A helpful image to drive home how weird the fat angst over Britney is. I will admit, she can probably sit down without bruising a bone, but still. Not fat.
This is probably a sign that I’m out of the loop on occasion, but I thought the problem with the Britney Spears performance at the VMA was that she looked about to totter over from being so stoned or hungover or whatever. But I flicked on the radio today and it was on a talk sports show and the host was ranting and raving about how fat she was, and he sounded personally offended, like she shat in his face. I was halfway convinced she looked fat so I went and looked at a picture of her and there appears to be no indication of rolls of fat or even of a dress size touching the double digits.
Apparently, there’s a lot of anger out there that Britney Spears was “fat” on TV. I can’t help but suspect that the vast majority of the straight men having huge, spastic fits about how Spears betrayed their masturbatory cycles with her fat ass, if presented with a woman who looked like that in real life, would make asses of themselves trying to fuck her. Maybe I’m wrong, but there’s a hint of disingenuous posturing to the fatass-Britney statements. Like maybe this has almost nothing to do with Spears herself and everything to do with enjoying the social permission to project all sorts of misogynist feelings onto a woman who asked for it by playing up ridiculous sexist fantasies all the way to the bank.
Shark-Fu has more.
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This is totally correct.
I was 15 when she went supernova. It was always distburbing to see grown men nursing boners for a 16-17 year old girl (when she first came on the scene). I am not sure why this was treated as ok, and not as gross pedophilia.
On another note, I am not sure how the average looking female goes to a public place like a mall without wanting to go home and take an hour long shower. The leering by creepers is getting ridiculous.
From the sound of various alleged commentators and critics nationwide, it seems that she wasn’t only fat, she was also handing out misogyny licenses right and left.
Funny, I didn’t think she was moving that fast!
Personally, I think the problem is not that Britney looked “fat,” but that she looked like an adult, not a dirty schoolgirl. They can’t admit that the problem is that she no longer fuels their socially-approved pedophilia, so they have to go with the socially-approved complaint that she’s “fat.”
“Fat” as a synonym for “adult”? Makes sense to me. It’s kind of funny, too—I’d bet the very men who are jumping up and down screaming about how gross it is for a woman to have a body that screams that she’s at the height of her fertility would then turn around and sign onto every two-bit evo psych theory about how men are “programmed” to treat women a certain way. If evolution programs our sexual tastes for maximum benefit, surely it programs men to prefer women who have enough padding to be fertile over those who don’t or are still so young that their ovulation is irregular, right?
I haven’t seen the clip, so I can’t comment on whether she looked fat or not. However, I’ve heard MTV wanted her to wear a leather corset outfit, but she insisted on wearing a spangly bikini instead. Maybe some of the comments that she looked “fat” are payback; how dare she fulfill a sexist stereotype that she chose, instead of the one the network chose for her!
Exactly. Her body is not “fat”. It’s the body of a grown woman, and they almost seem to feel betrayed that she has the nerve to look like a woman.
She’s downright svelte. I wonder if people get nausteated when they see me in public (I’m probably two sized bigger than Brit).
And you better believe it, James. I exhibit at conferences/conventions in a male-dominated industry, and I feel like a freak-show when I’m working. Men stare at me as though they’ve never seen a woman before. I’ll be outside having a cigarette and men literally walk past me with their heads turned, just leering at me. It’s filthy.
Britney’s alienated the press before, like the recent incident when she called a woman photographer papparazzi a “fat fuck” amongst other things, before kicking her over.
Myself, I heard the corset theory. The boards I’m on are pretty much saying that yeah, she looks good for a mother, but she looks ridiculous in her bikini. It’s as if she looked in the mirror, and thought she saw her 1999 body. Should’ve have used the corset that MTV suggested. Heck, I heard that she turned down the services of hairstylist Ken Paves himself, and went on with that cheap weave.
I’m just saying - while I do not believe that she’s fat, she’s certainly done everything possible to screw up her one talent - looking hot while stomping around the stage.
But she looks hot. The weird thing is that 99.9% of people bitching about her want to look like that/fuck someone who looks like that. I don’t buy a word of the criticism. It’s just being mean for the hell of it.
If you look at the other dancers, they are all in a corset/vinyl pants combination. What she looks is out of place. She’s the star and she looks like the odd one out on the stage. Add to that the vapid stares, obvious missteps and the times she lost track of the song and the whole thing is just sad. Of course the whole thing ends up about the fat- cause with the tummy bulge she looks like a mother in a spangly bikini and you can’t actually have the starlets look like they are full grown women who have lives off the stage. It messes with the illusion and we can’t have the fantasy tainted with reality.
Jesus Christ. I’ve found Britney to be vaguely annoying for pretty much as long as she’s been in the spotlight, but the fat comments are just utter bullshit. It was a dreadful performance — she seemed to barely be present mentally — but the LOL Fat Britney rubbish is just ridiculous.
The thing I thought while watching it was that, in addition to looking sorta baked, it looked like she couldn’t dance on those extremely high heels. Which, hey, neither could I.
I never got why she was considered attractive in the first place. She was an average looking girl aerobicized to the nth degree and dressed up like a porn model. And she was telling us to hit her. Her music was obviously designed by committee. She had no shame about lip-synching. And yet here were all my 40-ish colleagues drooling as if she was HAWT. And that was what I didn’t understand: she was so obviously fake that I couldn’t understand why people liked her even if she did conform to patriarchal stereotypes.
But then again, I don’t get why a lot of men actually think strippers think they’re sexy, either. Nor, for that matter, do I get why guys think the stripper aesthetic is hot.
Now, I just feel sorry for the poor woman. She’s already over the hill for what she is, and she doesn’t even like doing it anymore. She’s been lied to on a truly astronomical scale and probably has no idea how to distinguish between truth and fiction. What the hell is she going to do with the rest of her life? It’s easy to predict that she’s going to end up dead in a few years, but I’d really like to see her have some chance at a life.
Fashion critique. Tone upper arms or use some kind of cover, even just a scarf, if you don’t want to scream mutton dressed as lamb. Yes, her arms have a touch of middle-aged flab already, which is a natural thing but will turn off the guys who want to drool over a teen. Other than that, her body is pretty much perfect.
Career critique. To win back her misogynist, sexist fanbase, she’d have to do a big religious revelation thing and do a Christian album and cry a lot on TV about her shameful lifestyle. I don’t recommend it. To appeal to the sex-positive crowd, she needs to: get some college education, discover and embrace feminism, and come across as in control of her life. Basically following Madonna’s lead.
Critique of critics. I think the people complaining about her being fat may be too stupid to figure out what they really didn’t like about her.
Britney Spears looks “fat”? Not even close.
*sigh* Yes, it was creepy. Yes, it had squicky “dad & daughter” elements. Yes, our culture sexualizes females below the age of consent and infantilizes women above it. But: no, being attracted to a post-pubescent person is not and is never pedophilia.
Furthermore, there’s really nothing wrong with seeing a 17-year-old female and finding her physically attractive, no matter your age. Sexual attraction is amoral and isn’t easily controlled by conscious intent. That’s not to legitimize any behavior proceeding from said attraction.
Amanda:
I never agree with you, but here you’re right on. I can’t count how many times I heard today that Brit looked “fat” at the VMA’s. Single digit dress sizes do NOT make a woman. Most of the men I know would much rather be with a natural-looking woman–and to obsess over a child-like Britney in a Catholic school girl’s uniform is just plain icky.
Djur, not to disagree with your main point, but the Britney and teenage girl fetish has more to do with power and the fantasy of violation than it does with sort of a natural sexual attraction. Which is why people are violently rejecting her for having grown up, even though she is still quite lovely and probably much more fertile than at the height of her popularity. The sniggering cultural fascination was all about driving home the point to American women that every ounce of experience or intelligence you possessed was so very unattractive. Which is, I do believe, wrong and cruel. But it has nothing to do with baseline hormonal blips.
Your reaction was pretty much idential to mine. Britney’s obviously not fat, but even if she were, that’s not really the problem here, is it?. The problem is that she’s a serious drug addict who can no longer escape incredibly self-destructive, possibly career-ending behavior.
On the rare occasions that I go to department stores, the clothes that fit me are in the “Womens’” section. I’ve always wondered about this: does it mean that female people below a size 18 aren’t actually women? Since the sizes below 18 are usually in the “Misses’” section, I suspect that the implication is that if you’re thin, you’re a girl. If you’re fat, then you qualify as a woman.
Not to pile on Djur here, but it wasn’t just that Britney was 17; there are a lot of 17 year old stars who aren’t fetishized like her. (There isn’t a huge cottage industy devoted to “Would you like to shag the girl who plays Hermione Granger?” out there) If you watch “Baby One More Time”, you’ll see Britney’s appeal isn’t her singing and dancing; it’s that she tantiiziingly straddles that line between little girl innocence and womanly sexuality; she’s wearing pigtails with pink bow ties BUT she’s also wearing a thick coat of lipstick and way overdone blue eyeliner. She’s wearing a school girl uniform, BUT she’s tied the blouse around her breasts. She looks sweet and innocent (from a distance) but she throatily inviting her lover to “hit me baby one more time”.*
In other words, she’s a walking ad for all the Humbert Humberts out there, who’d like a partner with all the techniques of an experienced woman, yet all the innocence (i.e. inexperience and ability to be easily impressed) of a little girl. Not healthy at all.
*In fact, if she walked into the door of a real Catholic school dressed like that, she’d be sent home to change, but not before the nuns made her scrub her face clean in the wash room and recite a dozen Hail Marys as pennace.
This whole thing reminds of the perverted ravings of Derbyshire or some other teen-obsessed lunatic.
I guess you hit 20 and and it’s all over…
I’d give you my honest opinion, but frankly, I can’t get past the fact that she looks drunk/stoned.
“To appeal to the sex-positive crowd, she needs to: get some college education, discover and embrace feminism, and come across as in control of her life. Basically following Madonna’s lead.”
Madonna has embraced feminism? WTF?
I don’t know what all the complainers are hyperventilating about. I have never been interested in Brittany in a sensual way until I saw her at the MTV awards. In my eyes he went from being a pubescent girl to being a very hot looking woman. NOW I’m interested. A guy at work was just beside himself at the way she had let herself go. I told him you aren’t going to see a riper piece of fruit than that EVER. Very sexy!
I see where you are critising the perv reaction to her performance, but what I saw was something that would not have gotten out of the first round of american idol.
She didnt even sing, couldnt dance, put on a terrible performance.
She’s done.
The local karaoke bar has more talent than she has.
Britney has been and always will be a producers and managers manufactured star.
I have to say, the Britney criticisms I encountered on the AV Club and on Slog really did focus on her terrible, terrible performance. Does anyone have a rough notion as to the ratio of overall criticisms that were over her appearance vs over her performance? Because while I agree that the appearance criticisms are pretty stupid, it’s also hard to defend such a lacklaster high profile tank job as this was.
I’ve been criticizing Britney Spear’s on the talent front since her Mouseketeer days but what she is in trouble for at the moment is that she isn’t a chesty tween anymore or an overtoned teen, she is being criticized because the adult female body isn’t fashionable and after a couple babies she didn’t go to the gym and get back into her prechild body shape before appearing in public. The fact that she doesn’t have a grasp on the fact that her body is all grown up now is a part of our culture. We need to get the media to start celebrating all body shapes before we lose more young women.
The people who criticized the actual performance might be onto something in a weird way. Britney’s fan base, which is fixated on her body, wouldn’t dare act like a bunch of by talking about the quality of the performance — imagine them going so far as admitting to knowing what the dance steps were supposed to be — so they have to translate their disappointment into a term that they can articulate — “fat”.
In that picture, her body looks fine. But her face looks like a drunk with a two-thousand yard stare.
Blue Jean, Humbert Humbert wasn’t attracted to 17-year-olds. When Lolita started growing breasts, his interest started to wane.
(to no one in particular) Can we please stop confusing pedophiles (which Lolita’s narrator qualifies as) with men attracted to teenagers? Not that I think they should act on it, especially not if the girl is under the age of consent, and I think they need to examine themselves if they’re exclusively attracted to mid-teenaged girls, but no one blinks an eye when a guy checks out an 18-year-old, and the difference between her and a 17-year-old is a matter of months.
And ditto everyone else on the fat comments. Looking at that picture, it would never have crossed my mind to think she was fat, or chubby, or even, god forbid, had a tummy bulge.
Djur, not to disagree with your main point, but the Britney and teenage girl fetish has more to do with power and the fantasy of violation than it does with sort of a natural sexual attraction.
Uh-huh. And cheerleaders are big fetish objects because we all wanted to be the quarterback?
I think it’s more the way innocence and seduction get tangled up with our memories of those overwhelmingly sexual teenaged years more than power or violation fantasies, Amanda. But YMMV, chacon a son goat and all of that.
Jesus christ, the first fucking comment in the thread and somebody is taking a fat shit on the english language. Buy a god-damned dictionary. You’re every bit as bad as the kids in philosophy class who insists on referring to fetuses as “babies.” (Which is wrong, for the same reason calling an adult polar bear a “cub” is wrong.)
Pedophilia = sexual attraction to CHILDREN, i.e. pre-pubescent.
The word you should learn to use in cases like this is hebephilia, sexual attraction to adolescents.
And then there’s the oddly plausible theory that she was set up to bomb.
But wait a minute - aren’t big butts celebrated? I mean there have been enough songs written about them:
Sir Mixalot - Baby Got Back (I Like Big Butts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybfLRFacF-c
Queen - Fat Bottom Girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D99n9f3vU4
And that tummy bump - I know many guys (and girls for that matter) who really, really, think that’s attractive.
But for gawds sakes we can’t allow a star look NORMAL.
Whatr really irritates me is when super market tabloids pulish pictures of celebrities in swim suits who’ve put on a few pounds and they slap a headline on it “HALL OF SHAME”
Leave them the frigg be, they are normal and seeing cottage cheese thighs makes the rest of the female population deel better about themselves … oh I forgot, we can’t have that can we?
DJA, I read that link at first as “she was set up the bomb” and now in my head there is a horrible mashup of Britney Spears and old Internet memes.
Melanie:
All your brain cells are belong to us.
clytemnestra:
You’re reaching sort of far back for your pop culture references. These days, the anacondas of American want some only if you do not have buns, hun.
The word you should learn to use in cases like this is hebephilia, sexual attraction to adolescents.
Pretty sure “ephebophilia” is the preferred term.
Also, Jesus Christ, chill the fuck out. I know it’s crummy when someone shits all over your hobby, but really. There are worse things to do to the English language than conflating a pair of Greek loanwords with similar meanings.
I’m assuming the kid was talking down your hobby, because that’s the only explanation I can think of for what is very plainly an overreaction on the order of “They aren’t dolls, they’re ACTION FIGURES, MOM! GEEZ!”
It’s not just commentary in the US - I was outraged to see a “hilarious” cartoon of a fat Brit in one of our daily tabloid here in Oz. What really made me grind my teeth in anger was that this is a paper that runs faux concerned pieces about teenage eating disorders whenever it’s a slow news day. It’s disgusting. Poor Brit would appear to have one or two problems, but being fat is not one of them!
Yeah. Just ask these fuckwads.
Big ol’ sexism in advertising warning.
karpad,
Ad hominem attacks sure can be fun, can’t they? Perhaps I’m just a cantankerous old fuddy-duddy who is a lot harsher critic of those fumbling on his own team than of those tumbling on the rival team. As much as you wanted me to be wrong about something, however, both ephebophilia and hebephilia are commonly accepted spellings. Sorry, pal.
I also would argue that this is far from a trivial point. Allowing hebephiles to be called pedophiles carries the same problems as the tendency of (some) radical feminists to classify all heterosexual sex as rape: it dilutes the meaning of the word rape, and makes it that much easier to accept. (Intolerable, since apparently large segments of our society already find it quite acceptable.) Likewise, calling hebephilia by the name pedophilia threatens to pull pedophilia into the realm of acceptability. Every time someone were sexually attracted to a 17 year old (or a 19 year old, since adolescence is commonly defined as ending at age 20), they would be forced to view themselves as pedophiles. Before you know it, “I’m Spartacus”, and NAMBLA has seats in Congress*. Fortunately, those from whom we’ve inherited our language saw fit to hand us a distinction: pedophilia for the pre-pubescent, hebephilia for the adolescent. Indeed, had we not inherited these categories, it would have been prudent to create them.
* Okay, that’s a pretty extreme ending for my tale, but still, the moral response to pedophiles would certainly be softened.
