Via Redneck Feminist, an amusing article in Reason considers the right-wing horror of Eve Ensler’s much-criticized play.
Meet the put-upon conservative coed, the prototype pushed by conservative feminists to demonstrate liberal bias on college campuses. We’ll call her Claire. Claire doesn’t want any part of this vulgar spectacle known as The Vagina Monologues, but her Feminine Mystique-touting, Germaine Greer-quoting friends are tying her to a chair and making her watch. She desperately wants to be chaste, but condom-peddling feminists are driving her to her knees at the frathouse next door. She really just wants to be a mom, but her mentors in the gender studies department say that’s just not acceptable.
Claire may or may not exist, but there is a whole movement dedicated to setting her free. I recently watched Christina Hoff Sommers, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, give a speech on Eve Ensler’s Monologues to like-minded women. The play is performed on hundreds of campuses around Valentine’s Day ever year, and Sommers is annually appalled, most deeply by what she calls “a four-letter-word that begins in c, ends in t, and is not coat.” […]
This is the frustrating irony of conservative feminism: As the movement rightly condemns modern feminism for being a paralyzing ideology of victimization, it leaves a bloody trail of victimhood in its wake. Whether they be Yale freshmen or Princeton professors, the weaker sex is apparently unable to withstand the excesses of Naomi Wolf. Claire doesn’t stand a chance.
At the close of Sommers’ dire warning about Ensler’s play, a concerned mother had a question: “Where can I send my child so she’s not exposed to this?” The audience obliged with suggestions of Ensler-banning, second-rate colleges; Sommers nodded gravely. When women who call themselves feminists see censorship as the way forward, we have bigger problems than bad playwriting.
What bothers me more than the censorship is that some parents would rather send their daughters to second-rate colleges than allow them to be “exposed” to a play they disapprove of at a first-rate college.
Redneck Feminist’s post also has an entertaining story of how she learned to relax and enjoy The Vagina Monologues.
P.S. By the way, I’m not particularly bothered by Reason Magazine’s cliched slamming of contemporary feminism as “a paralyzing ideology of victimization.” Reason is a magazine written by libertarians; libertarians call it an “ideology of victimization” whenever anyone suggests anything other than Evil Big Government is ever oppressive or problematic.
UPDATE: Check out Amanda’s take on this story.
Oh my gosh, thanks for linking to me, Ampersand!
I hope no one will be offended by my VM story (especially those who listen to folk music– sorry). I hope my comments are taken lightheartedly, as they were meant.
Don’t women like Sommers and other liked minded women have anything else better to do, than demonize feminism and feminist initiatives to improve and liberate the manner in which women freely express their sexuality, and raise awareness to stop sexual violence against women and girls? Oh wait, that’s right–they don’t!
How is bashing feminism going to educate young women, make it acceptable for women to express their sexuality in a non-pornographic-for-male-gratification and non-maternal fashion, and raise awareness to stop violence against women and girls? What are women like Sommers trying to achieve by presenting feminism as the negative caricature the media and the IWF enjoy portraying it to be, to young women?
Antagonizing The Vagina Monologues is just another cheap shot made against feminists. I wonder what kind of “play” Sommers would have written instead? Since, you know, she obviously knows how to make women’s sexual expression “not a form of bad playwriting and an ideology of victimization”, and “properly” raise awareness to stop sexual violence against women and girls.
Speaking of “contemporary feminism as “a paralyzing ideology of victimization,”…..that false characterization of feminism is constantly over used by women like Sommers, Coulter, the IWF, and other antifeminist women, and it’s getting very old, real quick. Leave it to antifeminists to define feminism. Great post Redneck Feminist and Amp!
I think Reason has a good perspective. Not always one I agree with, but I find it comprehensible, unlike most real conservatives (Derbyshire, for example) or pseudoconservative Bushists (George Will, for example), and I sometimes feel like the political spectrum of my readership should extend a bit to the right of Matthew Yglesias.
I need to see the Vagina Monologues. I haven’t gotten around to it, and I haven’t read it either. It’s just… there are so many things that I need to get around to doing! Argh!
Speaking of “ideology of victimization,” Metalprophet recently posted a nice rant on that.
Sommers is annually appalled, most deeply by what she calls “a four-letter-word that begins in c, ends in t, and is not coat.”?
Yes, I’m also appalled by right-wing cant.
Heh. Now I’m reminded of the Catholic site that wrote “vagina” as “v****a.” No, I am not kidding. No, it was not a parody site.
A coincidence, I’m usually deeply annoyed and nauseated by an idiot that starts with a C, ends with an S and has a “hristina Hoff Sommer” in the middle. Also, it’s not a “coat”.
