to accept it. So although I knew all the thousand little precautions women have to remember to take on a daily basis I didn’t follow them, and bad experiences were the result.
Things are different now. I volubly defend myself against men who harass me. I go to the police if, for example (as happened last year) a man breaks into my neighbor’s home mistaking it for mine and then waits for me in the dark. (He spontaneously confessed this to my neighbor upon being confronted). I am very aware of my surroundings all the time, particularly at night. I don’t go on dates with men I don’t completely trust (I don’t go on dates much). There is also a great sadness to this though.
Your story was great, especially the build-up to “what is this leading up to?” and the unexpected twist at the end (your embrace of the feminist cause). We all need to actively talk about our own experiences and seek out the experiences of people who are different from ourselves.
I’m sorry and not sorry about your experience with the old man (although I am sorry for him, even if he did have questionable intentions. Everyone deserves sympathy–and empathy, if we’re being honest with ourselves). I am glad he had something to teach you. And it was a really good story! Bravo.
P,s. I also want to make a disclaimer for the typos and grammatical errors of my first comment: I’m really tired! I know nobody really cares, but as an English teacher it’s a bit embarrassing. I see them all now, and if there were an edit button…
It’s final exam week and everything is a little harder right now. 🙂
fruitloopsie
I agree. Though, I’d say that’s just more USA-brand horror than anything else. We love our camp and tropes. (And our water balloons and dolls filled with corn syrup, red food coloring, and pig organs. Sploosh.)
A lot of horror games are going for the “shock value” these days. Outlast’s DLC Whistleblower really went for the metaphorical jugular by having the last “main” inmate you face, Eddie Gluskin, being obsessed with finding a wife and having a family to the point where he’s in a bloody, tattered groom’s tuxedo while mutilating male inmates to make them “beautiful women”. (Which reminds me of that troll in one of these threads whining about circumcision being genital mutilation. Eddie would change his mind REAL QUICK.)
There’s a part just before you run into him where you round the corner and see a body Eddie’s made up, and it’s like something out of NBC’s Hannibal. It’s fun for a while, but there’s only so much people can handle, y’know?
Though I will say, it’s really interesting to see how Eddie is very much a poster boy for toxic male entitlement. He thinks he deserves a wife by any means necessary, and if he doesn’t get it, he lashes out, either by screaming “whore” and “slut” at the protagonist as he tries to escape, or by killing his other victims when they bleed out from his “transformation”. That does add a level of scary for me. It’s a very exaggerated example, but shit if it’s not eerie how accurate it is.
I’m also happily surprised by, but still leery of P.T., that Playable Trailer for Silent Hills.
It’s got good horror without a lot of gore and a decent story, but once bitten, twice shy with the Silent Hill fandom. Homecoming, Downpour, and Origins were bites.
I’m also happy/worried about Kojima and Del Toro taking on this project. Kojima’s a great story teller, but is prone to exposition vomit, and Del Toro is an amazing monster designer, but doesn’t look at or consider other people’s monsters when he creates his, so I’m worried he’ll ignore Team Silent’s intention with the monsters, and the rules they had set up that each monster follows.
I could literally talk about horror games all flippin’ day though, so I will stop now.
I’m not much of a gamer but in general I find Asian horror (often but not always Japanese) to generally be scarier than American horror. Although I actually like the American version better.
Asian horror tends to have less objectification of women and gore is used more sparingly. I love Audition which isn’t gory until the last twenty minutes or so. And during the torture scenes it cuts away frequently to their faces. It’s so much scarier than any American torture movies like the Saw and Hostel franchises and all their knock offs.
I meant to say horror movies in my last post!
For street and transit harassers, usually the easiest and safest thing is too ignore and put on a bitch face and eye roll.
But one time I was wearing a short skirt on a bus and this man sat next to me and stroked my thigh. I shouted “don’t fucking touch me!” He bolted off the bus at the next stop. I think he assumed that I was just going to be paralyzed with fear and take it. Catcalling is one thing, but when it escalates to anything physical, I get pissed and all my shyness just drops away.