Auguste,
Seriously? Ugh.
The fact that she’s a teacher reminds me of something that happened to a dear friend of mine, recently. She was giving her first lecture for the class she is teaching this semester, and she was bent over for some reason (futzing with a computer, I think), which one of her students took as a prompt to utter, “You have a nice [part of the body which is an unusual target for such comments].”* WHAT THE FUCK?! She’s your instructor! And even if not… creepy! Guh.
*Detail omitted to protect my friend. Fortunately, I’m sure this will be sufficient to protect her anonimity, because I’m sure there were at least 30 incidents like this one this semester. Contra Anne Frank, people are basically bad.
I refuse to play those games with the department stores, I walk right in and declare “Where are the clothes for fat women?”. I got tired of the euphemisms, “Plus sizes?” “Women’s?” “Extended Plus?” now it’s just, “Point me to the size 28’s and stand back, I’m about to do some damage!” If they want to infantilize thin women that’s their problem, I ain’t playin.
Britney is fat like I’m a toothpick! I’d kill to look that good in a sparklie bikini thing. She shouldn’t cover that up if she doesn’t want to, I say “Work it, girl!” She looks like an adult, she looks like an average woman, and if she showed up at my gym everyone would ask her what her secret is. Men at clubs would drop their drinks the moment she walked in. The entertainment industry is run by a bunch of aliens who have never seen an average woman, that’s all I can think of to explain the constant accusations of fat that normal sized women in entertainment have to suffer.
Unfortunately, we’ll probably see her doing a major mea culpa in six months promoting Slim Fast or Nutrisystem “I looked fabulous in my sparklie bikini, but thanks to Miracle Diet I’m back to looking like a boobless bag of bones. Thanks Miracle Diet!” Boo.
“Ad hominem attacks sure can be fun, can’t they? Perhaps I’m just a cantankerous old fuddy-duddy who is a lot harsher critic of those fumbling on his own team than of those tumbling on the rival team.”
Side note, I am really tired of idiots bandying about with “ad homnym” and “a priori”. I’ve noticed a sharp rise in this language since it made an appearance on network TV by political pundits. A fortiori you’re an egotistical twit Dennis. Am I as tired of this BS as I am of needlessly rhetorical questions? You bet your boots I am.
Who exactly would “the rival team” be? Please frame your response in a non-sexist way.
IBTP. Britney was marketed strongly for her sex appeal …because, you know, no talent… but Christina Aguilera, who can sing, got the same packaging.
Sorry “ad hominem”. It’s late.
Ok Dennis you want soemthing more current
granted her butt aint that big … but the lyrics suggest a big butt
I saw the “fat” comments the day after the VMAs with the picture you showed. I actually thought it was a file picture, an older one because I didn’t think she looked fat at ll. I was surprised to learn that was what they were talking about. Unbelievable! These stories did the impossible, which is make me feel sorry for her.
I agree with a lot of commenters it may just be a proxy to complain about her lifestyle. I do think it’s obvious that Britney needs to reinvent herself, but I’m not sure she has the maturity yet to do it.
Never been a big Britney fan, but damned if she doesn’t have some gorgeous womanly curves in that outfit. Brings to mind some of the models/actresses from the 1960’s when curves were more accepted.
I haven’t investigated fully, but I have heard a rumor that a part of the reason for the abysmal performance is that she had told the promoter not to have any comments on her children in the opening remarks, and the MC pretty much dragged her and her children through the mud in his opening remarks… so she might have been gobsmacked, and not stoned.
If that’s the case, this smells like a big nasty setup for the poor woman, designed to make her fail in order to feed the tabloids.
On behalf of the Patriarchy, I have an offer:
A woman will be just as hot -if not hotter- after 6 years and 2 kids, in exchange for men’s leering being socially acceptable. Deal?
Anyway, there aren’t many cross-cultural hotness factors, beyond some very basic things like waist/hip ratios. Trying to explain attraction in “natural” terms like fertility is just heading into a thicket of BS - as true as evolution is, using it to predict sexual behavior is one or two notches down from economics on the rigor ladder.
As for the puzzling media reaction, I can only recommend reading the Daily Howler to get an idea of the kinds of people calling Britney fat. Let’s just say truth or accuracy are not hard values to them.
Poor Brit. Hopefully she’ll get clean… without turning into a Jesus freak.
That rumour has been pretty much debunked by now. Silverman confirmed that Britney had no way of hearing what Silverman said before Britney went on to perform. In fact, if I’m not wrong, the show began with Britney, then Silverman came on.
The other (more credible) stories point out that 12 hours before she was supposed to perform, Britney was photographed staggering out of a club at 7am. She was supposed to reach Vegas for a rehearsal by 1pm, showed up by 4pm, and went straight up to her hotel room to toss back margaritas.
I don’t think anything was needed to make Britney fail. I’d say that she was doing a fine job of it her herself. Her recent performance at the House of Blues a few months ago is considered about what she’s capable of now.
Link to House of Blues
While I don’t think Britney’s fat, Amanda’s photo is the best of the lot that’s been circulating the interwebs.
At the bottom of this post [You Must Be This Thin >], I’ve transcribed some of the comments about Britney that I got off t.v.
I love the bit where since she’s a mom, she should be wearing an apron.
Jeebus H. Christ, society is just fucking fucked.
Britney may be a train wreck professionally, mentally and emotionally, but no way in hell is she fat. People who are ragging that bone are being disingenuous.
She no longer looks like the celebrity ideal — size double-zero — but she looks darn good for a WOMAN (not a prepubescent or adolescent) who has had two children in two years. Go down to your local Wal*Mart and you most likely will not see any women with kids who look that good.
Body-ideals and self-image are so warped these days that I want to scream.
I am not sure why this was treated as ok, and not as gross pedophilia.
I just keep thinking of Bill Hicks’s “Goat Boy” routine.
Amanda pretty much nailed it in that post. It has nothing to do with Britney Spears being fat. She isn’t. She looked pretty good in that photo (I didn’t watch the show). I still can’t figure out why anyone would care about Britney Spears’ weight anyway. Let her get fat or thin or whatever; it’s no skin off my apple.
Well it has been reported on the Stephanie Miller show several times this past week that Britney arrived 3 hours late for the VMA rehersals - which is why she didn’t appear to know what to do on stage. The choreographers had to ditch some of the more complicated parts of the performance because they had to be rehersed, and they weren’t able to.
They were also sweating bullets because of Brits 3 hour no-show. When she did show up she had a frozen margarita in one hand.
So I do think she was drunk. I actually feel sorry for her and hopes she get’s her life in order. She was too young to start a family and hadn’t found herself yet. Now her little boys are paying the price. Brits antics have only served to make K-fed look good. Which I didn’t think was possible.
Some guy: Thanks for proving the stupid. I predicted, when it came down to the line, that if being a stone cold sexist came into conflict with improving your chances of having healthy offspring, evo psych assholes would say that evolution would pick the former.
Thank you for proving my point. Next, how sexism trumps the laws of physics.
BTW, my money is on Britney Spears having that ideal hip-to-waist ratio that you fuss so much over. You’ll have to find another reason that you’re “programmed” to find excuses to hate on women.
I think it’s more the way innocence and seduction get tangled up with our memories of those overwhelmingly sexual teenaged years more than power or violation fantasies, Amanda.
Except we’re discussing specifically Britney Spears, who was sold specifically as an object of naive seduction, who was both highly sexual and yet, the male audience was told, knew nothing of men and sex and would provide the properly alarmed and fearful reaction if presented with a cock. “What’s that?!” Big eyes. Oh, so virginal and so fun to violate.
Dennis:
Your overinflated ego probably won’t take this very well, and we will be subjected to a long unnecessary diatribe on why grammar matters, but really, to paraphrase Fox Mulder:
“No one likes a grammar geek”
Especially one who can’t take his knowledge and put into constructive criticism instead of a profane laced rant.
Whatever loanword you choose, the average age of menarche in the US is now under 13, and 90% of girls are menstruating by 13.75 years. I think (devoutly hope) that most people here would agree that an adult having the hots for a 13 year old is teh ick, even if the 13 year old were sexually mature. So why is a 17 year old different, if both have reached sexual maturity?
Allowing hebephiles to be called pedophiles carries the same problems as the tendency of (some) radical feminists to classify all heterosexual sex as rape:
Name one. Just one.
And don’t say Dworkin. She said that the patriarchy doesn’t distinguish between rape and intercourse. (Intercourse is not the same as “sex”, since we’re splitting hairs.) She herself felt there was a difference and that the patriarchy, not her, was the one who didn’t distinguish. Which was a good point. In a society where women are all traded for sex, as whores or wives, the notion of consent is utterly irrelevant.
So please find me the feminists—multiple, actually, since you mentioned the word some and pluralized it—who say, “Despite the firm, bright line between rape and consensual sex in the patriarchy, I think biology, not culture, dictates that rape is sex.”
Karpad’s point, that you are splitting hairs to make sure that you feel better about yourself if you gawk at teenage girls, is what we like to call a “joke”, and apparently it hit a tad too close to home since you went so humorless. I would point out that historically the different between a “pedophile” and a “hebephile” is as gray and misty as the difference between rape and sex is in a patriarchy. We would consider raping 10-year-olds to be pedophilia in our culture, but in medieval Europe, that was a legal age to rape a young girl to force her into marriage. It’s called the “age of consent”, by the way, another demonstration that Dworkin was right, that traditionally the concept of “consent” had little to do with a woman’s actual desires.
I’m just so sick of the myth. I’m sick of people who conflate “observing a phenomenon” with “creating a phenomenon”. It’s like when you point out the toy to the dog and the dog stares at your finger. Surely humans have more processing chips than that.
“Allowing hebephiles to be called pedophiles carries the same problems as the tendency of (some) radical feminists to classify all heterosexual sex as rape”
If you’re referring to Andrea Dworkin, she didn’t. It’s a gross misinterpretation of her writing. Thank you.
Whoops, just a little slower than Amanda. But thanks for fleshing out the refutation; I just don’t have the energy anymore.
The Chicago Sun-Times ran a headline over her picture “Tele-Tubby”.
It was unreal. The woman has definition in her stomach, after having 2 kids in less than a year.
In the same issue, the Sun-Times ran a gratuitous shot of Giselle Bundchen in the gratuitious hottie part of the sports section.
Giselle looks like a rectangle. She had no waist. No hips. Her body type is “boy”.
Yet she’s hawt and a normal thin woman’s figure is fat.
Our culture is just sick. Skeletons with silicon sacks on them should not be the ideal.
The Chicago Sun-Times ran a headline over her picture “Tele-Tubby”.
It was unreal. The woman has definition in her stomach, after having 2 kids in less than a year.
In the same issue, the Sun-Times ran a gratuitous shot of Giselle Bundchen in the gratuitious hottie part of the sports section.
Giselle looks like a rectangle. She had no waist. No hips. Her body type is “boy”.
Yet she’s hawt and a normal thin woman’s figure is fat.
Our culture is just sick. Skeletons with silicon sacks on them should not be the ideal.
The local karaoke bar has more talent than she has.
Britney has been and always will be a producers and managers manufactured star.
She also has enough money to do whatever the fuck she wants for the rest of her life, even if she spends a fair amount of it on crap! Heck, she can hire and support multiple consultants to help her find herself and teach her proper umbelical interspection if need be.
In short, she probably should give up the performing crap that Disney manufactured her to do, acknowledge her shelf life is due, and go get a real life on or off camera.
So I do think she was drunk. I actually feel sorry for her and hopes she get’s her life in order.
You’ll excuse me if I choose to reserve my sympathies for young women with substance abuse and personal issues who DON’T have a couple of million in the bank.
She’s not fat.
But she looked fat compared to the dancers around her, and compared to herself just a few years ago. She wore an outfit that accentuated this.
But what was really offensive was that she gave a wholly unprofessional performance in front of an audience of professionals, after being picked to lead off the show. An insult to all of them and to the TV audience. Why not just spit on them? She’s no great talent, but she has, in the past, been professional. She deserves any criticism she gets for putting on a show like that.
Name one. Just one.
Fair enough - I’ve spied at least a dozen or so commenters who insist hetsex=rape in the comments section of I Blame The Patriarchy, even if Dworkin was supposedly misinterpreted (but wouldn’t refute the assertion when asked directly on camera).
Oops. Stupid spam filter said it didn’t go through the first time.
yeah, and I’m sure that the frat boys calling her “fat” don’t have an ounce of fat on them and all look like Olympic athletes in their prime….
Men are afraid of women. This is further evidence. We can handle girls, but women scare us. Scratch a misogynist and you will find a thin veneer over a quivering, thumbsucking little boy. Grow up guys.
In the same issue, the Sun-Times ran a gratuitous shot of Giselle Bundchen in the gratuitious hottie part of the sports section.
Giselle looks like a rectangle. She had no waist. No hips. Her body type is “boy”.
So are we aping the 1970s that much … first with a quagmire endless war, etc. etc. and now with a new Twiggy
Which raises a question: is there a psychological connection between the two: what happens to the public mentally when faced with a quagmire endless war and the resurgence of “rectangle woman” in the popular culture
Epi, it amazes me how much quivering fear is there. It’s the same quivering fear that drives a lot of war supporters. We see it, catalog it, understand everything about it….except the why.
I will say that a friend of mine recently pointed out to me why it is that white people need to stereotype black people as predators. It’s the fear that the plantation owner had hovering inside his mansion, surrounded by the people he oppressed. There’s always this lingering sense that the oppressed could strike back and they’d have a right.
It’s why there was so much national squeeing over Lorena Bobbitt and why MRAs dwell endlessly on the evil of women who save their own lives by murdering abusive men (which is often the only rational course of survival). The fear stems from knowing that your position over others is unjust and the sense that they know it and one day might just have enough of you. It’s also why there’s so much control of female sexuality—misogynists suspect women will flee them and their beds first chance we get.
You make a fine point, epistemology. I think it could stand to be fleshed out a bit (and I’m just the gal to do it!).
In my view, men are overwhelmingly taught that dominating women is the natural and inevitable course of events, and many proceed to act that way without examining why they’re doing it. Successful domination is more likely when you age women down a bit, both in appearance (costume and body–as long as you preserve boobs and butt) and in behavior (dependence and googly-eyed wonderment–see Amanda’s comment #54). A fatal case of cognitive dissonance sets in when fully-grown and more or less confident women break that mold, and like you say, all a man of such type can do is lash out, snap back, and suck his thumb.
I have a wonderful husband, but even he succumbs to the “Why can’t you be my sweet girl?” meme from time to time when I’ve bruised his ego.
Creepiest Britney defense evar?
Britney may be a train wreck professionally, mentally and emotionally, but no way in hell is she fat. People who are ragging that bone are being disingenuous.
She no longer looks like the celebrity ideal — size double-zero — but she looks darn good for a WOMAN (not a prepubescent or adolescent) who has had two children in two years.
And if she was presenting herself in public as a mother and a woman, she wouldn’t be hearing the backlash. Instead, she’s presenting herself as an A-list celebrity performer, a role she previously held due to her youthful physical appearance and intense marketing, and one whose mold she simply no longer fits. She has name recognition value at this point and nothing else.
In Japan, idol singers generally have a built-in expiration date, with very few exceptions who continue to be stars after they reach adulthood. American idols (no pun intended) don’t often grasp that concept.
Britney’s role model is Madonna, right? Perhaps she should investigate further how Madonna kept herself relevant by revamping her image AND musical style dramatically at regular intervals.
The problem is not that Britney’s body has matured. She’s anything but “fat.” The problem is that the celebrity body mold only stretches if the celebrity has other talents with which to get the audience’s attention.
@ Marcotte
I guess an evo psych asshole would say that if being a stone cold sexist came into conflict with producing viable progeny, over a number of generations stone cold sexism would give way to a lukewarm, gelatinous sexism. (Assuming there aren’t buttloads of other factors.) Did I prove that? Hey, were you making fun of my sex life, or lack thereof? How rude! This is the last place I’d expect to be denigrated for not racking up “conquests”!
Anyway, seriously, evo psych assholes have a long and glorious history of showing how evolutionary theory supports sexism, no trumping necessary. My point was that the weirdness of human sexuality defies simplistic explanations and needs to be viewed as a complex symphony of mixed motivations - fears, desires, taboos, compulsions, and so on. I don’t claim to know what the upshot of that is, though, so maybe everyone was ahead of me to start with. Or not?