Actually, Anne, the government of Uganda has declared the word vagina obscene and demanded that a performance of the Vagina Monologues change the title.
What do they want her to change the name to, “coochie-snorcher”? (That’s from the play.)
Seriously, these people aren’t interested in Education, they are interested in Isolation. They don’t have the maturity to deal with sexual topics on an intellectual level. The whole point of college is to expose you to a variety of different people and ideas in hopes that you attain a certain level of sophistication.
They want to live in the 1950’s.
OK, I just read – or skimmed – all of the related articles. I feel as if everything everyone is debating these days is whether women blog, whether we need our own spaces, whether feminism should be incorporated into all course work, etc. It reminds me of the Mary Daly fight where she refused to allow men to attend her classes with women. She offered separate accomodations for guys where they didn’t interact with the women.
Women’s studies is necessary as a discipline because the rest of academia for the last few thousand years has been men’s studies. It’s not enough to just give women equal time now. There are centuries of oppression, of erasure, of institutionalized inequalities to address. It’s going to take a full swing of the pendulum before it can stop in the middle. I would love for feminist values to become mainstream values but we just aren’t there yet.
A coincidence, I’m usually deeply annoyed and nauseated by an idiot that starts with a C, ends with an S and has a “hristina Hoff Sommer”? in the middle. Also, it’s not a “coat”.
That was brilliant! Thanks, Raznor.
Wow, Sally, that Catholic group should get together with the Ugandan government!
Well, according to the article the Ugandan government censored the play at the behest of fundies, so wrong denomination, but you have the right basic idea.
Certainly, a lot of the criticism of the Vagina Monologues is nothing more than hysterical ranting, but I followed the link to Christina Hoff Sommers’ speech, and the Reason article (while funny) really doesn’t address it in good faith. Hoff Sommers’ main argument isn’t that women need to be shielded from the obscenity of the Monologues; it’s the the Monologues are absurd, something which which I agree.
From Hoff Sommers’ speech:
Admittedly, I’ve never attended a showing of the Vagina Monologues, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re not “viciously anti-male”. But from what I’ve read of them – monologues that were excerpted in articles that lauded the play, so presumably I was reading what the play’s supporters deemed to be the cream of the crop – I’m inclined to agree with 1) and 3). I found the monologues I read to be embarrassing – not because I’m not liberated enough to hear the word “vagina” without giggling, but because, as Hoff Sommers says, I find the play to be horribly written.
I agree that it’s ridiculous to send a child to a second-rate college just to avoid this play (I dislike what I have seen of the play, but I dislike censorship far, far more), and Hoff Sommers should definitely be called on endorsing that option. But it’s not fair to characterise her (and others’) criticisms as being entirely founded in reactionary, anti-woman sentiments. (This is compounded by the fact that the Vagina Monologues have raised a lot of money to fight violence against women – something which Hoff Sommers praises. But the other side of that coin is that any criticism of the play is associated with criticism of anti-violence programs, which drives me batty. So either I agree that my vagina is a shell, a tulip, my destiny; or I’m pro-violence, pro-rape and liable to faint when I hear the word “cunt”?)
I’ve never seen the Vagina Monologues, either, and as I said in my blog entry on this, I’m pretty certain that it wouldn’t be my thing. But you know, a whole lot of stuff on campus isn’t my thing. I personally think softball is kind of a stupid sport, but you don’t see me picketing intermurals. A lot of my friends are on a softball team, but I don’t enjoy playing softball, so I go swimming instead. I don’t think I’d like The Da Vinci Code, but I’m not arguing they should remove it from the school bookstore. We’re talking about an extracurricular production that people go to because they enjoy it. I really fail to understand what the big deal is. If you think it’s badly written, don’t go.
If it’s spreading dangerous messages about women, that’s something we can talk about. But poorly written? Give me a break. Has she ever read the average university newspaper?
The poorly written thing is a bunch of hooey–the play is a series of stories told by real women in their own voices. It’s not “written” so much as edited.
I’ve seen Eve Ensler’s performance of it on Satellite several times. It’s an amazing body of work. She has interviewed women from various backgrounds and various ages how they feel about their vaginas. That is the appropriate, clinical name for it, it isn’t slang or obscene. Their stories are funny, charming, heartbreaking, sickening and all familiar in a way. Reading it won’t give you a proper perspective on it – you have to hear it spoken. It’s very powerful, it’s not at all obscene, and I think it’s a very important piece of work for everyone to see. It’s a statement about suppression of women’s sexuality and violence against women. I encourage you all to rent it before you criticize it.
She has interviewed women from various backgrounds and various ages how they feel about their vaginas. That is the appropriate, clinical name for it, it isn’t slang or obscene
The pedant in me must point out that the proper term should be vulvas.