WWTH
This bit reminded me of something that I had a huge problem with with Silent Hill: Homecoming. Scenes from the game are practically ripped frame-for-frame from Hostel. Though, it’s hilarious when they bug out. There’s a known bug where the character wielding the power tool to torture someone with will vanish, leaving only a possessed piece of equipment floating in the air and cutting people’s limbs off. It’s a very unintentional kind of funny. Homecoming also has the most Hollywood-ized campy trope pile I’ve ever seen, including a token black cop drenched in stereotypes and a token feeeemale who don’t need no man.
Admittedly, I liked the first few Saw movies because I found the idea of Jigsaw and how he came to be Jigsaw fascinating. Then they drug it out for way more movies than they should have, tried to build this intricate plot with mystery boxes and blackmailed pseudo-Jigsaws and I quickly got bored. (Though I really liked one of the subplots in the later movies where five people all involved with a building burning down got captured and they kill one another off through a number of puzzles to escape, until two people got to the end and realized they didn’t HAVE to kill off everyone else. They screwed over everyone else for no good reason. That was a good twist.)
ParadoxicalIntention
I haven’t been paying attention on which games were made in Japan or USA and so far I do want to play bioshock 1, 2, Rule of Rose and Alice games.
I know I said I don’t like all that gore and cussing (like the walking dead, can they go through one scene without the words ‘G**damn’ and ‘f***’?)
but I don’t mind playing a few games like that and Its just I don’t understand why there are so many games like that with so much disgusting stuff in it now adays. I forgot about ‘jump scares’ there’s quite a lot of that too isn’t there?
I read about outlast games and that Eddie gluskin.
“Which reminds me of that troll in one of these threads whining about circumcision being genital mutilation. Eddie would change his mind REAL QUICK.”
Yeah, any troll who whines about that should go watch Eddie
I always read about games before making a decision on playing them or not. I wonder what would it be like to be a female protagonist in a outlast game? Oh well I can go on all day about horror games (good thing that there are actually a lot of good ones out there I just need to keep looking) too so I’ll stop.
WWTH
Good for you for standing up to that creep
I find the Saw movies, some of them anyway to be entertaining and suspenseful. But not scary. They’re more about seeing what games they’ll come up with, who will survive and what plot twists will occur. I’ll watch practically any horror movie but my favorites are the kind that unsettle me and stay with me. The atmospheric slow burn kinds are what do that. Not high body counts and buckets of gore.
The Descent is a big favorite of mine and the first half where they’re dealing with being trapped in the cave with Sarah just sort of seeing the Crawlers in brief flashes is scarier than when the Crawlers are hunting and killing the characters in the second half. The claustrophobic atmosphere and the interesting characters and subtext are why I like it. Not the creatures.
Sorry for the ramble.
Carmen,
Welcome! Click the scented candle on the right side of the screen for the official welcome package.
Another horror lover here.
@weirwoodtreehugger
Audition is great! I liked Hostel, too, though, although it’s too disjointed IMO. But it’s interesting that the scariest scene (at least for me) is one without any gore at all. It’s the scene where (POSSIBLE SPOILER?) the protag has escaped into the locker room, and one of the clients calmly discusses how much he’s looking forward to acting out his fantasies.
I think that movie could have been a great gothic, but missed.
@Carmen
I just saw your comment and it’s my bed time already. But I promise to read it tomorrow morning. 🙂
The first Hostel is okay. I actually like the second one better. It has a neat twist at the end. The third one is terrible.
Joining the “Hi” chorus for Carmen!
There’s something to be said for sharing stories of your own experience and being open to hearing about other’s experiences.
Thanks for sharing!
So, I can yell loud enough to be heard well across a theatre, or most reasonably sized outdoor spaces. Why? Well, it’s an easy skill to learn when you do actually need to be heard across such spaces! Point here is that if learning to scream at the drop of a hat by facing yourself in the mirror seems silly, grab a friend, go to a park, and start trying to shout at them from a distence away. Put yourself in safe situations where you need to yell to be heard, and you’ll get practiced at being loud.