To keep up with the edit: the hip to waist ratio thing is just something I remember seeing on Nova, I think it was. It was a consistent preference even for folks who lived in the Amazon and hadn’t been programmed. I have no idea what Spears’ ratio is. My personal criteria are more… varied.
And I don’t “hate on women.” To be honest (OH NOES!) I do feel conflicted and resentful about the pressure to play expected social roles, and I feel sad that my immature angst is matched by self-assured women being angry that men would want to be with an innocent, inexperienced and therefore nonjudgmental and accepting woman-girl. (Must we jump to “violation”?)
Anyway, it’s about looks, right? What can I say? On really good days, I find all people in the world attractive. Hopefully that will become everyday, it sure ain’t now. Until then, my point, as always, is that we’re all tyrannized by the human condition. Yes, you more than me. You win.
Oh, and BTW, I was criticizing the people who called Britney fat. The media is full of sick assholes, who, because the top echelons of power attract and breed sociopaths, are hired by sick assholes. I think my point was that trying to split hairs to find out “why?” misses the forest for the trees: condemn the sick, support the well, turn off the TV, focus on those we can help, not our own pain. Crap, now I’m preachy. WFT is wrong with me? Not even taking my own advice, lol. But in which way am I not taking it?
And in general, sorry for pushing your buttons, but I think it can be productive. Oh! Symmetry! I just remembered facial symmetry is also universally attractive. Weird.
@epistemology
Clearly us quivering thumb-sucking little boys haven’t been told to “grow up” enough. It’s good to know that if we can just “get over it” and “be a man” you’ll let us out of the mysogynist concentration camp.
I realize now that your kind of thinking needs to be spread. It is so very rare in our country, and could really help things, if only men were more worried about measuring up! That would take care of all these problems.
No more angst for me! I’m born-again hard! Hoo-aah!
Clarifying — am I suggesting that someone can’t be a mother and a woman AND an A-list performer? Of course not. “You made your babies, now stay out of the spotlight” isn’t a message that should be sent; if she wants to try a comeback, she should be welcome to do so.
What I’m suggesting is that with her changing body and the PR trainwreck that’s been her life for the last few years, she’ll have a VERY hard time convincing record execs to stick with her long-term instead of picking some 17-year-old to be the Next Big Thing, extracting money from her pubescent body with ruthless efficiency just as they’d done with Britney’s.
I’ve never paid much attention to gossip columns, though I used to read them when I had nothing else to do. I remember Britney being the media’s darling - they loved her. But lately, the gossip rags I read online HATE her. They’re just plain MEAN and come up with any and every reason to judge and hate her. I’m not Britney Spears fan, but it leaves me feeling the strong urge to defend her.
What’s really fucked up is that not only is she being called fat, but that people are actually enjoying knocking her down. The woman is obviously distressed- something that being a global pop icon at 16 would probably do to most of us. What is the deal with people finding such delight in watching others fail?
And I don’t think she looks good “even though” she popped out two kids. I think she just. looks. good.
Poor some guy. All he wants is to leer at women and not have to feel like a jackass, and now he’s getting picked on from all sides. Won’t someone have pity on the thumbsuckers?
What disappoints me is that, as others have alluded, people are talking about how “fat” she was instead of talking about the fact that she totally sucked.
I really don’t care what she looked like. I never found her attractive even when I was supposed to find her attractive. And I have liked some of her records, but that song sucks.
That, to me, is the issue. The rest of this is window dressing - and it’s window dressing which Britney Spears can eventually use to look aggrieved and get us all to keep talking about her and treating her like a pop star when in fact her big comeback single is completely awful.
Not that I think any of that is on purpose. I just think that one of the angles working here is that Britney Spears is a confirmed Life Member of the Celebrities Club and the only criticism allowed is the shallowest kind and no one is allowed to say “Gee, maybe she shouldn’t be a celebrity anymore. She’s kinda awful at what she does.” Because no one ever actually stops being a celebrity unless they pull the plug themselves.
Well, Britney did drop her kid on the head, and took him to the doctor a week later. And complained to every tabloid she could that the doctor had “victimised” her by asking “mean questions”.
She’s also alternately attacked the paparrazzi physically, while at the same time doing things designed to get their attention. (e.g. jumping into the ocean with only a bra and undies, wearing a shirt as a dress and flashing her bottom to the world in the process).
She also turns up for photoshoots massively late, and lets her dogs poop on ten-thousand dollar gowns.
Oh, and her Yorkie puppy has a broken leg, because she let her two year old play with it.
I would like to find a reason to defend her, but so far the best I can do is “mentally a toddler”.
She was definitely on drug.
if you watch the video, she has a hard time climbing stairs and any move that require balance-concentration.
———————————-
also from news:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=295990
The fallout from Britney Spears’ performance at the MTV Music Awards is becoming more bizarre with reports the starlet popped anti-depressants before the show.
Its really pretty depressing that in this country a woman can make a lucrative career out of nothing more than advertising herself as an ideal sperm receptacle.
Its really pretty depressing that in this country a woman can make a lucrative career out of nothing more than advertising herself as an ideal sperm receptacle.
Thank you, Junk Science! Isn’t this whole thing about a lack of compassion, really? Britney, fat chicks, creepy guys, a giant toilet of pain, swirling, swirling. I’m grateful you’re here to plunger us!
No. Women who have children and expect to maintain their personhood are not hurting anyone.
But being leered at does hurt. Read my first post. Leering at women can hurt your current partner (if you have one) and it can hurt the object of your leering. It feels disgusting; it feels like you’re public property and it’s creepy.
…but no one blinks an eye when a guy checks out an 18-year-old, and the difference between her and a 17-year-old is a matter of months.
Uh, depends on the guy. A 20- or 25-year-old checking out an 18-year-old, or even a 17-year-old? No eye blinked.
A 40-year-old guy checking out an 18-year-old? Sad, pathetic and creepy.
I understand the difference between a pedophilic appeal and an hebephilic appeal, and Britney’s was always a pedophilic one. As others have pointed out, she was dressed younger than her actual age but given markers of adult sexuality, all before the age of 18. She wasn’t dressed as a cute, normal 16-year-old (like, say, Hayden Panettiere). Britney was dressed as a 12-year-old or younger with her boobs trying to burst out of the too-small clothes.
A coiuin of my SO is really fixated on the whole “barely legal” concept and I asked him why one time. Basically he said it boiled down to the fact that women his age had “bad attitudes and too many expectations” and basically didn’t keep their mouths shut and look up to him in doe-eyed wonder like some little girl would.
In effect, he likes being able to call the shots and not having to take any lip (and of course, he liked the thought of the girl not being “used” and not really having much experience to measure him by). It wasn’t really based on physical attraction so much as almost purely based on having control and power and on his insecurities over not “measuring up” sexually.
Oops, *cousin. Spellcheck is not my friend.
…oh, and of course leering hurts. it reduces the person you are leering at to an object. It says “regardless of who or what you are in life, you are a woman and thus a sexual object to be ogled and enjoyed at my whim”.
Britney doesn’t look fat to me, but she does look kind of sexy if you like drunk women who don’t give the strong impression of having any brains at all. And, my dear dear friends (and I call you that only because I don’t know you), there is definitely a segment of the culture that likes exactly that. Why? Beats me. I’m still trying to figure out why anyone voted for George Bush for president the first time.
I like women who are smart and mature, but that’s just me. Never have been afraid of women, although even at the age of 49, and married my darlings so stop sending me those photos of yourselves proving math theorems at a blackboard, I still get wood when an appealing female starts talking about meropmorphic functions…and she’s built like a brick shithouse that has incorporated the Golden Rectangle.
.618 is Teh Hawt!
SilenceIris, I suspect that’s almost always the reasoning behind “barely legal” fixations. The men don’t want a grown woman with opinions, preferences and expectations. It’s too challenging.
HEY! Do that again!
When I was reading that line, Brick House began playing on the radio
(I kid you not)
I called her “slutty” after her video, “Toxic”, back in 2003. Now, I am defending Britney Spears from these wild, baseless accusations that she is “fat”. She is a mother and that is natural for a mother, even a first-time mother. I’ve seen women’s chests long enough to know what it looks like.
And I think she was sober. And I think she was tired of the paparazzi.
And as far as size numbers goes, the size zero is our problem. The MSM, especially the Augusta (GA) Chronicle, has a pro-anorexic agenda. And it is the MSM that is our problem — not overweight people.
And Sarah, I love women with opinions, preferences, and expectations, unlike other men who want women who submits to male authority.
There’s a weird dynamic among heterosexual men when it comes to talking about women’s bodies. It’s less about the women themselves and more about establishing status among their male peers.
On the one hand, there’s the bonding aspect - “I find this woman attractive, and you do too; therefore we’re both normal and we have something in common.” That’s the point of all those Hot 100 lists - we’re all supposed to agree on who’s attractive, and they provide lists of “safe” people to express attraction toward.
On the other, there’s this tendency to be ridiculously critical of women. I think the idea here is to make both men and women think, “This woman I thought looked perfectly fine isn’t good enough for him; that must mean he’s such a stud that he can easily do better.” I’m not saying it convinces anybody else; just that that’s the mindset.
On a (possibly) unrelated note, I see Evolutionary Psychology being used more and more these days as justification for sexist behavior (along with racist behavior). Anyone with a few quick minutes to google can pull up the numerous flaws with this branch of psychology and also uncover its obvious agendas. Have there been any Pandagon articles done on this subject, or articles done at other feminist sites? I think it would be a subject worthy of discussion.
I’m sure you do, Jovan.
I was specifically speaking about men who prefer barely legal stuff. Which, hey, you might. But it was a generalization about that kind of man.
Ick. I see/hear that kind of sentiment so much, and is one of the primary reasons I stay single. A friend of mine was engaged to an older guy in college - she was 22, he was 30 - and right from the get-go, I couldn’t help but look at him and think, “What exactly is it about you that a woman your own age won’t put up with?” Relationships with significant age differences creep me out; there are exceptions to the rule, but almost always seems like the man is looking for someone to manipulate and dominate.
SilenceIris, Feministing has covered a number of “studies”:
Women like pink while men like blue and
Women are better than men at grocery shopping
are two that come to mind. Ugh.
clytemnestra:
We have magical powers, but we are not your monkey.
For the uninitiated, I present the lyrics to Brick House:
Chorus:
She’s a brick—-house
Mighty mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out
She’s a brick—-house
The lady’s .618o39 and that’s a fact,
ain’t holding nothing back that Fibonacci Series.
She’s a brick—-house
She’s the one, the only one,
who’s built like a rectangle where, if you take out a square, the sides remain in the same proportion to one another
We’re together everybody knows,
and here’s how the story goes.
Verse:
1. She knows she got everything
a mathematician needs to get a man, yeah.
How can she use, the things she use
89-144-233, what a winning hand!
(Chorus)
Verse:
2. The equations she proves, the sexy ways,
make an old man wish for younger days…squared
She knows she’s built and knows how to please
Sure enough to knock a man’s slide rule to its knees
(Chorus)
Bridge:
Prove that theorem, prove that theorem now (repeat)
“What exactly is it about you that a woman your own age won’t put up with?”
BINGO. That’s what I always wonder as well. To me these pairings are a major red flag that the guy’s insufferable in some way or another.
People, let’s get this straight: grown men leering at a 17-year-old girl is just as creepy as the day is long, but it’s not even related to pedophilia. A 17-year-old is, biologically, an adult.
Let’s also get this straight: 40-year-olds aren’t as attractive as people half their age, at least not in a raw, hormonal sense. When you’re young, you may assume that 40-, 50-, or 60-year-olds are attracted to each other, like “Papa Bear” and “Mama Bear” in a storybook. But in the crudest sense of “attracted,” it just ain’t so. Both genders seem to remain attracted to people in the 16- to 25-year-old range, at least in a physical sense, even though it’s socially inappropriate, and in the case of males, has an unsavory, predatory whiff to it.
All that said, I agree that men should not leer at women of any age, particularly teenagers; it’s a gross thing to do. And also, for the record, I find many middle-aged women to have a radiant, wise kind of beauty that’s more intriguing than the sparkle of youthful sprites.
Britney’s not at all fat, but her get-up was ill-advised. It only went to further illustrate that she is, “at bottom,” an average-looking diner waitress from Macon, Georgia. And yet she’s invested her entire identity in her sex appeal. There’s something excruciating about that, and lots of people simply enjoy being mean. It’s hard for a decent person not to feel compassion for the gal. Her handlers should have advised against the entire gig.
People, let’s get this straight: grown men leering at a 17-year-old girl is just as creepy as the day is long, but it’s not even related to pedophilia. A 17-year-old is, biologically, an adult.
Let’s also get this straight: 40-year-olds aren’t as attractive as people half their age, at least not in a raw, hormonal sense. When you’re young, you may assume that 40-, 50-, or 60-year-olds are attracted to each other, like “Papa Bear” and “Mama Bear” in a storybook. But in the crudest sense of “attracted,” it just ain’t so. Both genders seem to remain attracted to people in the 16- to 25-year-old range, at least in a physical sense, even though it’s socially inappropriate, and in the case of males, has an unsavory, predatory whiff to it.
All that said, I agree that men should not leer at women of any age, particularly teenagers; it’s a gross thing to do. And also, for the record, I find many middle-aged women to have a radiant, wise kind of beauty that’s more intriguing than the sparkle of youthful sprites.
Britney’s not at all fat, but her get-up was ill-advised. It only went to further illustrate that she is, “at bottom,” an average-looking diner waitress from Macon, Georgia. And yet she’s invested her entire identity in her sex appeal. There’s something excruciating about that, and lots of people simply enjoy being mean. It’s hard for a decent person not to feel compassion for the gal. Her handlers should have advised against the entire gig.
Double argh to the blockquoting. The second paragraph is from me.
Godmonkey, I don’t find that to be true at all. I find a 30-year-old man more attractive than a 18-year-old. I get more genuine sexual attention the older I get, though I do get less abusive behavior that pretends to be sexual attraction, like guys following you and screaming at you. I suspect it’s not that I’m less attractive, but more self-assured that scares off some (though god knows I still get harassed a number of times a week) of the ugly attention.
Is the sexual attraction that creates harassment more real than the kind that creates flirting? I’m skeptical.
Which isn’t to say there’s a mental illness if you find a 17-year-old hot. Just that you can’t hide behind the “everyone thinks 40-year-olds are grody” excuse. It’s simply not true. Also, a significant percentage of people are sexually active into their twilight years, indicating that someone thinks that even at 70 and 80, you can be quite fuckable. My point is that while there’s a myth that there’s a “raw, hormonal” sexual attraction and a less significant, somehow less real “try to enjoy their personality” sexual attraction, I don’t think they can be separated so easily.
Weirdly, my point is that by the “raw sexual attraction” standard, Spears is right up there. I suspect, God, that your repulsion to her comes from the supposedly less real repulsion to her personality. And that a woman who looked like her but had a lively personality you found appealing would somehow mysteriously create more of that raw sexual reaction.
damn! I’ll have to take back that organ grinder costume then.
As I said above, when said 17-year-old is being dressed even younger than her biological age to be more sexually appealing, that’s where the pedophilia kicks in.
Finding a 17-year-old dressed as and acting like a 17-year-old to be hot? Creepy if you’re old enough to be her father, but somewhat understandable.
Finding a 17-year-old dressed as a 12-year-old but acting like a 25-year-old hot? Do you really not see the weirdness built into that?
Amanda,
I agree with everything you just said. I overstated my case to make my point. I myself am vastly more attracted to thirty-something women than to 17-year-olds. But I sure as hell notice them at the grocery store, the train station, etc. My main point was that this is not pedophilia, nor even a resident of the same continent as pedophilia.
Except we’re discussing specifically Britney Spears, who was sold specifically as an object of naive seduction, who was both highly sexual and yet, the male audience was told, knew nothing of men and sex and would provide the properly alarmed and fearful reaction if presented with a cock. “What’s that?!” Big eyes. Oh, so virginal and so fun to violate.
I dunno - when I first saw the video of her in the sexualised schoolgirl video, “knowing nothing about men and sex” wasn’t the impression I got, but again YMMV. I *suspect* that particular trope is a little more complicated than you’re considering, but I keep coming up against the fact that my opinion is just my opinion - I don’t speak for all men.
