Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

@kupo

Wow, that was a painful read. Christ, it’s like there’s some kind of trope where middle-aged professional writers have to tut-tut the younger generation for demanding more of the culture at large than their generation had. “Why didn’t you just slap him and call a cab like we were taught back in the 70s, you damned Cat Person-reading millennial?!”

@Mish

Yeah, that one’s even more horrible. Not only does it take too long to get to the same point as Kupo’s article, this one also leans on the idea that women have some kind of inherent power to catastrophically inflict pain on men simply by “crying assault” on social media or to the nearest digital publication. Careers come to an end, all because some feeeeemale feels “demeaned”! Good men’s poor careers! Think of the careers! Women have castrated men en masse! They were just a lewd joke or a backrub!

This pair of articles illustrate a pair of concepts that appear to be the go-to for those attempting to lasso the momentum of the #MeToo movement (neither of which are new to us, but I’m articulating mostly for my own satisfaction):

1. That the demand for accountability is costing too much. Now, being a guy, I’d be the last person to ask, but I’d wager that what the women of #MeToo want is for guys to stop behaving this way. I listened to Shaun of Shaun&Jen’s new video where he describes his journey from demi-troll to ostensible feminist ally by having his own behaviour described back to him by the feminist boards of SomethingAwful. He recognized he was doing the things that these women were relating as having made them uncomfortable and reflected on them over time. Men appear to be having some difficulty in having a problem with the same self-actualization. They read the story about Aziz Ansari and say “Oh shit, I did that to woman I wanted to get in bed with… am I the bad guy? No, no I can’t be! After all, I’m no Weinstein!”

But here’s the thing: in the absence of this broad cultural self-actualization, our capitalist society is responding the only way it knows how to in the wake of a social media firestorm… by firing people. For the most egregious power abuses, this is
wholly appropriate. But if the Aziz Ansaris of the world could actually demonstrate that they’ve learned something,

2. The changing sexual politics appear to threaten not only those that take advantage of the power imbalance, but those that have adapted to it. It’s like seeing a buddy of yours who works in another industry using the power of the union to demand better working conditions; you react with a mixture of anger at yourself and anger at him, saying “Wait a minute, you mean I didn’t have to put up with 80 hour work weeks?! What are you, lazy?? The rest of us work that, and proudly!” There’s that pride that you were able to adapt to hardship, but there’s that little voice in the back of your head that tells you you were a chump for not standing up for yourself. I’m getting this vibe from both these female authors, particularly from Caitlin Flanagan, who describes the time period of her near sexual assaults (Back in my day, our sexual assaults were harsher, little missy! Not like the “disappointed” taxi rides in some short story that went viral!) as if to underline a generational divide in how women handled the misbehaviour of the men around them. Well, sorry Caitlin, women of 2018 aren’t putting up with the boundary testing anymore. Maybe you did back during the Falklands War, but shit, I wasn’t even born yet at that point and I already feel out of touch in my early 30s.

3. There is a third thing, and it’s related to something I mentioned further upthread: women’s sense of empowerment has only strengthened in recent years, but the sexual politics of men has not changed to match it. I was still conditioned to see “getting laid” as the ultimate indicator of masculinity (I was just entering high school when American Pie came out in theatres). If a woman you wanted to bed was resistant, continuing to pressure her was the expected plan, eventually she’d “give in” and satisfy you. This is the source of all the fretting about “OMG, we can’t flirt, seduce or court women anymore?!”

No, guys, you can still flirt, just do it in a way that doesn’t leave a woman feeling uncomfortable. Respect women enough to mind their feelings. If there’s hesitation, then clearly the woman’s having doubts. At that point, there’s a good question to ask: is the sex going to be that great? If the answer is no, then what’s the point in applying pressure? There’s only a point if your goal isn’t to enjoy good sex, but just to get your dick wet and a bedpost notch.

It actually brings to mind a pair of characters from celebrated Canadian sketch comedy show The Kids In The Hall. The first is Cabbage Head, the self-described “King of the Mercy Fuck”:

I can see some shades of the guy from Cat Person in Cabbage Head there.

By contrast, Chicken Lady was an overtly sexual character, calling an escort service and clucking “Gotta get laid, gotta get laid” when her terrified date runs out on her:

Kinda an interesting juxtaposition of traits applied to absurd comic characters.

KITH also had an amusing sketch caricaturing feminist activism. Bonus points for MRA d-bags in the comment section drawing the entirely wrong conclusion from the sketch.