The woman in me would tell you I have both.
I haven’t seen it either, but what I’ve heard sounds no worse than what men say about our dicks. To say nothing of Aleister Crowley. I don’t see the problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but doesn’t the Uganda story suggest that something like this might help?
If it’s spreading dangerous messages about women, that’s something we can talk about. But poorly written? Give me a break. Has she ever read the average university newspaper?
Heh.
I just watched a video about “V-Day,” which had clips from performances of “The Vagina Monologues.” Part of the documentary focused on a man who’d organized a group for men to overcome patterns of brutality to women. He spoke at a performance of “The Vagina Monologues.”
Anti-male? No. But definitely opposed to a certain concept of masculinity, and supportive of dismantling that concept of masculinity.
Omar, you got it. That’s what I liked about it–all things being equal, women have the same mix of normal embarrassment/amusement and warm regards towards their genitalia that men have. But things aren’t equal and it’s downright empowering to be given permission to have the pleasure of normalcy in your life.
There are centuries of oppression, of erasure, of institutionalized inequalities to address. It’s going to take a full swing of the pendulum before it can stop in the middle. I would love for feminist values to become mainstream values but we just aren’t there yet.
So 2 wrongs do make a right?? What you are saying basically boils down to revenge. That’s pretty enlightened.
The Vagina Monologues ARE NOT anti-male. Just because they are pro-female does not mean they oppose men as well. This is not a dicotimy.
I especially liked the one about the man who is a “conniseur of pussy”. That one hilarious, and showed men in a positive light.
The one about the older women seduce the 16-year-old was less about the sex and more about the rebellion and experience of her sexuality.
Huh?
Dude. It’s The Vagina Monologues, not The Rusty Garden Shears Monologues. Calm down. Uncross your legs. Breathe.
No, of course not, because attention in and of itself is not a wrong. The problem–one of them, anyway–is the disproportionate amount of attention given to one perspective, one set of experiences, one kind of body, without any balancing attention granted to the other.
Until pretty recently, more credence was given to male beliefs about women’s bodies than to women’s actual experiences of their own bodies. In order to correct this imbalance, we need to spend a little extra time catching up with the distaff side of the population. It doesn’t mean that men, wangs included, will lose the right to be reflected in art and literature. It doesn’t mean that their bodies will become as vague and suspect as women’s bodies were. It just means that we need to do a little remedial reading.
Look at it this way: you and I are both employees at the same factory. We do the same work, and we should receive the same amount of money. For some reason, our foreman hates you and is good friends with me. Instead of giving us equal paychecks, he gives you only half the money you deserve, and gives me my money plus half of your money. Eventually, you complain to the Labor Commission, and they intervene and order me to give you the other half of your income. Are they being vindictive towards me? Have they stolen from me? Do you deserve that money less simply because it was unfairly given to me first?
In the long run, lying about women means obscuring the truth about men as well.
Piny, you nearly owed me a new keyboard for that one!
Exactly. I don’t understand why anything that tries to be positive about women is taken by some to be an attack on men. In fact, I can think of a lot of vagina-positive things to say that don’t involve men at all, let alone putting men down.
Are positive body images somehow a zero-sum game between the sexes?
“Are positive body images somehow a zero-sum game between the sexes? ”
Well, yes. One has to consider the porn industry, no?
I thought you knew by now, CrysT, that only men have free speech in regards to vaginas.
What Q grrl said, pretty much.
I think that there is a certain zero-sum element to discussions, in terms of equal time in specific situations. But maybe we could deal with a lack of male representation in the arts and in literature when we get anywhere near that eventuality?
And Q grrl’s offhand comment was absolutely right. What is most troubling about this for me is that a simple biographical anthology–something that would be banal if it were about anything other than women’s sexuality and reproduction–is turned into not even a threat but a full-on assault, a theft. As though a (re)claiming of women’s subjective bodies by actual women is waging a raid on male property.
Actually, I never encounter any meaningful discussion of the human body in general, or of men’s bodies, except in the context of anti-sexist discussions of women’s bodies. There’s a zero-sum game in play, but it’s not a question of men’s bodies versus women’s bodies. Sexists don’t want us talking about our real bodies at all.
I was about to say “except in medical school,” but then I was just reading about the study that found episostomies were harmful. Cutting up a woman’s vagina causes pain and suffering — who would have guessed?
That’s a very good point. George Orwell and Ralph Ellison both wrote about the same general problem, albeit on very different terms. It takes a lot of work to sustain a big lie. When you decide that humanity must be divided into two opposite creatures, you create a dichotomy that both putative halves have to struggle against reality to preserve. Men are forced into roles just as limited as women’s, and their bodies and subjectivities undergo many parallel negations. Men aren’t silenced and ignored in the same way, but they are definitely censored and pressured.