Let’s also get this straight: 40-year-olds aren’t as attractive as people half their age, at least not in a raw, hormonal sense. When you’re young, you may assume that 40-, 50-, or 60-year-olds are attracted to each other, like “Papa Bear” and “Mama Bear” in a storybook. But in the crudest sense of “attracted,” it just ain’t so. Both genders seem to remain attracted to people in the 16- to 25-year-old range, at least in a physical sense, even though it’s socially inappropriate, and in the case of males, has an unsavory, predatory whiff to it.
Heh - took a 23 year old out to dinner yesterday night and listened to her bitching about the several guys her own age who’s she’s playing around with (and occasionally pointing out that “wanting to fuck her” and “being a good guy” were not necessarily mutually exclusive points). I think I’m getting under her skin because she knows I find her sexually attractive, she’s made signals - and I’m just not trying to get her into bed.
Yes, older people find the young sexy. But we’re capable of thinking with our big heads as well as our little one - more so than those in their teens and twenties.
But, Jesus, the way society makes young women so insecure is incredibly sad.
Personally, I think the only thing stopping people that lust after 17 year olds from (admitting that they’re also) lusting after 13 year olds are legal consequences for doing so. I don’t buy the whole “drooling over cheerleaders isn’t pedophilia” argument as a result. Remember, when the law permitted it you had much older men marrying girls in their early teens.
Mnemosyne,
Yeah, I’ll concede that the whole schoolgirl-fetish-thing is patently unhealthy. There’s some question of degree, though. For a while about 10 years ago, you’d see the schoolgirl look sported by the occasional downtown hipster. So is it less sick if it’s ironic? (Austinites may be aware of Satan’s Slaves, who have used it to performance-art effect.) Can we be be sure that Britney herself wasn’t somewhat ironic? (Sadly, she now commands the past tense.)
There are just so, so many elements of the Britney saga that are grotesque, and to me, sexuality is really the least of it. If I were her manager, I’d tell her to disappear for five years and then re-emerge as a campy, self-aware gay icon. The poor gal’s a punching bag, and yet she really is kind of contemptible in some ineffable way. What a sad spectacle.
We actually had a conversation about this in my class yesterday. I brought up that people were saying she looked fat, which absolutely floored me. That’s fat?
My students kept saying, “Well, she might not be fat but she shouldn’t have worn that outfit,” to which my response was consistently, “Why?” No one could give me an answer. They bought the B.S. hype.
They also got fussy with me when I noted that sculpting the muscles in our bodies isn’t taking care of them but artificially shaping them. I’m skinny as hell, but I eat well (usually) and walk a few miles a day. I take care of my body, but I don’t sculpt it. And because I won’t sculpt it, I’m perceived (among gay men, at least) as not taking care of myself, or caring about myself.
The male gaze fucks shit up big time.
Brittney isn’t fat; but her outfit by comparison with what the others are wearing make her look like she has an extra 10 lbs on her. Plus I think she’s probably put some weight on her upper arms–can’t tell whether it’s muscle or not from the picture. If she hasn’t been working out she may be losing muscle definition.
If you’re surrounded by people with thinner figures than you, you are going to look plump by comparison. End of story.
Thanks, MsKate. I slept late today.
The only explanation I can muster for the hostility to the idea that some feminists hold this belief, when presumably most readers (myself included) here at least occasionally visit the radical blogs where these people comment is some tendency toward the “No true Scotsman” fallacy. If your hypothesis is that Dworkin was just too offended that someone would misinterpret her so badly to respond, maybe that’ll go through (but please forgive me if I roll my eyes.) If your hypothesis is that all the “hetsex=rape blog” commenters are MRA trolls, then… Well, that’s actually not completely ridiculous, now that I think of it, but still, I think the better explanation is that some feminists actually believe that all heterosexual sex is rape.
Sorry if you still need to write me off as an obvious 54-year old MRA looking to excuse his lust for 15 year olds. If you’re going to do that, you’ll want to ignore the facts that I’m 24, and generally not the type to cruise the high school parking lot for potential dates.
When feminists say “sex is rape” they don’t mean sex is inherently rape, but that the culture has poisoned sex so that sex = rape in misogynists’ eyes.
Sex is not necessarily rape. It’s supposed to be a mutually pleasurable activity. But when you’re living in a patriarchal rape culture, things get fucked up.
Satan’s Cheerleaders, I mean. (Satan’s Slaves was a biker gang associated with the Manson family.)
I think it’s better to respond to the arguments presented here rather than bring up a position (het sex = rape) that I don’t see being presented by anyone in this blog. It may be a position held by some feminists… perhaps… but it’s a strawman here.
Eileen,
Go check out the original context in which I brought it up. (post 39)
I was actually taking it to be a position that people here would disagree with, and arguing that calling hebephilia pedophilia is would have bad social consequences on par with social consequences we might expect from calling hetsex rape. So, it’s not as though I was sticking anyone in this thread with that position… in fact, if anyone here holds it, they have a legitimate complaint, since I took the wrongness of that position as an unargued-for premise.
Sex is a commodity and women control the supply-side. This has led men historically, on a culture-wide basis, to fear and loathe women’s sexuality and to attempt to exert control over it — while congratulating themselves for protecting women’s “honor.” The whole set-up revolves around men’s sexual insecurities and their resentment of her biological trump card.
So in this sense, I suppose I can see the “sex is rape” argument, but it’s an incredibly incendiary and alienating way to state it. It’s frankly obnoxious.
Moreover, things do get better. Women in the U.S.A. and in the West in general have more control over their own sexuality than could have been imagined 100 years ago — or than can presently be imagined by women across vast swaths of the Earth.
I also think there’s a huge social class issue with a lot of the Britney-bashing. Somebody upthread said she was “at bottom, just an average-looking diner waitress from Macon.” You check out some of the mockery that’s thrown at her on sites like Go Fug Yourself, and it’s just dripping with contempt for her allegedly trailer trash ways. I mean, tell me if I’m totally wrong here, but a lot of this smacks of finally having an opportunity to put the grubby little prole in her place, now that she doesn’t give the leering pervs boners anymore.
It just seems crafty to take a response thread with complicated feminist opinions about the commodification of female bodies, adult and otherwise, and introduce the old ’some feminists think sex = rape’ canard.
And I’m sorry, but the distinction between hebephilia and pedephilia doesn’t seem to be important to anyone but the ‘hebephiles.’ As has been pointed out, the attraction to sexually immature (and they are) adolescents probably has more to do with power than with physical attraction. Most well-adjusted people are attracted to adults, not adolescents.
Bella, I agree. I’ve heard a lot of Britney bashing that’s basically white trailer trash bashing.
I actually thought she looked pretty good… but then I’m in South Carolina!
This is just so depressing for young women–many are undoubtedly thinking “if she’s fat, what hope is there for me?”
Likewise, fat jokes last night on MAD MEN, and really, she was just a girl with a big butt.
What’s the matter with everybody these days? It’s like fat-psychosis, yet the average American is gaining weight. I honestly think the two go together…
This sort of thing goes on all the time in Japan. I always get vaguely nauseaus about the idea of watching any music clips from there, as that all that get posted usually are young women usually pretending to be vulnerable little girls. Usually with lots of bright, fruit suggestive colors.
Thing is, Japan’s pretty big about jazz, and I do like more adult performers like Amuro Namie or Ostuka Ai. So I check for HD performances non-the-less.
Of course people are going to say she’s fat. This is a woman who doesn’t write music or lyrics, sings poorly, is a fair dancer and doesn’t play any instruments. She’s a successful performer because she uses the one skill she does have in spades: sexual expression. Whether it’s in the dance moves, song lyrics, facial expressions… you name it, this woman WORKS IT. When your popularity is based on how well you gyrate and flaunt your wares, your body and how you use it is gonna be the basis of most of your criticism. She probably wouldn’t have received quite as many absurd insults had she bothered to put on the kind of quasi-strip-tease show she typically has, regardless of whether she has the teensiest bit of mommy-tummy. From what I’ve been told and from what I’ve seen on TV her shows have historically been very good. But she went on stage and moved her body like she had a migraine and scoliosis. Pretty bad. People watch Britney to get caught up in the sex heat. When a performer doesn’t deliver to his or her audience, naturally the crowd gets vicious. Everybody else jumps on cause they can. People love pouncing on celebrities when they’ve done something trashy enough to pull them off their pedestals, and Britney is over the limit in that regard.
I always wonder, if men were objectified as severely as women, what would happen to how they treat women? Like, if every day there were articles in People about celebrity bald spots or love handles or secret photos taken of speedo-clad male cellulite on beaches, would guys wake up and think, gee, I don’t like being treated like that, so I should stop treating women like that!! There are obviously men who are self-aware enough already to understand this or at the least act civilly, but what about the primordial stew that doesn’t get it?
deep6,
What you’re describing happens, but it happens when we gay men look at straight men in a way that might in any way indicate desire or attraction. We turn them into the objects of the male gaze, we turn them into women.
The result: gay bashings, murders, and the “gay panic” defense.
I may be reading this wrong (its very possible), or taking it out of a historical context, but I would tend to think that many women who are/were in a position where sex is/was treated as a commodity do/did not feel that they are/were in control of the supply. Of course, historical views don’t usually take women into consideration, nor their (historical) lack of control over their own destinies. Implying that women had control over something that was commodified and rigidly controlled by men makes very little sense.
“Sex is a commodity and women control the supply-side.”
Yeah, right, because women may embody sex, but we don’t desire it in the same way men do. And we het women NEVER see attractive men as the embodiment of sex for us. No, of course not.
You go on thinking that way, Godmonkey. Stick your head in the sand and pretend that women aren’t eyeing you up and judging your sexual desirability. And pretend while you’re fucking a woman (if, in fact, with your shitty attitudes you could actually get a woman to voluntarily fuck you) that she isn’t rating your ability…or really feeling anything at all. It must make your life so much easier.
MAJeff, don’t hog it. Some guys get it from girls for whatever odd reason.
I’ve had my share of leering and drooling from women . I’ve even had my ass gropped by the lunchlady when I was in college. Got the standard fake “wasn’t me” with a smile.
Oddly enough, my sex life is nil. I’m good enough to oogle and paw over, but not talk to or ask out? Lemme tell ya, it certainly makes me wonder if I have a repulsive personality at times. Or am I viewed as safe to act out of fantasies? It’s not the pretty young ladies that leer or grop. And it’s not at more anonymous places like bookstores or malls or whathaveyou. At school or at work. Too many people just don’t get laid, I think.
An interesting question: to what degree is male objectification of females cultural and to what degree is it biological?
Not pontificatin’, just askin’.
OMIGOD. She is not fat! Britney has had two children in a short period of time. People need to know that being emaciated is NOT sexy.
Shah8, what you’re desribing is how it feels to be a woman. Sucks, huh?
Godmonkey, didn’t someone already try to play the Evo Psych card further up in the thread?
Crys T,
Predictable response. The reality is men will schtup a sheep if that’s what it comes to. A man’s answer is damn near always “yes.” It’s when the woman says “yes” that the lovin’ commences. I suspect it’s the cultural recapitulation of something evolutionary, but there’s no way to know that. A very cogent argument can be made that it’s strictly cultural. Personal insults would be a poor basis upon which to build such an argument, however. I want women I’m fucking to be feeling-less ciphers? Trenchant stuff there! Solid scholarship.
Of course women get horny and of course they size up men lasciviously. For the sake of our species, I should certainly hope so!
My statement was hamfisted and inelegant, but life itself is hamfisted and inelegant. Live long enough and you’ll come to know this.
Bingo. I think one of the reasons this has all been so upsetting to me is that I’m almost exactly the same age as Britney and about the same size as her - not overweight, not even a double digit size, but not skinny. Every time someone calls her fat, it’s like they’re calling me fat. Which is ridiculous and oversensitive of me, I know, but it’s hard to shake.
Also, I gotta add, regarding relationships with age differences: I met my husband when I was 21 and he was 29, and he could not possibly be less interested in controlling or manipulating me. Some relationships with age differences have odd or creepy overtones, but it’s a stretch to suggest that they all do.
SarahMC, yup. Enough to bite back at guys who think that leering at women and groping is a compliment.
It’s a whole lot more likely to mean that they are losers and know so themselves.
shah8,
there’s a difference between being ogles by a gay man and by a woman. Being looked at by a gay man places a straight man in the position of women. Not so when being ogled by women. It’s about the overal construction of gender and the power of the gaze.
It’s also one reason why I avoid eye contact. I don’t want to give straight men a reason to beat the shit out of me.
Does that mean I’m going to have to apologize to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore for what I said? Oh dear.
So, whenever you are offered sex, you, Godmonkey, take a woman up on her offer? If any female offered you sex, you would take her up on the offer? Anyone? Use your imagination. Anyone.
Depends on the attractiveness of the person offering? Age? Marital status? Their personality? Whether you want to have further contact with the person?
Would you have sex with a crazy destructive stalker? Someone with a history of loudly revealing particularly intimate details? Someone with bad breath? My grandmother? Someone that hadn’t showered in days? A co-worker? Your supervisor? Someone underage? Your cousin? Your best friend’s wife? A semi stranger who said she wanted a kid, but that you wouldn’t get hit up for child support?
Would you take up a stranger on the offer of sex…at midnight, the night before a big exam the next morning? If you were sick? If you were throwing up? If she had a herpes outbreak?
Men aren’t idiots. And I doubt you, or many men, would actually shtup a sheep. Or have sex with someone you found particularly unattractive, or if the timing was bad, or if you didn’t want to get involved. Sex isn’t logical, but most people (horny men included) have the basic instinct for self preservation that stops them from doing stupid, self destructive things. I think the male objectification of women is more cultural than anything.
Sometimes I wish what happened to Mel Gibson’s character in “What Women Want” would happen to all men, for a month or two. I especially like the bedroom scene where he learned that he wasn’t all that in bed, that a woman’s breasts are indeed attached, and he didn’t have the foggiest clue how to please them and that he was being rated every day. (we are just do it on the sly)
*IF* that were true, then there’d be a huge industry comparing men to each other, criticizing their appearence and fitness (in the biological sense), and men would be the ones with more elaborate, striking clothing, makeup, etc. Not unlike peacocks, deer, lions, cardinals (the birds), stag beetles, etc etc. You will notice that this is not the case.And in fact your argument seems to be, “women control access to sex, so men resent it and take control away from women, which proves that women control sex” — a pretty short loop of illogic IMHO.
Furthermore, something is only a “commodity” if it’s the same regardless of source or supplier — which is only the case if humans are commodities, and love *is* the same as rape.
Yeah, I’ll concede that the whole schoolgirl-fetish-thing is patently unhealthy. There’s some question of degree, though. For a while about 10 years ago, you’d see the schoolgirl look sported by the occasional downtown hipster. So is it less sick if it’s ironic?
It’s less sick if it’s an adult doing it. Again, a teenager dressing like a 12-year-old and acting like a 25-year-old is hitting different buttons than a 25-year-old who dresses like a schoolgirl does. I do think that a huge part of the appeal of Britney Spears in her heyday was socially-approved pedophilia. Not hebephilia, but straight-up pedophilia in an “acceptable” package.
I dunno about that. I have heard guys admit to shtupping a hole in the back of the sofa or a knot in a tree (seriously). I don’t know if I want to relate the stories my ex told me about growing up in Southern Texas.
Also the phrase, “The girls get better looking at closing time.” did not come about in a vacuum. Come to think of it, some guys got better looking at closing time too, but that was a long, long time ago.
Sweet Jeebus, haven’t they ever heard of baby oil and their hand? People never cease to amaze me, and the more I study them the less I understand them.
What the hell is she going to do with the rest of her life? It’s easy to predict that she’s going to end up dead in a few years, but I’d really like to see her have some chance at a life.
Well, PITW, Felagund. Marianne Faithfull started out as a wispy-voiced, producer-created teenaged Mick Jagger fuckpuppet and then torpedoed what career she had left in a series of highly embarrassing chemically-fueled auto-da-fes, and then came back as a serious artist when she was well past 30 and nobody was paying attention anymore. So I wouldn’t shovel the dirt on Britney’s head just yet.
And yes, I think they knew she was going to implode on camera when they signed her up.
“Fat” has now officially become an all-purpose stand-in insult for “anyone we don’t like who’s not bone-thin or a total hardbody.” Bleh.
I guess they wanted some variety, or they, themselves, weren’t a very good fuck.
some guy, if you’re really feeling that bad about yourself, I suggest you get some help instead of taking it out on women. Mockingly asking if it’s OK to leer at women doesn’t make us care a whole lot what happens to you.
A man’s answer is damn near always “yes.”