Remember, MRAs, the punchline is that the ogling leches do exist; the activist was correct in her assessment. She just took it to a place of anger when the prof was willing to talk about it.

@Katamount: The videos don’t seem to match the text around them?

http://i64.tinypic.com/2enrs5i.png

Article on Chelsea Manning candidacy

@ Kupo, Kat;

“Why didn’t you just slap him and call a cab like we were taught back in the 70s, you damned Cat Person-reading millennial?!”

… or “just let him have his way, like we were taught in the ’50s”… or, ” ‘what’s wrong with what he’s doing?’, like we were taught in the ’30s”

or, anything but social change….

Strange one:

App creates contracts for one night stands to ‘prove’ sex is consensual

Because it’s a techgeek thingy, a blockchain is of course involved. 😛

Don’t know exactly how I’m feeling about this. First thought was “what a stupid idea” but it does put things up front. You can withdraw consent at the touch of a button, so – what’s the point of it really? I’m too old to get it. 😛

Edit to add: @Katamount – your vids are showing the right ones for me.

@kupo

Thank you. That makes sense (sadly too much sense).

Some idiot with more time than sense just made The Last Jedi: The De-Feminized Fanedit. (Spoilers at link in text, if you haven’t watched the movie yet)

Took out ALL the women characters, it’s now 46 minutes long and completely incomprehensible.

And then I read some of the comments for some reason. Some of the commenters had the same concerns I did but it was mostly full of dudes – and some women too – whining about false accusations.

Yup, what @wwth said. I’ve heard the idea before and it was bad then and it’s bad now.

Because it’s not actually meant to enforce enthusiastic consent. Enthusiastic consent doesn’t need gimmicks like this. Let’s face it, it’s a passive aggressive jab at the idea that enthusiastic consent is needed at all, just in app form. And to hammer just another point home, there’s a reason that guys don’t just ask, “Hey, wanna take this to the bedroom?” It’s not because they’re shy, it’s because they’re afraid she’ll say “No”. Hence the need to test women’s boundaries and wear down their resolve with obnoxious Aziz Ansari behaviour.

I’ve been mulling over a means of communicating the importance of enthusiastic consent to the broader dude-bro community. Ever since I listened to a “debate” between YouTube feminist/ally Michael Rowlands and the odious YouTube a-hole Bearing–wherein Bearing insisted that if a woman instigates sexual activity that she has consented to whatever happens afterwards–I believe it’s important to point out the folly of this line of thought. Because as the Aziz Ansari example shows, the dude-bro brigade really will cling to “she was into it at first” as a Get Out Of Rape Free card.

Well, if we’re playing the Sam Harris “thought experiment” game with sexual assault, how about this for your clueless dudebro? Dudebro instigates sex with a hot girl at a party and after a couple hours of fun, she excuses herself for moment. While he’s resting up for the next round, she sneaks back in the bedroom and starts pegging him with the 10-inch unlubed strap-on she had in her backpack. By dudebro logic, he instigated, so he should be fine indulging her pegging, watersports and scat fetishes, right?

Mayyyybe enthusiastic consent is preferable on those ones, eh, Mr. Dudebro? Given how fragile the Dudebro ego is, it might penetrate more than other examples (pun intended).

@Alan: Well, there’s still Leo …

Re: de-female characters “Last Jedi”…

jeezus h christ with a purple tambourine… WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE???

E.T.A. actually, I know…

3) if women have agency, I might not get my end wet…
2) if women have agency, I might not be in charge
and, of course, 3) MY POOR FRAGILE FEEEEEEEEEELINGS!!!!!

@Brony
You probably saw pixel scientist post this on TMS, but just in case you haven’t seen it, I thought I’d share.

https://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/mythcommunication-its-not-that-they-dont-understand-they-just-dont-like-the-answer/

Drawing on the conversation analytic literature, and on our own data, we claim that both men and women have a sophisticated ability to convey and to comprehend refusals, including refusals which do not include the word ‘no’, and we suggest that male claims not to have ‘understood’ refusals which conform to culturally normative patterns can only be heard as self-interested justifications for coercive behaviour.

So, earlier today I watched the episode of Electric Dreams in which what appears to be a meteor strike over the midwest is actually an arrival of aliens that start taking over the planet by replacing the humans.

Cut to about 8 hours later and I see that there’s been a meteor strike over the midwest.

http://i.imgur.com/bWVCnqt.gif