By David Futrelle
Three, three indictments in one! Three former Trump campaign officials are in the hot seat today. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is the big name on the list (along with his pal Rick Gates), for such fun things as conspiracy against the U.S. and money laundering. But even more intriguing is the GUILTY PLEA of relatively unknown Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, whom Mueller has presumably flipped, who seems to have been doing some active COLLUDING WITH THE RUSSIANS.
So here’s an open thread to discuss the news and any other indictment fun that transpires today.
NOTE: Sorry to have gone missing for so long. I’m still dealing with a combo of health issues that have made it very difficult to work. Thanks again for your patience and support.
Fratboys. The “fratboy” is just what our society thinks healthy adolescent male behaviour is. Their behaviours are just a slight exaggeration of what’s expected of “normal” men.
A man who spends his early 20’s as a “frat boy”, drinking and partying and being a f’n nuisance will be admired for his youthful indiscretions. He’ll be able to sit back at his desk, kick his feet up and tell stories about sexually abusing women or causing property damage, and people will laugh. His career will be fine and he’ll bond with other dudes who had similar histories, giving him entrance to the Old Boys’ Club, because that’s all the Old Boys’ Club is. It’s the drinking and partying frat gang that got older, and now they just sit around drinking scotch and smoking cigars because they ain’t got time for that shit now.
A woman who spends her early 20’s doing exactly the same keeps her mouth shut about it if she wants any hope of a meaningful career – or any hope at all of not being considered a sexual assault target of choice. She gave it away for free in her 20’s after all, why not now? And her youth will be used as an excuse to consider her inappropriate for everything – barred from promotion, considered untalented (or more properly ‘only good for one thing’), considered ‘dirty’. If she ends up being successful, everyone will assume she slept her way to where she is, only making it worse.
Men are expected to be fratboys. That sort of behaviour is everywhere.
I’m not ranting at anyone in specific this morning, just sort of blithering on keywords here, don’t mind me!
If you’re rely curious about the formative experiences and terrible decisions about how to process them that led roosh to make himself into what he is, pirate a copy of his first book, Bang. It opens with an origin story which manages to be at once deeply repulsive and yet still unsettlingly innocuous by comparison to the monstrous things he has actually done.
Re: BDSM
I’ve seen a chat group have a policy that “if you talk about abuse, you’re banned” ostensibly because that just causes too much drama. Guess what the “leader” of the group had previously been accused of.
> A woman who spends her early 20’s doing exactly the same keeps her mouth shut about it if she wants any hope of a meaningful career – or any hope at all of not being considered a sexual assault target of choice. She gave it away for free in her 20’s after all, why not now? And her youth will be used as an excuse to consider her inappropriate for everything – barred from promotion, considered untalented (or more properly ‘only good for one thing’), considered ‘dirty’. If she ends up being successful, everyone will assume she slept her way to where she is, only making it worse.
My current female boss did all those things you described and then some. We in fact did them together more than a few times. She’s now successful and no one holds it against her.
You sure this is common?
@Scildfreja:
And that’s the sort of thing that the ‘master of my own fate’ types refuse to accept. It’s the line I heard once that ‘humans are not rational animals; humans are rationalising animals.’ We do things based on incomplete information and then make up the reasons later. We do that all the time, because we never have complete information.
The people who insist that they are truly rational are, for the most part, the ones who insist that they are ‘right’ and who refuse to self-reflect because that might show otherwise.
Oh good. Croosters knows a successful woman that didn’t get slut shamed. I guess that means misogyny is over and feminism won. I’m so relieved!
Criminey, @Croosters, stahp.
People have been more than polite with you here, and you just keep farting all over anyway. You’ve tiptoed right up to the line of shitting all over this thread, so stop before you do.
I am seriously questioning your “Feminism 101” bona fides.
@reimalebario
Eh, Goreans gonna Gor. Just a matter of time.
Oh well, at least we still have MST3K’s glorious roasting of Outlaw of Gor: “After 4 days of shooting, finally got script today. Guess what, I’m not playing Thomas Aquinas. I’m supposed to be some kind of freakin’ Wizard!”
Just want to underscore what Scildfreja has said:
This is absolutely true. It’s that kind of self-assuredness and entitlement that creates all sorts of evils. I think of that scene at the end of American History X where Edward Norton is at the breakfast table talking about a book he’s studying and his father starts to use the familiar talking points about “affirmative action” and how some friends of his “deserved” firefighting positions that were given to black people and just casually drops the N-word into the conversation. That’s how it starts, and all you need is social reinforcement and you can become as self-assured and hateful as the skinhead the character eventually becomes.
It could have been me. It could have been any of us. But I don’t have that kind of self-assuredness. My parents were different. The community I lived in was different. The people around me were a little more diverse. I’m a little more sensitive to the emotional states of others than most and I have a keen imagination that probably enables empathy more than most.
There but by the grace of God go a lot of us.