Except when it isn’t. Like MJ pointed out, I very much doubt you would sleep with any woman at all who asked. It’s easy to blame women for not liking sex when you’re not getting laid as often as you’d like, because then you don’t have to wonder if maybe the real problem is you.
But haven’t they heard of slivers? There’s a reason, having grown up in Minnesota, I won’t have sex outside–Mosquitos! People be batshit insane.
Thank you, MAJeff. Jeez, the mistakes I’ve seen people (both genders) make …
…or a knot in a tree…
Um, splinters????
Okay, if I had a penis that would give me nightmares.
MJ, no, I haven’t done those things. Honest. No, really, I swear. I mean it dammit! Look, not even when I was 21, all right?
Maybe they could even have a contest to see who can throw the ball through the hole the most times. But it’s true, men are encouraged to be insecure about other things besides their looks. They’re encouraged to seek the highest position possible in the pecking order and to endure all manner of anxiety in the name of material acquisition — lest they fail to be seen as “marriage material.” Women are encouraged to engage in rigorous quality-control of their sex appeal, in order to differentiate their product in the marketplace. (You’re right, commodity is the wrong word. Product is more accurate. And no, I don’t actually regard people of either gender as commodities or products; it’s just an analogy for a macrodynamic that plays out much more messily and gloriously, with lots of variations, in real life.)
No, she deserves criticism for putting on a show like that. She doesn’t deserve to be called “fat” b/c she couldn’t dance and lip synch professionally.
Uh, no. It’s not.Men like to pretend that they are always ready to have sex, but in reality, they aren’t. They get tired, sick, busy, etc.
Talking to friends and even my mother (which is all very anecdotal, I admit) we’ve all had our male SOs claim that all we have to do is ask, when the reality is we want sex more often than they are willing to perform.
“A man’s answer is damn near always ‘yes.’” is just part of the meme. It’s the answer men are supposed to give to prove they aren’t gay. “I’d hit that” is the same thing.
No basis in reality.
P.S. I had lots and lots of sex in my 20s and early 30s and now I’m married. I have exactly zero personal bitterness toward women and I never, ever said that women don’t like sex as much as men. Historically, though, they’ve been cast in a gatekeeper role — that’s a dynamic that’s hard to deny — and I’m willing to entertain the notion that they’ve been placed in that position by a fearful-of-women-for-whatever-reason patriarchy. However, my bias is that the dynamic was developed evolutionarily somehow, even though we’ve outgrown its usefulness.
Can I just point out that this myth that men always say yes to sex seems designed to make women who’ve been turned down for sex by men (and many, many women, even hot women, have) feel bad about themselves? It also discourages women from propositioning men because it increases the potential humiliation of being rejected.
It’s weird; so much of the way men talk about sex creates a culture where it’s much harder for them to get any.
I had lots and lots of sex in my 20s and early 30s and now I’m married. I have exactly zero personal bitterness toward women and I never, ever said that women don’t like sex as much as men.
That’s great. You’re still advancing the “I would have sex with anyone who asked, and it’s women’s fault if I don’t get any” argument, and as it’s a line favored by lonely whiners, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get confused with them.
It’s weird; so much of the way men talk about sex creates a culture where it’s much harder for them to get any.
I don’t think it’s even really about getting sex for some of them. It’s just about having a reason to bitch and feel sorry for yourself because everything in life doesn’t always go the way you want it to.
MAJeff, the God of Biscuits
Then you have to find a place where there aren’t any mosquitos,
such as broad daylight in the middle of a Kansas wheat field, mid day on the side of a mountain in Colorado/Massachusetts, a unseasonable warm snap in the middle of a Massachusetts winter.Yeah, well, fine, except 1) I did and do get plenty, 2) I’m willing to allow that men themselves have cast women in this role. (In fact, the worldwide chastity mania is administered almost solely by men. If I weren’t getting any, I’d be quicker to blame Abrahamic religions than women.)
Which leads us to a very real paradox. Men want rampant sex and yet historically (though times are a-changin’ in the West) place expectations of “virtue” upon women. The question is why. There’s clearly a fear there.
It’s possible that, since women gestate children, early human females had a vested interest in being more selective about their mates. This “trump card” could have led to a situation in early civilization where men sought to wrest control of the entire realm of sex, which they effectively did. Now they made the rules. Paradoxically, as Kali pointed out, it almost certainly meant they got laid less.
I certainly don’t state these things for facts.
It’s so embarassing when men try to use Evo Psych to explain or justify their behavior.
Evo Psych is a flawed pseudoscience that white men use to justify philandering, oppression of women and racism towards minorities. That’s really, truly all it is and even bringing it up makes you look like a dumbass…so give it up already.
It’s when the woman says “yes” that the lovin’ commences.
Women’s “yes”es have only recently even been taken into consideration, and even so consent doesn’t always matter.
Can I just point out that this myth that men always say yes to sex seems designed to make women who’ve been turned down for sex by men (and many, many women, even hot women, have) feel bad about themselves?
Yeah, I agree. It’s weird — we get two messages. One is, hey, men aren’t picky, all women have to do is show up, hyuck hyuck. The other is along the lines of “Ewwww, that bitch has fat thighs!” And we get them at the same time, sometimes from the same people.
Just a terrific ‘girl-tummy’
Sexy…oestrogenic…not fat.
When did this thread become about Godmonkey?
It’s possible that, since women gestate children, early human females had a vested interest in being more selective about their mates. This “trump card” could have led to a situation in early civilization where men sought to wrest control of the entire realm of sex, which they effectively did.
Honestly, this makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s a lot like something I’ve been trying to articulate. (Not that my acceptance of it makes it true, or a valid scientific argument. I’m just saying.) That point would have come through a lot better without the “men will fuck anything with a hole” hyperbole favored by resentful losers who can’t grasp that everyone’s experience is not exactly like theirs.
However, I do think I’d be extremely reluctant to fuck all the time if birth control didn’t exist, no matter how much I liked fucking, because no amount of fun would be worth years of pregnancy and a houseful of children unless you really, really wanted that. It probably would be necessary to take away all my other choices to get me to live like that.
That said, I’m definitely not offering my own opinion as proof of anything.
If there is some biological value in being more selective in choosing a mate, then how should that affect my libido? A lower libido in women would make sense. Less chance of the hormones overwhelming us and a better chance of making a selective mate choice, right?
So why do I have a higher sex drive than my partner? We’re the same age, both healthy. He even works fewer hours than me. He’s supposed to want more sex than me, right? You said that men want ‘rampant sex’. He tells me that he feels guilty about not wanting more sex.
Why is there a range of sex drives in the population? Why would some women have a higher sex drive then some men? If you’re right about men wanting rampant sex, then shouldn’t most men have higher sex drives then their partners, even accounting for some individual variation?
Here’s a hint: whenever you look at evo psych- remember, we’re social creatures, we’re very adaptable. There are a lot of reproductive strategies out there. And even supposedly monogamous songbirds cheat.
I think your assumption that ‘men want rampant sex’ is total crap. I really wonder what the results of surveys about libido and sex frequency would be like if you pretended to hook both men and women up to polygraph machines. I also wonder how you got the ‘men want rampant sex’ idea when the expectation of virtue for women has been traditionally intertwined with the usual themes of original sin, temptation, and bob only knows how many centuries of women being told we were wanton, weak creatures. Women being compared to Eve and demonized sexually as the ‘rampant’ ones has been around for a hell of long time as part of the virtue and control idea. Much longer than men being the ‘rampant’ ones.
As far as the “women are more selective” thing, most reputable biologists (as opposed to evo-psych morons) think that the actual strategy employed by our ancestresses was to have multiple partners at the same time. That way, if a pregnancy did occur, none of the males could be sure that he wasn’t the father, so all of them would have an incentive to make sure the infant grew into an adult to pass along the genes that might be his.
Of course, once it became a matter of passing actual material goods (like farmland and sheep) along. men got a lot pickier about knowing whether or not they were the actual biological father. Clampdowns on women’s sexuality go hand-in-hand with agriculture and animal husbandry — it barely exists in hunter-gatherer-type societies that don’t accumulate land or livestock that they want to pass along to their children.
In other words, despite what evo-psych types want to tell you, for women, civilization basically sucks.
hrmn…. having seen a couple of relationships with age differences which worked out well,and being in one which has a 12 year gap (and that one going on eight years), I mislike being told there is something wrong with both me, and her, with the imputatation that it’s because there is something which other women can’t put up with.
Since I’d had successful (if ultimately failed) relationships before that (defined as lasting more than a year; and being more than just dating/having sex in that time), and those with women older, younger and the same age as myself (though none as great at the present 12 years) I don’t think that’s the case.
Then again, I know about exceptions; and tend to have my doubts about relationships where there is a large gap.
I also know that I wasn’t looking for a “sweet young thing” and one thing sort of led to another.
Age is a funny thing. One of my high school teachers had a rule; which he shared with all his classes: Never date anyone more than two years different from yourself; because in your teens that’s a large experiential difference.
He also said that at 18 (because you are legally an adult) you are free to make any sort of mistake you like.
My father was ten years older than his second wife (she was 30 somthing when they got married). That was a disaster.
My grandfather was forty+ years older than his third wife (divorced, widowed). That worked out just fine.
I know that I didn’t end up where I am today because I was with someone weak-willed, or who didn’t know better, she had four people vying for her affections (and her ex was still trying to win her back; said ex is female, so the pool was varied).
What’s the point… if I still have one it’s that things have to be taken for themselves. Yeah, there’s a tendency for the age gap (esp. male older) to be about power, but it isn’t always.
The relationship will be what it is.
Can I just point out that this myth that men always say yes to sex seems designed to make women who’ve been turned down for sex by men (and many, many women, even hot women, have) feel bad about themselves?
You know, that’s an interesting point. I do know that the first time my fiance turned me down for sex, I was devastated. I had internalised the “men always say yes” thing so completely that I was sure if he was turning me down it must be a problem with me. He had to sit me down and explain that men are human beings who get tired, stressed, etc., not sex robots who can perform on demand. (And I was embarassed as hell at needing the lesson… I’m supposed to be a feminist and here I am getting sucked in by gender stereotypes. But they’re so freaking insidious, it’s hard to get rid of them).
I don’t get where anyone could call her fat. The only thing i found unattractive about the whole thing was the extent to which she seemed to be phoning the whole thing in. Beyond that, Amanda has it right, she actually does still look quite hot…now if only her music was any good (but hey, at least she’s not Fergie, whose lyrics could well be a war crime unto themselves)
It’s when the woman says “yes” that the lovin’ commences.
Dunno. My experience is that lovin’ commences when both parties are saying, “Yes, yes, sweet baby Jesus, yes.” But it’s always been my opinion that sex is better when it commences as a result of mutual desire and consent, rather than one party being harrangued until s/he halfheartedly consents.
Which is not to underrate the value of the tease, but I suppose that’s kind of a different category with implied mutual desire in spite of… Screw it, maybe I’m just having better sex than this guy.
Oh yes. See, the goal of the patriarchal hawtness mandate is not to make you so disheartened that you just think “Well screw it, since I’m never going to be worthy anyway I might as well just give up”, though that is exactly what some women ultimately conclude. But it wouldn’t do at all if women en masse decided to do that.
It’s goal to hang that hawtness tantalizingly close to us - just 10 more pounds on South Beach and I’m there! and I can get a boobjob on credit! - only to cruelly rip it away - geez if Britney Spears is a fat ass I must be Jabba the Hutt.
But then we will be quickly reassured that men will fuck anything, despite evo-psych’s mighty, mighty grip on male sexuality. Even our fat nasty cottage cheese riddled > .7 waist to hip ratio selves, so we should at least show some gratitude and give it up so they’ll have live masturbation aids while they’re thinking about Britney circa 1998. And of course, if we’d all get in better shape and get Brazilian waxes, they’d find us ever so less repulsive.
I’ve watched the debate between Godmonkey and the others with some interest. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but ror what it’s worth, I interpreted his statement [about the men being (in effect) a default yes and the women being the conditional yes, (the two together being required, etc.)] as follows (even though I concede that he didn’t say so): `All things being generally equal and at any given time it is the man who is more likely to overtly want sex and to request it; all things being generally equal and at any given time it is the woman who is more likely to have the veto as to whether coitus comes’ (ahem). Hence Godmonkey’s rather provocative phrase “sex is a commodity and women control the supply-side”, his meaning (I believe) being that all things being equal –in our North American / Euro culture and absent rape or coercion — it is the woman who decides whether or not something is going to happen.
What are doing you doing listening to a sports talk station anyway, Amanda? These guys are assholes to begin with — it’s very likely that you’ll hear a misogynistic remark when you tune into male-hormone talk radio.
Focusing on this aspect of the post-Spears appearance is peculiar. Most of the discussion has been on the Sarah Silverman misogyny that followed the Spears stoned-out “dance” segment.
That’s where the discussion would start, unless one were deliberately trolling the sports-talke airwaves to find offensive males to delightfully skewer.
…and quantity control, too. If they provide their product to too many customers — or enjoy distribution too much! — they are called “sluts”, “whores” and the like.
You know, that’s an interesting point. I do know that the first time my fiance turned me down for sex, I was devastated. I had internalised the “men always say yes” thing so completely that I was sure if he was turning me down it must be a problem with me. He had to sit me down and explain that men are human beings who get tired, stressed, etc., not sex robots who can perform on demand. (And I was embarassed as hell at needing the lesson… I’m supposed to be a feminist and here I am getting sucked in by gender stereotypes. But they’re so freaking insidious, it’s hard to get rid of them).There’s a manipulation angle to it, as well, within dysfunctional relationships. Quite a few of the divorce files I handled had wives winnowing sex down to nothing, then demanding it out of a clear blue sky. Any failure of the man to be a “sex robot who can perform on demand” was then used either overtly or subtly to denigrate his masculinity and exert control. Sometimes, too, in the absence of that effort to denigrate the man’s self-confidence and self-esteem would be shot anyways, as, internally, he would berate himself for the failure to be a “sex robot who can perform on demand”, which many (most) men expect themselves to be because the metaculture tells them that they are and must be so.Oh yes there is, and has been since she was eleven or twelve in the first movie. I had the misfortune to hear about it all the damn time when I used to frequent a male-dominated video game message board.
I seemed to have screwed up the blockquotes. My own excerpt starts at “There’s a manipulation angle to it…”.
I think that actually is one of the reasons there is been such and emphasis on the control of women through many cultures. It’s the underlying fear that most women have a bigger sex drive than most men, and they don’t know what to do with that.
Although my husband who just looked over my shoulder and read what I was posting days that it has to do with “raising other men’s babies” - and the innate desire to see your seed flourish. Which if resources are limited, and you are raising your children and someone else’s children, your children are receiving less because of the burden of another’s. One sees this in certain birds. Control one’s woman/women, you can be reasonably assured at only raising your own children/seed. From me – this is an interesting thought when you consider what cultures/religions have done to embrace adoptions of orphans and what other cultures/religions have not done, leaving them to fend for themselves.
I have heard the somewhat evo psych view that when presented with a bevy of fuckable women (as in harem) any man, even on with a low sex drive, will rise (pun not intended) to the occasion. For an example they point to a lion’s pride
Cantabridgean;
You’re right that H.H. was attracted to prepubscent girls, but that’s exactly how Britney was dressed up to be in “Baby One More Time”. Yeah, if you want to split hairs, she was actually seventeen, but with her (then) stick thin figure, pink ribboned pigtails, and school girl uniform, she could easily have passed for twelve. As Amanda and others have stated far more eloquently, it’s the “innocent little girl” who was being marketed, not the teenager.
Slyth;
LOL! Poor you. But again, Emma Watson (alias Hermione) isn’t primarily portrayed as a sex symbol (except among really desparate game geeks, that is)
The t-shirt, like this skit on SNL, is funny because it’s the exception, not the rule.
It’s just a media pile-on. The chum’s been the water for a year or two now, so this was inevitable. Had she been 5 lbs lighter, they’d have been saying she was anorexic. I didn’t read the media comments as being representational, I suppose.
hrmn…. having seen a couple of relationships with age differences which worked out well,and being in one which has a 12 year gap (and that one going on eight years), I mislike being told there is something wrong with both me, and her, with the imputatation that it’s because there is something which other women can’t put up with.
Since I’d had successful (if ultimately failed) relationships before that (defined as lasting more than a year; and being more than just dating/having sex in that time), and those with women older, younger and the same age as myself (though none as great at the present 12 years) I don’t think that’s the case.