Or get out your cell and call someone, doesn’t need to be a “help me here” call, but “hey, how was work // that test // the dentist // whatever?” — that extra confidence of a friend on the line (literally) can be enough to go “can’t you see I’m busy here?”
And that “I will decorate with your organs” stare does work btw, my usual approach is to just deadpan stare at them, almost a “you have GOT to be kidding me”. Not a questioning sort, but a “don’t make me hurt you”. This tends to get all but the stupidest dogs to shut up too btw, so bonus! (Oh man, my most recent ex’s parents have this dog that insists on barking at me, or did, last time I saw her I gave her that stare and she went to hide, I’ve yet to see if she still wants to bark at me!)
But yeah, a good solid “you do not scare me, you might want to be afraid of me though” stare will send most creepers, and dogs, sulking off with their tails between their legs (questionable success on cats, their levels of giving a fuck vary too widely!)
Long post is long. So to end on a cute note — that dead pan stare has humorous effects on fish, some stare back, some ignore you completely, and Puff takes it as a sign he should beg for food (because of course he does!)
Argenti: Yep! The “I will smack the color off of you” Stare, has worked for me on more than a few occasions, with dogs and people.
Try “I’ll smack you so hard by the time you wake up you’re clothes will be back in fashion”
Violent AND pithy 🙂
fruitloopsie
Bioshock is North American (I’m pretty sure 2K Montreal was helping with it), and all three games are really good. One is really linear, but it fits in with the story, so I forgive it, and it has a really gory scene where the main character is made to do some nasty things with a golf club that literally made my mouth pop open. A lot of people didn’t like 2, but I thought it was good, for what it’s worth. I got really emotionally attached to the characters and the story’s pretty good. I also managed the good ending, so there’s that. Infinite (3) is considered to be one of the best in the series, but some people find the story line to be convoluted for the sake of making things convoluted. And a few people have questioned the need for the Vigors (Plasmids) in the game. However, it really hits hard (in a good way) on the topic of racism in the background of the main stuff.
Rule of Rose is an AMAZING game, and it’s by Atlus, who is Japanese, and was bought out by Sega a while back. They’re also the creators of the awesome Persona series, and Persona 5 is coming out sometime this year, which us fans are super hyped for. (Persona 4 came out for the PS2 YEARS ago.)
I would also recommend games like Haunting Grounds if you really like Rule of Rose.
I haven’t played the Alice games, but I hear they’re good. I heard Madness Returns wasn’t as good as many people hoped it would be, but I think that’s because it suffered from a case of Excess Hype.
There’s a few more of them in modern games than there are in games past, but I think it’s quickly becoming old hat and no one wants to do that anymore. I’ve found a lot of games are going back to the subtle horror of yesteryear, and that makes me a very happy camper.
The horror genre is great for female protagonists, so I don’t see why we couldn’t experiment! : D
WordPress, why did you cut off my smiley face? : |
I just didn’t want an emote, damnit.
Not quite conveying the full body horror shown by Heartiste, but I think this captures the general PUA attitude (let’s see if this embeds):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Archery_Target_80cm.svg/400px-Archery_Target_80cm.svg.png
I’m going to go with “probably not.” or charitably, “Maybe it’s been a long time.”
I seem to remember a piece of his several years ago where he claimed to have slapped a woman across the face and slime came out of her vagina. Cause she was so turned on by the alphaness of his slap, y’see.
I thought, well, ok, that’s extra-horrible, even for him– but slime coming out?
I am not claiming to have meaningful experience with a diverse range of vaginas here.
But yeah, very Bags of Sand.
Gosh, between thinking about that and the “vaccine debate” coming back up, it’s been a very mid-aughts nostalgia kind of day for me. What a weird time that was.
I’m going to have to get out some Panic! At the Disco or something to really help nail the feeling down.
Hi again, just to clarify what I meant when I said I didn’t use to think I mattered…this mindset led me to passively allow it, as though I were watching myself from a distance, even when violent/violating things were being done to me. Sometimes I froze up, sometimes I said no. I never said yes and I never invited it. But I also never screamed at anyone or raised a fuss.