What Roosh does provide at the very least is a case study in virulently toxic masculinity. I haven’t read his books, so I don’t know the origin story that Orion alludes to, but I have watched Kevin Logan read some excerpts for his Descent of Manosphere series and the clear lack of enjoyment he has for not only sex but what he has to do achieve it just radiates from the sentences Logan read. It’s obvious that Roosh doesn’t actually like practicing pick-up artistry (and who would, if they have to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours moving to another country and wearing down vulnerable women’s self-esteem until they submit to awkward pity sex?). What Roosh does enjoy is demeaning and controlling women and being congratulated for it by other hideous people in the form of back-slaps and book sales.
@JS
The saying “scum rises to the top” is very relevant to the kink/bdsm scene,
over the past couple of months or so a lot of rope instructors have been getting accused of doing things to people after tying them up,
the most common defense is “But thats what the Japanese masters do!” which adds an element of racial fetishism on top of the obvious misogyny.
Yeah, noticing that there’s a double standard between how men are treated for having sex versus how women are treated for having sex is not even feminism 101. It’s pre-feminism 101. I noticed it so long ago that I don’t even remember first noticing it. It’s that pervasive.
@Croosters
You… you sure about that?
And then there’s this…
But also Croosters:
Wow…
@Scild
The American Pie kids become the Mad Men adults who mold the culture to create more American Pie kids
…
I recognise Croosters as a being pretty cool radical sort, where the fuck did this misogyny-denying Nazi-defending ableist 4Channer come from?
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Glad I’m not the only one to recognize the “meme arrows”.
@Croosters
Yes, I’m sure it’s common.
Finding one example of someone who has not been slut-shamed would only work if anyone had said “This happens to all women without exception.” I didn’t read that.
Of course some women are lucky enough to move in accepting and respectful circles. But some – I would say the majority – don’t.
In both senses of the phrase.
@Moggie and @opposablethumbs Thanks, I hadn’t heard that and it cheers me up. POS is right. He appears to have no conscience at all, just enormous self regard.
I have a gut feeling (but no evidence) that a tax audit might turn up all sorts. He strikes me as exactly the sort to believe that only little people pay taxes. But of course the UK is far more interested in rooting out benefit cheats than tax cheats.
Ughhhhh… I was 14 when American Pie came out and even then I could sense there was something terribly wrong with the attitudes on display. Fuck. That. Movie.
I’m definitely stealing this quote though… perfect summation of the entitled asshole cycle.
@Croosters: Being genderqueer unfortunately doesn’t mean that you automatically understand everything that feminism is, or how it affects different people with different intersections of privilege.
Using a single story of a woman who wasn’t slut shamed to say that women aren’t slut shamed is a good example of how being tuned in to one thing doesn’t automatically mean you’re tuned in to everything.
The dialogue is always evolving, we all need to keep learning to keep understanding how the world works.
@SFHC
They’ve gone back and forth, especially on the ‘asshole isn’t a mental disorder’ side of things
Apparently, some kink communities are just horrible. No wonder, since I’ve heard there are all kinds of creepy-misogynistic subcultures that border to or somewhat overlap with the kink culture.
I just recently joined the main Finnish online kink community, and luckily it seems relatively decent. Obviously not perfect – the last time I checked, people were running a #metoo thread.
It’s been generally awesome to learn BDSM discourse from feminist-leaning English language kink blogs – most of all thanks to Cliff Pervocracy! – and then stumble into the same in my native language.
I mean, “whore” is used as an insult while “pimp” is used as a compliment. To point out a blatant and obvious example of the dynamic we’re discussing.
Not only is being compared to a pimp considered complimentary, but the term “pimp slap” is too. Sex workers are so despised that a term that implies the abuse of them is used to call someone (and usually a male someone) cool and badass. Since women are derisively called “whore” for having consensual non-transactional sex, or being perceived as having sex, or turning down sex, or being raped, or wearing revealing clothing, the implication is right there. The abuse of women is acceptable, if not desirable if she fails to conform to the patriarchal ideal of perfect womanhood at some point in her life.
And no one bats an eye at this except for we no fun buzzkilling feminazis.
@ WWTH
Not to detract from your point, which I completely agree with, but you may be interested to know there’s a word here ‘ponce’. That describes any man who lives off of women. So it’s a word for pimp, but would also cover a general moocher. It’s, quite correctly, highly derogatory.
It’ll even get used in situations where someone’s not pulling their weight in a relationship, “He just ponces off his girlfriend” etc.
ETA: maybe you could try to popularise it over in the US?
@Alan Does ‘ponce’ also contain the meaning ‘effeminate’? That’s how I understood it, but I’d like to know if I’m wrong.
@Arctic Ape
Feminist-kink is pretty awesome is just disappointing that it has to exist along side dudebro-misogynist-kink.
@Fishy Goat & @Alan Robertshaw
If ponce lack the “effeminate” connotation I’ll try working it into my vocabulary.
@Rhuu
Rather OT:
Hey, you! You showing up reminded me! Also, maybe @Scild, @Sandra, and other a specs would be interested too, I dunno. Guess who got his riiing? You asked to see it when I got it made. Sorta anniversary gift to myself (love you, darlin ❤)
https://m.imgur.com/a/pZr1m
Hopefully that link works. The inscription reads ‘Ace as in Awesome’ if it’s hard to read. The background is my kitchen table 😀