Then again, I know about exceptions; and tend to have my doubts about relationships where there is a large gap.
I also know that I wasn’t looking for a “sweet young thing” and one thing sort of led to another.
Age is a funny thing. One of my high school teachers had a rule; which he shared with all his classes: Never date anyone more than two years different from yourself; because in your teens that’s a large experiential difference.
He also said that at 18 (because you are legally an adult) you are free to make any sort of mistake you like.
My father was ten years older than his second wife (she was 30 somthing when they got married). That was a disaster.
My grandfather was forty+ years older than his third wife (divorced, widowed). That worked out just fine.
I know that I didn’t end up where I am today because I was with someone weak-willed, or who didn’t know better, she had four people vying for her affections (and her ex was still trying to win her back; said ex is female, so the pool was varied).
What’s the point… if I still have one it’s that things have to be taken for themselves. Yeah, there’s a tendency for the age gap (esp. male older) to be about power, but it isn’t always.
The relationship will be what it is.
tzs:
And if you’re in a group of people surrounding a person with a thicker figure than all of you, you are all going to look skinny by comparison.
Why does that make her “fat”? Why the one-tiny-size-should-fit-all presumption?
Besides, the dancer to her right (our left) doesn’t look radically different in size from Britney to me. I didn’t see the show, though, so I can’t be sure.
clytemnestra:
A baseball grandstand in a snowstorm.
Crikey. As an Actual Evolutionary Biologist™ I get really frustrated with Ev-Psycho rationalizations because they make so little biological sense. I’m going to use Godmonkey as an example, here, but he’s hardly alone.
Both logically and biologically, male humans *can’t* be both naturally unselective (willing to fuck anything) *and* picky (only interested in certain types of women). That the rules of patriarchal society require this contradiction is IMO ipso facto proof that those rules are not based in natural evolution, because evolution is not illogical (at least, not in that way).
Not every natural sexual system is the same. male Mallards are pretty much as Godmonkey described men: willing to stick their dicks into anything that holds still long enough. Swans mate until death do them part.
But what you should notice is that male Mallards are strikingly beautiful and the females are dull & camoflaged; both male and female Swans have display plumage and behavior. How the species looks is a sign of how it acts.
So, if humans *naturally* acted like Mallards, we wouldn’t *naturally* care how Britney looks. If we *naturally* care about her looks, then we must be *naturally* more like Swans — though we’d also be likely to be looking at Justin Timberlake in a sparkly thong, too.
My conclusion? Human sexual behaviors incorporate features that are not only un-evolved, but which are directly contrary to what we expect in a naturally-evolved system.
I am saying “naturally evolved” because I’m coming to suspect that humans are domestic animals — that is, that we have a long history of not always choosing our own mates, which has given us some of the biological features of pets or livestock.
Well, she’s not fat, but that’s gotta be one of the LEAST sexy (read: plug ugly and designed to make anyone wearing it likewise) outfits I’ve ever seen on anyone, male, female, or otherwise.
Crikey. As an Actual Evolutionary Biologist™ I get really frustrated with Ev-Psycho rationalizations because they make so little biological sense. I’m going to use Godmonkey as an example, here, but he’s hardly alone.
Both logically and biologically, male humans *can’t* be both naturally unselective (willing to fuck anything) *and* picky (only interested in certain types of women). That the rules of patriarchal society require this contradiction is IMO ipso facto proof that those rules are not based in natural evolution, because evolution is not illogical (at least, not in that way).
Not every natural sexual system is the same. male Mallards are pretty much as Godmonkey described men: willing to stick their dicks into anything that holds still long enough. Swans mate until death do them part.
But what you should notice is that male Mallards are strikingly beautiful and the females are dull & camoflaged; both male and female Swans have display plumage and behavior. How the species looks is a sign of how they act.
So, if humans *naturally* acted like Mallards, we wouldn’t *naturally* care how Britney looks. If we *naturally* care about her looks, then we must be *naturally* more like Swans — though we’d also be likely to be looking at Justin Timberlake in a sparkly thong, too.
My conclusion? Human sexual behaviors incorporate features that are not only un-evolved, but which are directly contrary to what we expect in a naturally-evolved system.
I am saying “naturally evolved” because I’m coming to suspect that humans are domestic animals — that is, that we have a long history of not always choosing our own mates, which has given us some of the biological features of pets or livestock.
“I think that actually is one of the reasons there is been such and emphasis on the control of women through many cultures. It’s the underlying fear that most women have a bigger sex drive than most men, and they don’t know what to do with that.”
Well, 150-200 years ago, that used to be the accepted reasoning. And not that know all that much about Christianity, but I must say the the whole Adam and Eve cast out of Eden story makes more sense in a world where women are thought to have as much or more of a sex drive than men.
As other people (Mnemosyne) have pointed out, there’s a lot of evidence against the “not wanting to raise other people’s kid’s” theory. So the evolution argument isn’t as strong as a lot of it’s proponents like to think it is.
Dear mods:
I think I went to modland twice. Plz dump one of the duplicates.
“I am saying “naturally evolved” because I’m coming to suspect that humans are domestic animals — that is, that we have a long history of not always choosing our own mates, which has given us some of the biological features of pets or livestock.”
That fits nicely with the thought that occurred to me after my last comment, which is that it’s technically possible (but not necessarily likely) for women’s sexual drive to have decreased dramatically in a short amount of time (since the rise of agriculture) through selective breeding. But that, at that point we’re talking about conscious breeding practices for purposes that are only tangental at best to survival, which isn’t what most people think of when evolution is discussed.
Joanne-
partner male or female? soory I gotta know for if male my mind keeps referring to the “shrinkage” problem.
Ok, she wasn’t called “fat” because of the view in the blog post you made, Ms. Marcotte. She was called “fat” because of views like those in this blog post. [url]http://tomandlorenzo.blogspot.com/2007/09/soanyone-else-think-its-really-over.html[/url]
Obviously she’s not fat, she’s an adult who has given birth a couple times and isn’t a stick figure anymore. Whoever picked out the wardrobe might have been setting her up, because she isn’t carrying it off. And reports said that she herself was the first to run offstage, having seen herself on the giant monitors, sobbing that she looked like a “fat pig.” Very sad, because obviously she’s not fat, she’s just not a stick figure with a hardbody and a six-pack anymore. But packaging yourself as a stick figure with a hardbody when you aren’t and don’t, and you have a hideous weave and have been flashing your genitals in public with the likes of Paris Hilton, well what do you expect?
I feel sorry for her, and no less so because some of it is her own doing/undoing. Normally I don’t even pay attention to stories about these sexpot types but this one seems to be everywhere.
As to men being attracted to her when her videos first came out and she was so young, well she was packaged to do just that. Those videos were dripping sex from the beginning; at that point I thought it was much more the fault of people who promoted her that way. Now she’s a grown-up, she needs to stop trying to keep up that image as it was never good to begin with.
But the whole “women’s sexual drive to have decreased dramatically in a short amount of time (since the rise of agriculture) through selective breeding” is in another frame the “nature vs nurture argument.”
How can we say it was due to “selective breeding*” when for hundreds of years women in many cultures were told that their sexuality was/is evil.
. . . try having a decent sex drive when you are told that to enjoy sex is sinful, that mans fall was “your” fault, that you are just a field for your husband to sow, no one gives a flying fuck if he beats you even before fucking you, etc. etc. etc.
Nuture or the absence there of could be and can be just as responsible, if not more so, for the decrease in female sex drive.
And yes, from personal experience getting beat by your husband DOES decrease your sex drive.
But the whole “women’s sexual drive to have decreased dramatically in a short amount of time (since the rise of agriculture) through selective breeding” is in another frame the “nature vs nurture argument.”
If anything, “not always choosing your own mates” would select for the male sex drive to be tied to aggression and rape to be used as a form of conquest in war. Cf the offspring of Genghiz Khan, Bosnia, just about every war throughout history.
By definition, this particular factor wouldn’t have much, if anything, to do with female desires.
“If anything, “not always choosing your own mates” would select for the male sex drive to be tied to aggression and rape to be used as a form of conquest in war.”
It could do both, inasmuch as women who were more promiscuous would be punished more harshly or at least considered non-mate-able material. Which is what has happened quite often in our past. Men may be willing to sleep with promiscuous women, but their offspring have a much lower chance of survival. Likewise, mass rape as a weapon of war works as much because it destroys the the enemy population as because it replaces their genetic material with yours.
But again, all speculation.
clytemnestra,
Thus my “technically possible, but not necessarily likely” line. My point was not that the bad evo psychs are right, but that even in the unlikely event that they are partially right, a self-manufactured evolution of the species does not have the meaning they are trying to say it does. Domestication is vastly different from “natural selection.”
One thing that hasn’t been noted yet, interestingly enough, is the fact that in our culture “fat” is used as a euphemism for (and often in conjunction with) “lazy”. Britney Spears is not fat. But the gossip press, in tracking her every move on this, have made it abundantly clear that is is lazy. She therefore was going to be called fat. If her performance had been first rate I wonder if the “fat!!!” calls would have been so pronounced. Personally, I don’t think so; people would have spoken positively about that exact same body.
I really don’t think that the past 10 millenia (since beginnings of agriculture) has allowed much scope for changing the human genotype, by either natural or deliberate selection. The exponential growth of our species’s population indicates we’ve pretty well deferred natural selection, and any notions this or that wacky bunch of authoritarians have had of “improving the breed” or subordinating Others would have been badly undermined by ignorance of biology and even more fundamentally, by human resistance–what Teh Authoritays would call “cheating.”
How does one measure a woman’s sex drive, for instance, without giving her lots of chances to demonstrate it, thus undermining the “reduce womens’ sex drives” project by increasing her chances of getting pregnant? What if it turns out that any genetic component of the female sex drive is linked to male sex drive?
Anyway any such scheme would be resented and resisted and subverted. The authorities would cheat too; the abstract “good” of accomplishing some scheme of “taming” women for instance would hardly outweigh the immediate charms of a more spirited one right here and now.
And human generations are much longer than those of just about any animal. To get results by selective breeding alone would require millenia of fanatically sustained efforts. Societies just don’t last that long, not without tremendous change, and the sort of society that would do such ruthless things with human beings would be particularly unstable. The basic paradigm of ruthless aggression may persist, but the thugs in charge would always be being overthrown by other thugs with other notions.
The only physical evolution that has clearly taken place involves resistance to particular infectious diseases, and that is generally not linked to any other characteristics. (Sometimes it is, as with sickle-cell anemia, but not usually.)
Biologically we are the same as gatherer-hunters ten thousand years ago.
I mentioned this group on an above thread, but fortunately the talking-head media has not seen Beth Ditto of “The Gossip”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt3UzZ-KaTA
It is long past time that critics look at music quality and soul, and not focus on superficial body-plastic images. Either you like the music or you don’t.
Music is after all about music, not appearance.
“Fair enough - I’ve spied at least a dozen or so commenters who insist hetsex=rape in the comments section of I Blame The Patriarchy, even if Dworkin was supposedly misinterpreted (but wouldn’t refute the assertion when asked directly on camera).”
For the record, I saw her argue it on camera. Phil Donahue show, her Intercourse book tour.
Most of the comments I’ve read on IBTP reflect A.D.s interpretation of this and not yours.
I’ve watched the debate between Godmonkey and the others with some interest. I don’t have a dog in this hunt,
Wha-?
Look, go away, Seeker. Just fuck off. Right now. Go on - LEAVE! Door, ass, hit on way out.
I mean, shit, if you’re going to let a little thing like that stop you, you really don’t BELONG here! Next off, you’ll be insisting your comments be relevant and contribute meaningfully to the interplay of ideas. You wanker.
PiaToR: Fuck you right back. Newsflash, creep: there are no mandatory positions here, nor it is mandatory to take a position on a matter of debate or take sides between posters. Any person is perfectly entitled to comment on the debate or the phrasing itself.
Your purportedly shocked and abusive comments are especially loathsome and hypocritical given some of your past contributions. I declined to jump on the attack-PiaToR when you went off on a rape apologist tangent some time ago. It’s clear, though, that I was wrong in giving you the benefit of the doubt of good faith in your repeated ill-statements. You really are an abusive, pernicious, shitty-minded, confrontational little creep, aren’t you? So kindly go fuck yourself with a splintered oak tree and bleed all the way to the nearest gutter where you belong.
While you’re worried about shrinkage, I’m thinking about frostbite. No, I wouldn’t particularly welcome it falling off!
MAJeff -
worried? I never said I was worried, just was wondering about it. I never considered frostbite because I wasn’t thinking that it would be *that* cold.
I hate the argument that men just can’t help themselves and that women control sex. It’s just another argument to excuse bad behavior by men. I do not believe that men can not control themselves. I think these arguments are really insulting to men’s intelligence. I can also recall similar arguments about sexual harassment - that one should really take it as a compliment about one’s attractiveness.
Clytemnestra,
if it’s snowing, it’s that cold.
but, shrinkage will only usually aply to the non-erect state (and the scrotum). At least as far as I know.
Implausible deniability.An interesting question: to what degree is male objectification of females cultural and to what degree is it biological?
The question is based on a false premise, that these things are quantifiable and that they don’t influence each other. Clearly, they do. For instance, a man is aroused by a woman’s charming smile or fascinating wit.* His body sends hormonal signals creating a biological reaction. His body, pleased with its reaction, moves “sparkling wit” up the chain of command in sexual attraction.
The idea that you can separate the mind from the body is basically false. The mind is part of the body.
*I know, according to the armchair evo psychologists, it doesn’t happen. But I’m working off real world observations.
The only explanation I can muster for the hostility to the idea that some feminists hold this belief, when presumably most readers (myself included) here at least occasionally visit the radical blogs where these people comment is some tendency toward the “No true Scotsman” fallacy.
Why don’t you ask? We’re offended because a) it’s a lie b) spread by anti-feminists to discredit feminism c) that distorts an important observation that would help women. We dislike this lie for the same reason biologists hate creationism. The fact that a handful of cranks on the internet have weird beliefs says nothing about feminism as a rule. Dworkin was not a random internet crank, but a respected feminist thinker. I don’t agree with everything she says (I don’t agree with everything pretty much anyone says, though), but I cannot stand having her writings misinterpreted by people intent on excusing the rape culture. Seriously, if you look around at the people who are spreading this lie about “all sex is rape”, they’re generally the dudes agitating for de facto legalized rape by making it utterly impossible to prosecute.
“Men want rampant sex all the time”?
No. (Some) men want other men to THINK they want rampant sex all the time. It’s display behavior to other males, to shore up their place in the pack. No relationship to actual sex drive.
Predictable response. The reality is men will schtup a sheep if that’s what it comes to. A man’s answer is damn near always “yes.”
Wow, so I’m uglier than a sheep, since I’ve been told no?
Wow.
Wow.
I disagree that I’m uglier than a sheep, for what it’s worth.
Women’s “yes”es have only recently even been taken into consideration, and even so consent doesn’t always matter.
What Anne said. Also, your nifty little truism denies the historical reality that women ask, as well. Which is how my uglier-than-a-sheep self has received the “no” that is impossible for women that aren’t utterly repulsive, as it must be for every woman not-me.
I thought I was okay, honestly. I’ve had boyfriends, and they don’t seem desperate, like they have to go below sheep level to get laid.
How is it possible that a biological female woman with a trim figure and no deformities can be uglier than a sheep and get the impossible nos? Seriously, I’m dying to know.
The vast majority of men don’t have unstoppably rapacious sex drives any more than most women do. Leafgreen has it, it’s just a certain kind of bullshit that some males use for one-upsmanship. And the man than cannot control his sex dive is childish or weak, not virile.
I’m amazed that some people seem to believe that shit. Maybe no-one really does.
(Some) men want other men to THINK they want rampant sex all the time.
But I don’t think it’s other men they want to think they’re desperate and hard up enough to fuck sheep. What I love most about that truism is the idea that self-pity and grossly insulting the object of your desire are somehow attractive, or at least sympathetic. I would fuck a sheep, ladies, so no matter how ugly you (rightly) think you are, I’ll sleep with you anyway! Now fuck me, for god’s sake!
seeker, for what it’s worth, I think Phoenician was joking. I agree with everything you said, though.
Amanda, I would like the record to reflect that I also disagree with the contention that you are uglier than a sheep.
PiaToR: Fuck you right back.
Nice offer, sweetie, but you’re not my type.
seeker, for what it’s worth, I think Phoenician was joking.