I might quietly say “no” and back away. Otherwise I would just stand or sit or lie there and look away, into the distance. It’s taken me years to learn how to raise my voice in my own defense (and hands, if I have to). But I did it without therapy, which like many–I’d say most–people in the world right now I cannot afford. Not good therapy, anyway (although there are some great advocates and non-profits out there that provide free rape counseling, what I needed was more specialized–cognitive behavioral therapy, a way to break a pattern). I eventually managed, through soul-searching, to realize that it was not my fault.
It’s an interesting fact that women who are victimized, especially young, are at a greatly increased risk of being victimized again, in all sorts of ways; we communicate so much with our bodies without even being aware of it. It’s like blood in the water, and I’ve witnessed the way it brings out the worst in otherwise good people. One of my strangest experiences ever was a nice man who refused to take no for an answer and afterward wept about it and said he’d never done anything like that before and he didn’t know why he’d done it. I didn’t take that to mean it was my fault, though it felt like that; I was crying too. We were both crying, and then he left me alone and I got out of there.
People are complex, and in fact I refuse to believe there is such thing as a “rapist”or a “killer” or any other ist or er; there is just a person who rapes somebody, or who kills somebody; whether or not it is part of a core identity or set of values really depends on the individual person. I’ve run into men who commit assault, and I’ve run into predators. They’re different.
So I always took it to mean something was wrong with me, that I invited it somehow; but after a lot of soul-searching I realized that both was and wasn’t the case; I did send off unintentional signals–whether of passivity or flirtatiousness (my two modes of relating to men when I was younger)–but nothing was wrong with me, and ultimately it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault if I was walking in the street minding my business, and it wasn’t my fault if I was kissing a guy in his apartment. No is no. Violence is violence. But people are complex, and this is far from black-and-white. It’s okay to acknowledge the person I was and the part that played in my experiences, and that’s not mutually exclusive with the fact that it wasn’t my fault.
I changed the way I walk, I changed the way I talk to men. I neither flirt with nor give the fear-smile to men who approach me anymore. I changed a lot of things to protect myself. Learning how reform my sexuality into something I can better control–learning how to flirt right and how to shut it down, fearlessly–is another step. Part of it is just getting older.
I am glad I can be honest here. If you tell someone you’ve been attacked once, they feel sympathy. Twice and they shut down. Throughout your life and they flat out sneer. I keep it to myself most of the time. But there is lots of statistical evidence out there about this phenomenon, which makes me wonder how many of the 1 in 5 women in the self-reported CDC stats have been attacked more than once (did it explicitly ask how many times a woman had experienced a rape attempt or completed rape, or simply if she had? I can’t find an answer to that). Even more heart-breakingly there are websites of women describing in detail their experience of this, at times far, far worse than mine (the rape of a teenage girl leads to promiscuity and drinking and ends in a gang-rape on a bathroom floor not long later, which turns out to be just the beginning for her). Having filed a police report once in college and then been treated with contempt, I never bothered again. Particularly if alcohol is involved or if it’s someone you know or have dated before, there’s no point. Real life is not like Law and Order. If only there were such champions for justice. (Although the new British law about affirmative consent gives me hope).
So for me it hurts me to hear people ask other women things like “why didn’t you scream?” or “why didn’t you fight back?” or “why didn’t you leave right away afterward?” and etc. Is “I suddenly ceased to be a person?” answer enough. Or, “I just left my body at the first sign of trouble…”
That’s what I meant by I thought I didn’t matter. And I think it’s the silent who are victimized the most. Silent at the time, and silent later.
I guess I am still shouting to the rooftops on the internet. But thanks for listening, if you did–and thanks for the welcome. I won’t go back to lurking, but I’ll keep it shorter and lighter in the future. But since I just spoke up I wanted to share my reason for coming here, my personal stake in this cause–and to clarify my earlier post about my own self-objectification, if that’s what you could call it.
Really, thanks for the warm welcome.