Shhhh. If he/she is unable to parse someothing as obvious as the second to last sentence, better to have he/she show it now.
Amanda, I would like the record to reflect that I also disagree with the contention that you are uglier than a sheep.
Depends on *which* sheep.
The answer is fairly simple - they prefer the sheep for the same reason they masturbate; it’s considerably less complicated than dealing with a real person. Especially an opinionated, mouthy, intelligent person.
The sheep is just more authentic (for them) than the right-hand-and-baby-oil route.
You might be correct. If so, PiaToR should give it up and leave the jokes up to those with a functioning sense of humour.Mark Foxwell:
I agree with you that since agriculture selection human populations have been mostly selected for resistance to infectious diseases, though I also think there’s been a lot of dietary selection, too.
When I talk about domestication or artificial selection of humans, I’m mostly thinking of arranged or socially-pressured marriages, which are very common in hunter-gatherer societies and so probably go back 70,000 years or more, long enough to have evolutionary significance. (They have *no* equivalent in nature: arranged marriage is AFAIK the only sexual behavior that is both common and uniquely human.)
I’m *not* talking about deliberate or consicous “breeding”, because I don’t think most important domestications have been deliberate. Basically, to get evolutionary change selection has to be *consistent*, and anything people have to think about or intend isn’t going to be consistent enough. It’s the things we consistently do without conscious or deliberate thought that will make the difference.
For the record, I saw her argue it on camera. Phil Donahue show, her Intercourse book tour.
I have to admit that I didn’t see that particular event. I did see a 60 minutes segment and another interview where she just sort of waved her hands around and equivocated in a way that implied that it was self-evident. As if it didn’t need explanation.
Perhaps she changed her approach to being confronted with the distortion? From what I saw, she seemed willing to own it, even if it wasn’t what she had really intended to say.
Then again, I was watching it the first time around, not being presented with the selected version for a studies class.
But she looks hot. The weird thing is that 99.9% of people bitching about her want to look like that/fuck someone who looks like that.
Hot is a subjective term. She isn’t fat. However, I never found myself attractive to her. Her music and personality came off as too market driven.
What is disturbing is people were rooting for her to fail. She performance was terrible and people won’t drop the subject. It makes insecure people feel good when a famous person falls apart in public.
*gag* oh please.
You know, if there’s so much confusion about Dworkin’s own feelings about her writing, it’s possible to, I dunno, look around and find out the facts.
Shorter Dworkin: I don’t think sex is rape. I’m saying men who cannot conceive of a sexual interaction that isn’t about dominance and submission can’t distinguish sex from rape.
But sure, yeah, Phil Donohue and vague memories.
Saying that Dworkin believed all intercourse was rape is like this: Say you walk upon a man beating a dog. And you say, “Oh my god, everyone, this man is beating this dog!” And you get thrown in jail for animal abuse. Surely we’re smart enough to tell the difference between observing a phenomenon and creating it.
More great quotes from this interview:
It’s compulsory to defend people who misread Dworkin by blaming the victim of the misreading, by pointing out various ways she used hyperbolic language to make her points, etc. But let’s get away from that and play a little game. What if, as a pure hypothetical, people misinterpreted Dworkin’s writings on intercourse because they don’t want people to reimagine a sexual landscape where mutual pleasure and affirmation ruled the day instead of male dominance and humiliation of women?
Clytemnestra, re the snowstorm, it was a male partner. We had been walking for some time and were actually kind of overheated in our parkas.
Plus we didn’t really undress, just unzipped and aligned. The parkas did some shielding, too. So exposure to cold air was minimal and, uh, intermittent.
Hmm, now I can’t wait for winter!
what exactly is dominant or not dominant when it come to two person intercourse?
wouldn’t it mean complex analysis of personality, pleasure, social structure of meaning, etc..?
Seems to me a very diverse category of experience that can’t possibly be structured in simple theory.
That would be a pleasant but unrealistic belief, squashed. It’s possible to experience intercourse outside of the dominant conquest paradigm, but only because feminist critics like Dworkin pointed out that it’s structured that way so that people can find alternatives. It’s blatantly silly to suggest that all of our history has made every interaction about male possession of women and pretend that intercourse wasn’t also constructed that way. Plus, there’s plenty of evidence that intercourse is seen as possession/domination. Men describing “having” women. Virginity is a big deal because the idea is that a woman who has sex is owned by the man who fucked her and therefore anyone else who fucks her afterwards is dealing with used goods. We refer to women as “used up” if they have a lot of sex.
Really, the more you think about it, the more that denials that sex is constructed as an act of male possession and dominance sound very silly. It’s like this:
Which isn’t to say that I am on-board with anti-BDSM or anti-porn activism per se. I think it gets more complex in a lot of cases. But the standard issue, vanilla sexual paradigm is that sex is a man possessing and dominating a woman. It’s finally changing, but again, only because feminists protested.
squashed?
have you, um, looked around the internets lately?
with the safesearch feature turned off?
FALSE. She has never said this. She sets the record straight in a 1995 interview with British novelist Michael Moorcock. And in a new preface to the tenth-anniversary edition of Intercourse (1997)
The interviews I remember seeing with her were subsequent to her congressional testimony, where said comment was erroneously attributed to her. At the time (1986ish, I believe?) she didn’t seem to DISown that statement. That may have only cemented the attribution in the public mind.
I agree, having gone back through the material in question long ago, that Dworkin never did say what she was said to have said. HOWEVER, having lived through that time and thus lacking hindsight, it did appear that she wasn’t terribly interested in brushing it back until much later on (which was referenced, above, e.g. Donahue show). All of this, which took place in the years before many here were aware, led to the popular perception that she said something outrageous and wouldn’t back off of it.
Most people don’t go back and read that congressional testimony or her actual writings on the subject and find out otherwise. That and her early “whatever” response why it got stuck on her so badly. Sometimes, how these things play out is as important as how they eventually work out.
That she didn’t push back probably has as much to do with the motivations of her critics as anything else. How do you push back against people lying against you? It can feel impossible—just asking them not to lie won’t work.
The problem is focusing on Dworkin as the source of the problem, when she was the victim. Oh, maybe she could have handled the lies better or maybe protected her ass more, but really, in the end, if people want to lie about you and others want to believe those lies (which is *exactly* what’s going on here), then there’s not much you can do.
I suspect that Dworkin was thrown into the light by here testimony and really didn’t know what to do with the mainstream media. There was clearly a learning curve involved, as she did become much more adept at dealing with the extreme misattributions by the time she did her book tour.
Who amongst us would know what to do with that situation, either? Did you?
MAJeff, the God of Biscuits
actually when growing up in Denver snowing meant that is was warm enough to stave off frostbite for 1/2 hour to many hours because the cold cover keep the radiant heat of the city on the city and that the cold was/is a dry cold….
Not like here in NE. You don’t have the feeling of cold cutting right through you and that you’ll never be warm in Denver. If anything I have jokes with my father that you hear a great sucking sound in Denver, especially when it is really cold, as all the moisture in exposed skin is sucked out.
So it’s not always *that* cold when it snows.
Oh, and here’s that tub of lard Marilyn Monroe in a bikini:
http://staff.washington.edu/gcthomas/Images/Marilyn/mm_bikini.jpg
It’s not just that, it’s the idea in this culture, unlike a man who moves from boyhoood to manhood via growing older, “womanhood” is bestowed on a girl through her first intercourse with a man. Men are therefore the “keepers” of (what is in most cultures) a natural age driven progression. No intercourse, no womanhood, no personage, no maturity. Combined with what Amanda has written about virginity and used goods, makes, keeps them in a such an overarching state domination and determination is diminishes every stage of a womans life.
I’ve been in a similar situation, except I had more recourse to fight back directly (since having a blog makes it way easier for people to go to the source than ever before), and still I feel helpless to a degree. Huge numbers of even well-meaning people assume I “hate” Catholics. Trying to address the complexity of the situation (it’s not Catholic-hating to oppose church dogma that oppresses actual Catholic people) runs off huge numbers of people, so it’s like pissing in the wind.
Dworkin had fewer resources, more lies, and she was addressing a far more precarious situation. If I were describing it, I’d say the situation is that we have this social fiction where men are encouraged to view sex as domination but women and polite society is encouraged to ignore and deny that reality. Which creates a delicate balance (and weird situations like women blatantly denying that a lot of porn trades on the degradation of women while a significant percentage of male consumers eagerly seek out porn that advertises that it’s got more and uglier degradation in it) that could be easily upset. Saying that intercourse is constructed as male domination of women is uncontroversial so long as you are supportive of that construction, but to speak it out loud in a critical voice is like farting in church.
Which is all to say that I don’t blame her if it seems she quit resisting, since resistance was useless. Her best bet was to keep speaking and hope that she had a positive impact, and I think that’s happening, if in a way that she didn’t anticipate. It’s the most that any of us can hope for. We can’t control what people do with our work; it’s best to accept this and work on what you can control, which is the quality and your sense of integrity.
The only men who whould chase after Andrea Dworkin are the guys with harpoons who sailed with Captain Ahab …
PS Britney looked fine. Well, physically, at any rate. Better than the backup dancers, who looked like rejects from a KISS reunion tour.
a lot of porn trades on the degradation of women while a significant percentage of male consumers eagerly seek out porn that advertises that it’s got more and uglier degradation in it
Which reminds me of this essay at Nerve.com, about a man’s observations of changes in porn. Warning for possibly disturbing porn descriptions.
ps. I have no interest talking about who is misreading who. since I haven’t read the book, I can’t say I am inclined to take one position or another. sounds more like talk radio hoopla.
anyway,
I read the quote more carefully.
Right I agree that the dominance model is widespread. And more often women gets the shorter end of the bargain in term of sexual relationship in that model.
(ie. woman: why can’t I do this or that thing. you always want me to do this. man: well cause I like it. … then come all the justification, explanation, most of ten an interpretation of male dominant model. ) I venture to guess this conversation happens more often than the other way around.
My grip about the superficial reading of that quote. That sexual interaction shall be about “egalitarian”. An equality, presumably some sort of pleasure contract structured around constructing equal distribution of power. (eg. A go on to, next B. B get one spank for each A single spank…. etc etc.)
What if sexual relationship is nothing more than an interaction, an exchanged not merely the actual physical act, but also understanding what those act means and continuous evolution of the exchange. There is framework of interaction of course. Maybe it’s about power, maybe it’s about senseless pleasure, maybe it’s exploration, maybe even material bargain … bla bla… who knows… it varies and ever changing.
bottom line I find changing dominance model into egalitarian model is nothing but adjusting parameter of a stodgy model.
why not reduce the entire power relation model as mere one form of sexual interaction out of infinite possibilities. If I have to put my money, sex takes precedence over all other human interaction. It’s primary drive. … well unless we are talking single bacteria or some sort of weird mushroom.
btw, forgot to post.
I wonder why nobody mentions the obvious about Britney Spears.
It’s obviously a pretty basic form of exploitation. The industry is grinding her and spit the pieces. In that particular performance, she was not ready and fell apart.
on bigger picture. She is artistically exhausted and needs to renew herself. She didn’t have a chance to grow up. She is still doing music like she is 18 yrs old.
etc..
Oh, God, that was horrible. Truly terrible.
If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my bunk.
Drat - I hate screwing up html tags.
Oh, and here’s that tub of lard Marilyn Monroe in a bikini:
http://staff.washington.edu/gcthomas/Images/Marilyn/mm_bikini.jpg
Oh, God, that was horrible. Truly terrible.
If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my bunk.
Oh FFS now we’re reinterpreting Dworkin? Again? She’s gone, first of all. She said what she said. She imagined all sorts of things, including some bizarre rape scene that when recreated by bystanders that night, never happened. She most certainly DID imply and suggest that all hetero sex was rape, and if you deny that you’re disingenuous at best. Or you think we’re stupid, those of us who might read it, that is. We’re not. We can read, you know, English. Which I presume Dworkin spoke? Considering that her writings are published in it, that is. And if she was speaking English then yeah, it’s obvious she said what she did. My stars, she never said these exact words in sequence “All heterosexual sex is rape.”?? She most certainly said something hella close, which no intelligent shaved ape of this species could possibly misread.
What the fuck does that have to do with the fact that Britney Spears is acting out the pig? I’ve seen the shaved beaver picture, and you know what? Why the HELL would any sentient grown woman in this century possibly flash her pussy like that to photographers? Especially in this particular case? Seated next to Paris Hilton no less?
FFS Blog owner, save your ire for people who have an iota of feminist sensibility, if you have half a brain, wouldja?
eric,
That was foul.
Some months ago, mindful of my ignorance of formal modern feminist theory, I went to Andrea Dworkin’s site (which is kept up posthumously by her friends) and printed up a bunch of the excerpts there, and read them.
She was smart, courageous, and perfectly happy to have sex–with partners who respected her, which is how it should be.
One very moving thing she wrote was how women who were, like her, young hippies in the Sixties, welcomed the much-ballyhooed Sexual Revolution, hoping that sex would become a fun playground with their rebel brothers, ready to share the joy. It took a lot of bitter experience with men who had every chance to have free, fun, mutual sex offered in that playful spirit, and yet chose again and again to turn it into bullying, exploitation, and general viciousness, to kill that dream–or send it into a coma. A coma she hoped to revive it from, if only the bullying could be stopped.
I for one am sad she isn’t with us any more, though actually she’d have to live longer still to have any hope of seeing that better world.
A world where the erics would have either wised up, shut up, or gone away from.
I replied to eric before seeing Stormy’s contribution, which is even fouler.
OK, duly noted, Stormy. You have not an iota of feminist sensibility, nor apparently any other kind, such as reading English. Check.
It’s quaint that you think that means you ought therefore to be exempted from “ire.” Why troll here if that’s not what you want, after saying the things you say?
Presumably ire is what you want. If you wanted some facts, you might try reading some Dworkin yourself, for instance.
Amanda gave you the link, and she wrote in English.
Given that there’s a Stormy out there who does have an iota of feminist sensibility I resent this clod using the name.
Dworkin wrote of what society thought of rape and sex, not what she thought of sex. FFS, indeed. I’m so sick of assholes trying to use her social analysis to attack her.
Oh, I know that. Back in MN we had a statement that these New Englanders can’t comprehend: “Warm enough to snow”
“My statement was hamfisted and inelegant, but life itself is hamfisted and inelegant. Live long enough and you’ll come to know this.”
Don’t patronise me, cupcake. I’m probably old enough to be your mother and know a fuck of a lot more about how the world works than you do.
“The reality is men will schtup a sheep if that’s what it comes to. A man’s answer is damn near always “yes.” It’s when the woman says “yes” that the lovin’ commences.”
Absolute bullshit and yet one more tedious example of how it’s the anti-feminists who really have the insultingly low opinions about men.
clytemnestra said: “I have heard the somewhat evo psych view that when presented with a bevy of fuckable women (as in harem) any man, even on with a low sex drive, will rise (pun not intended) to the occasion. For an example they point to a lion’s pride.”
Pretty piss-poor comparison, as human females don’t go into heat the way felines do. Lions don’t have sex at every stage of the female’s cycle, as is common in humans, and I really doubt they make their decisions about having sex in remotely the same way as us.
So, hypothetically, we could be evolving due to a new kind of social selection, possible only to us as intelligent social beings, able to not only reflect in our own brains on our environment (natural and social) as reasonably smart animals can also do, but to communicate and refine these modelings of reality, and pass them down as accumulating cultural lore, integrated with social strictures. If that is, there is any reason to think that human societies would exert special selective pressures that could correlate with genetic traits.
70,000 years is a mighty long timeframe, but during something like 90 percent of that time, most of humanity was definitely pre-cultivator, still living as gatherer-hunters, pretty much as our definitely pre-human ancestors did. Doubtless the transition to full modern humanity involved decisive refinement of the basic GH lifestyle, putting us firmly atop the food chain, but no revolution in our basic status as part of that chain, living in the same niche our pre-verbal, largely pre-cultural, ancestors did. Perhaps our initial wave of population explosion, spreading out of our original African environment into every climate zone on the globe, had to wait for full humanity, though I gather that previous hominid species had already spread all over Eurasia and perhaps well toward Australia without the benefit of fire, elaborate handcrafts, or presumably language–but these were not our ancestors and either died out or were displaced by us.
OK, as I understand it, largely based on Turnbull but to my knowledge backed up by just about every study of true GH peoples everywhere, pre-cultivator humans all lived in bands of 50-200 people, composed of kin from the band or neighboring bands that married in. None had any identifiable social hierarchy beyond division of labor by gender and age group. None showed signs of the kind of brutal sexism so common to post-cultivators; it wasn’t the case that men had recognized “rights” to abuse their spouse or children, nor did these societies sustain harsh ritualism. War, in the sense of systematic agression, was unknown; Turnbull claimed that the very concept of murder was unknown to the Mbuti he studied.
As for arranged marriage–I gather that definite, presumably monogamous, marriages did eventually occur, but this would be after a period of more or less promiscuous sexual experimentation among the pubescent cohort. Bearing in mind of course that in a population around 100 people, only a dozen or so kids would be adolescent at any given time, so the choices, even allowing for meetings with neighboring bands and exchanges of mates there, would be limited, and everyone would be fairly close kin already. Given that there was no economic or social stratification except gender and age, and no possible economic basis for profitable exploitation, since the productivity and technical level was low, with any band member being more or less able to make any implement needed, and no one able to accumulate more than they could carry–what would be possible reasons for parents, or elders collectively, to try and govern the youngsters’ eventual selection of mate-for-life? and with all potential partners drawing more or less from the same gene pool, how much variation would there be for any kind of selection to work on?
With the rise of agriculture and animal domestication, the picture changes, in terms of there being new, often severe, differentials in social power and access to resources, plus of course warfare and slavery between societies and within them. But now we are talking about a much faster pace of technical development, exploding populations and greatly increasing population densities, great turnover in populations, and on the timescale of evolution, rapid social turbulence–one millenium’s peasants might be the ancestors of all the lords and priests and rich merchants of the next, while their descendents in turn might well be tumbled from their social high places back into obscurity.
All through all these stages, I think that achieving “full humanity” means that we’ve largely deferred the cutting edge of natural selection by using the power of social cooperation to keep the wolves of starvation from pretty much everyone’s door, including most poor folks most of the time. The poor are exploited ruthlessly but smart despots generally enforce some lower limits, both because the poor are the source of the rich’s wealth and because desperate rebellion is not unknown and always potentially simmering in the background. So pretty much everyone is kept alive, and most of us have some chance to reproduce, regardless of differential genetics. Social stratification is manifestly not based on allegedly “superior” genetic traits though of course ruling classes generally so flatter themselves. (And sexual exploitation of the poor by the rich results in spreading these allegedly wonderful traits among the oppressed and ruled anyway.)
Gatherer-hunters, as my anthro teachers claimed, died largely due to “accidents,” not starvation. So if we are evolving still, we are at any rate on a different trajectory than we were.
I would be keenly interested in hypothetical traits that human marriage practices might be unconsciously selecting for. But I trust you know better than me how bogus most of the candidate “theories” put forth by armchair evo-psychs are.
Is it fair to say that these bozos have muddied the waters so much that reasonable hypotheses cannot be discussed? I figure that a reasonable guess would be fairly discussed, damn the half-wits, but since I don’t see any and can’t think of any, I figure that any such evolution by unconscious social selection would be subtle and very debatable, and we do better to assume there is none until someone makes a robust case. And such a case would not have the crude, dehumanizing, implications mainstream discourse evo-psychs specialize in.
Stormy, I’m sorry if the right interpretation of Dworkin is not the one you want to hear, but we’re more interested in reality here than coddling misogynists. Why don’t you go advocate for some creationism and leave us alone?
Wow, so I’m uglier than a sheep, since I’ve been told no?
Wow.
Wow.
I disagree that I’m uglier than a sheep, for what it’s worth.
Well, maybe to a ram you are. It all depends on whose livestock is being shtupped.
However, here I am, still not anyone’s monkey…okay, so I guess I’m Mrs DBK’s monkey.
“C’mere you little monkey.” “Ook ook.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. Here’s a banana. Let’s go shtup the sheep.” “Ook ook OOOOOK OOOOOK!” “Nice monkey. Stop doing that or you’ll go blind and grow hair on your…never mind.”
Oh, and on a serious note, I’m not bragging or anything, but literally half the “first times” I experienced as a single man were at the request of the woman I was dating. Sure, I wanted too long before the request was put in, but I sort of just let things take their course and when the time came, then so did we. But I was pretty laid back about commencing sexual activity the first time, so often it was the woman I was necking with who asked me if I wanted to mate or, the question I always found most amusing, “Do you have a rubber?”, which I once answered with, “Is your clit THAT BIG?”
I love a woman with a sense of humor.
Once my partner and I were basking in that after-glow that poets have been trying to describe for millennia and she said, “That was perfect” and I answered, “I like to think of myself as a service organization.” True story. She didn’t see the humor in that comment and actually got offended, though I never have understood why. We didn’t last too long together. Too bad, too, because she had really big brains. Got her doctorate a few years later and is now teaching at a mid-western university.
Okay, so I couldn’t be too serious for too long, but human sexuality is a really complex thing and way too complex for my tiny brain to deal with. I kinda just feel attraction to whomever I feel attraction to and if I stop to analyze it, well, I don’t get anywhere anyway. Now Britney Spears, she’s a good-looking woman, but she does, from what I have seen, lack something in the nature of smarts, so while I appreciate her appearance, I don’t find her attractive in the same way that I am attracted to, say, some other good-looking but smart female celebrity who has a gazillion dollars and whom I will never meet and who wouldn’t give me the time of day if I met her anyway.
Also, she’s not a redhead. Redheads never worked for me. Anyway, I’m married and pretty conventional, so I wouldn’t cheat on my wife with Britney Spears even if I were asked. Well, maybe if my wife asked me to. Have I mentioned whose monkey I am?
I never offerd a guarantee that the comparison was purrfrct.
(sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
Besides it was never about comparing female humans it was that a male human with a lower sex drive could/ould pscyhologically raise his sex drive and preformance(even unconscious or subconsciously) if he had his “pride” - a group of fuckable females that was his alone. It’s about his fear of loosing his position and esteem in the community if he his women drift away to find another partner. He psychologically “amps” himself up to preform for all the women he “has.”
And actually you can see this in overly macho cultures where a guy brags about having a wife and many mistresses.
“I never offerd a guarantee that the comparison was purrfrct.”
Sorry, clytemnestra: I was criticising the people who came up with the comparison, not you.
Never, ever, evereverevereverevereverevereverevereverever call the Librarian a “monkey”, please. It’s not safe.Hey, I’m a Librarian, and a Monkey too. Now stand still so I may throw my poop at you.
I am a librarian, and I am not a monkey. I fling poop at people only for evolved, intellectual reasons, such as as a form of political critique or literary criticism.
There’s gotta be some way to make art with it too….
have clue will travel
I think you nailed it in the first paragraph above. Britney is still dressing and performing like she’s an 18-year-old. Britney’s still doing the shtick she did when she was a teen pop star and it failed miserably.
Like Britney, Madonna was not gifted with a particularly great singing voice. Madonna’s greatest talent has always been her ability to re-invent herself. What Britney needs to realize that Madonna was already in her 20’s when she started her career and never bothered with the fake “virginal” routine that Britney played except to lampoon it in “Like A Virgin”.
Unlike her contemporaries like Christina Aguilera, Beyonce, and Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears never made the transition from teen popstar to adult performer.
The thing is that Britney at 16-17 was already presented in a similarly hyper-sexualised way to Madonna at ten years older. So I’m not getting why people are jumping on the “she needs to present herself in a different way now she’s older.” She’s still years younger than Madonna was circa her Sex book, for example.
And Madonna may have worn “different” outfits/images throughout her career, but the hyper-sexual thing has been pretty near constant. I know I’ve seen photos of her in equally-revealing outfits as the one Britney is pictured in well into her late 30s-early 40s–ages Britney is far, far from reaching.
As far as I can see, the big difference between the two of them is that while Madonna has always seemed in total control of her facade, Britney has let hers slip in the past couple of years. I think people are pissed off at her for acting like a real human being under enormous stress* rather than as a flawless, soulless machine, which has always been the vibe Madonna gives off. God knows we can’t be allowed to see that years of starvation diets, brutal performance regimes and being shown as little more than a fantasy sex doll could possibly take a toll on a young woman.
Did no one else think that the fact that one of the first things Britney did when she really cracked was shave her head was a blindingly fucking obvious rejection of all that? Not that I’m saying she necessarily even gets it herself, but come on: she deliberately did something to make herself considered unattractive/unfuckable.
*cos being a fuckhole is FUN!!!
My two stepsons who are great gentle kids were discussing some fanfic they wanted to write based on a show I never watch called family guy. I tuned into their story line and and it was basically bad things keep happening to this one character named Meg because she is ugly. I asked about the other characters, her brothers. Both are apparently liked but one is fat and one is psychotic. The kids could not explain why the guys got a pass, but I have an idea. My husband and I are going to watch the show and see if it is really promoting this woman-hating agenda. However, I think the way BS is getting treated gives young men permission, nay encourages them, to treat women badly who don’t live up to their standards in terms of looks. EEEEK.
bmc90, I used to watch quite a bit of Family Guy, and it is a VERY adult themed show. I’m pretty much turned off it now - I don’t know if it got worse/less funny in the later seasons or I got more sensitive to jokes that make you feel a bit dirty after you’ve laughed at em. Maybe a bit of both. Anyways, my take on the jokes in FG is that:
1) If they perceive there to be a cultural taboo or sensitivity they will push and push the joke as far as they can, much like South Park. And it’s not a really subtle kind of comedy, so they often paint with as broad a brush as possible. Consequently, they have to keep taking it to new extremes. So if there’s a sensitive stereotype or gross new trend, it’ll probably be in an episode.
2) It’s hugely cynical - they do show the hypocrisy of the lazy, grossly fat and stupid Peter paired with the slim, smart, sexy (but rather servile) Lois (Ala the Simpsons) but it can be hard to tell where they are pointing out sexism/privelege and where they could be perceived as celebrating it. Meg is depicted as grotesque constantly (despite being clearly just average in looks) but is that because FG is exposing societies shallow judgementalism towards young women or are they laughing at the crushing of an ‘ugly’ girls dreams? I think it’s mostly the former but the distinction could be lost on some kids and teenagers.
3) FG uses a lot of violence for the slapstick laughs - not very surprising, being a cartoon and all, but something to keep in mind if kids are watching. If seeing men and women slap each other around, Punch and Judy style, is not for you (or our step kids), then be aware of that.
4) FG has a lot of sexual allusions - even Stewie, the baby, comes out with it, which is the basis for his characters really - an evil, adult mind in an infant. The sexual stuff can be hilarious for us debauched adults but could be a bit full on (if they comprehend some or all of it) for younger adolescents.
That said, the FG scripting and actors can make it a damn funny show, which is why it’s been successful. Some of its musical numbers are classics. For adults, its really a matter of personal preference, but as you mentioned kids watching it (presuming they’re under 18?), thought you might appreciate some extra info if you find you don’t want to watch it marathon style. For FG fans here - this is my take only, of course.
Personally, I would be concerned about the levels of cynicism for younger viewers, because it’s hard to know how they’ll absorb that world view. Hope that helps you a bit - I know this is OT! Would have emailed you but there’s no address displayed.
oops, that should read ‘YOUR stepkids’ to avoid sounding creepy. My only excuse is that it’s 5am in my part of the world right now and I need more coffee.
2) It’s hugely cynical - they do show the hypocrisy of the lazy, grossly fat and stupid Peter paired with the slim, smart, sexy (but rather servile) Lois (Ala the Simpsons) but it can be hard to tell where they are pointing out sexism/privelege and where they could be perceived as celebrating it. Meg is depicted as grotesque constantly (despite being clearly just average in looks) but is that because FG is exposing societies shallow judgementalism towards young women or are they laughing at the crushing of an ‘ugly’ girls dreams? I think it’s mostly the former but the distinction could be lost on some kids and teenagers.
The humour aimed at the character of Meg is a theatre of cruelty. Meg is essentially a completely normal person - nothing special, no character flaws. In fact, I’m not sure she actually *has* a character. She dresses almost invisibly, she isn’t pretty or ugly, she isn’t a genius (slightly above average if anything). In short, she’s EveryTeen.
She’s also unwanted by her parents, constantly told she’s ugly, unpopular at school, often humiliated, and a continual failure for reasons beyond her control. She’s an invitation for every late teenager realising life isn’t fair to identify with, and then realise that life is indeed crap.
I’m not sure it’s a female thing, although the sad truth is that in our societies it works better with a teenage girl as the target. Noticably, she doesn’t seem to hate herself or internalise the hostility - she does occasionally scream that she hates her family, but who wouldn’t?
Ah, that clears it up a bit for me re Meg, Phoenician. I was wondering about it. Thanks. I think FG does portray a strong emphasis on gender issues in Meg’s treatment, as her teenage brother, slightly younger than her (I think), is hugely immature and amiably stupid but doesn’t get the barrage of criticism on appearance or similar issues.
Your reference to Artaud makes me curious to go back and analyse FG in greater detail now!
Your reference to Artaud makes me curious to go back and analyse FG in greater detail now!
Don’t bother. While I’d like to claim to erudition beyond those of mortal posters, the fact is that I hadn’t heard of Artaud until you mentioned him.
Thanks for the analysis on FG. I’ve passed your posts on to my husband for further discussion. I’m afraid the kids have done what young witnesses to abuse often do: join in. The fact that it is a TV show makes little difference, I think. It takes a lot of maturity to have your own independent judgment that what you are seeing is wrong or that it is meant to be ironic. God knows I don’t want them calling into a talk radio show one day to heap scorn on a teen idol who gained 5 pounds because they feel entitled to do so (or worse).
Thanks for the analysis on FG. I’ve passed your posts on to my husband for further discussion. I’m afraid the kids have done what young witnesses to abuse often do: join in. The fact that it is a TV show makes little difference, I think. It takes a lot of maturity to have your own independent judgment that what you are seeing is wrong or that it is meant to be ironic. God knows I don’t want them calling into a talk radio show one day to heap scorn on a teen idol who gained 5 pounds because they feel entitled to do so (or worse).
Well Mark, if you want “foul”, just look at the reaction to the Juanita Broaddrick rape. It was like “No harm , no foul!” The media didn’t care, the Democrats didn’t care, Hillary (obviously) didn’t care …
Lovely, huh?
That woman, she’s a woman, can’t sing. She really should have retired and be content counting her money, maybe invest in something. There was no way for Britney to continue on without becoming a sad joke herself, instead a focal point of our creepy uncle society, unless she actually learn to sign, and maybe write.
It’s not like Britney don’t have the material to write songs now, she could write about how girls everyday are being used up like meat, she could write about bad choices, bad boyfriends, how you can’t stop being a parent once you’ve actually had the baby, sleepless nights… Heck, it’s like this, I don’t like Julia Roberts, she’s kinda fake, her characters doesn’t get angry and get ugly like Angelina Jolie’s character does, her rage in Erin whatever was expressed with a few angry taps on the table. I loved Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, when she plays the pretty object of everyman’s desire actress, who had nosejobs, who doesn’t eat, and have that unhealthy edge to her, which people exploit instead of heal.
The way she’s up there now, it’s sad, but the people who used to drool over her, now when they say she’s fat, they are saying, she’s done, bring us more /fresh/ meat.
My husband and I separately watched 10 minutes of Family Guy and he is ‘pulling the plug’ as it were. My husband does not quite have my gender issue radar, but one scene with a woman in a doctor’s office claiming to have nymphomania and two doctors’ “cure” was MORE than enough for him. I was treated to Bill Clinton having a ‘fat chick’ party in the back of his limo, asking the women, which of you does not have my herpes yet. And sure enough, poor daughter pretending to read an e-mail to a pretend boyfriend to get her parents’ attention is ignored completely, until her father breaks her computer to show how strong he is. Can’t find anything funny with this.
I am EXTRA late with this response, I know. But I think the issue with Brittany and how supposedly “fat” she was during her performance speaks volumes of American pop culture’s simultaneous yet contradictory desires for things to stay the same and to have something new to talk about.
She isn’t the same old Brittany. Logically we all knew that she couldn’t be, she’s grown up and gone through some major drama in recent years yet people wanted to hope against hope that she would come back just as good if not better than ever. There is nothing people seem to want more these days than glorious comebacks of our fallen stars but if these comebacks aren’t attainable ridiculing them harshly (probably because people feel as though they put a certain level of faith and hope into this stars reclamation of success and that faith and hope doesn’t end as they’d hoped).
The underlying motive is… “If we can’t laugh with you, we’re content laughing at you.” Brittany is just another victim of that logic.