(This is not to say, of course, that the subject/object, competent/incompetent, rational/irrational parts of the overarching dichotomy don’t injure women’s expression in particularly insidious ways.)
And on that level, The Vagina Monologues is a threat to the cultural tradition pertaining to male bodies. Norman Mailer has good reason to be nervous. Destabilizing one half of a dichotomy automatically destabilizes the other half. But it’s worth asking whether men should be any more invested in their portion of a poisonous inheritance than women, or whether delegitimizing patriarchal concepts about male experience will hinder men’s ability to convey their experiences honestly.
Q:
Actually, I had forgotten. I’d forgotten that from time immemorial everything women knew about the vagina came from the words of men. And just look where that’s got us: isn’t the percentage of adult women who’ve never had an orgasm in their lives something shocking, like about 30%?
It’s a good thing I ignored all the crap I read as a child in both wank rags and “proper” sex guides written by “expert” men (quite big in the 70s, those were), or I’d never have managed to get myself to an orgasm, either.
You know, I really had forgotten all that stuff……………that what happens when you actually take the time to know your own body: you stop listening to “experts” who dont’ even have the same equipment lecturing you on how to do it all “correctly”. Including jerk boyfriends who tell you “I know what you want”.
Wow, I’m beginning to see why so many people are finding the Vagina Monologues to be so threatening.
Brian:
And piny:
Excellent points. I really hadn’t thought of it in those terms.
The fear and anger all makes perfect sense now. Except for the fact that I, like piny, have to wonder why some men would *want* to hang onto that “poisonous inheritance”.
These aren’t excuses, just reasons. Of course it isn’t impossible or even Herculean to make efforts at ending sexism around you. But this is what I’m noticing.
1) It’s really, really tempting. It’s hard for people in general to think honestly about how they might not deserve something they want when it’s offered to them. When some woman gives you the right of way in a group discussion, well, you had something very important to say. And you can listen to her opinion afterwards, anyway. And when shop clerks are nicer to you than they ever were to a butch dyke, and much more solicitous than they are to women, well, they’re just doing their jobs, right? You can’t very well ask them to be ruder to you just to be fair.
2) It’s really, really hard to see. Take Amp’s analogy of the smooth highway vs. the one with potholes. People tend to notice difficulty and hindrance. This is very new and very different to me, and it’s still hard for me to make the connection between looking like a nice young man and getting better treatment. It’s even harder for me to make the connection between looking like a man and women ceding territory to me. Bio-guys have been swimming in it since birth. Before that, even.
3) It’s a deeply-ingrained habit. My oh-no-you-go-first training is so reflexive that it’s very difficult for me to take any space, to raise my voice at all. I’ve always been outspoken in conversation, and was one of _those_ students even when I was a girl, so I have the opposite problem in discussions. But everywhere else, I shink. I act like this even though these social cues aren’t socially acceptable anymore. Society spends a lot of time enabling male privilege.
4) I’m a nice guy. I’ve always treated the women in my life decently. I’m not to blame for “the patriarchy,” whatever the hell that means. My behavior has nothing to do with violence against women. It’s ridiculous to compare rape with being interrupted. I am not to blame for misogyny. I’m not a misogynist. You have no right to lay all that bullshit at my feet, lady, because that’s not me. &c.
1) Mmm, pie!
2) There’s nothing inherently wrong with eating an entire pie.
3) I’m entitled to at least half of the pie, and I’m eating “at least half” of the pie.
4) Lots of men have pies that are way bigger than this.
5) Lots of men don’t even get pies.
6) My mom never baked me enough pie.
7) Look, she got some pie.
8) I offered her more pie. She declined the pie. It’s not my fault she has an eating disorder.
9) Doesn’t everyone really deserve an entire pie?
10) I worked all day for this pie.
11) I believed I was getting the whole pie.
12) This isn’t even a particularly good pie. In fact, I’ve been nauseated for several minutes now.
13) But never once have I complained.
14) It’s just pie. It’s not like I took her wallet.
15) Lots of men would have taken her wallet. She should be thanking me.
16) I am not responsible for past pastry disparities. We’re talking about this pie, and only this pie.
17) There will be other pies. Perhaps even better pies.
18) The pie is gone now, so there’s no point in complaining about it.
19) Listen, fuck you.
20) This discussion is over.
21) What pie?
Is it just me, or does “pie” look extremely odd written several times?
I agree with much of what Piny said.
I think most men hang on to that “poisonous inheritance” because there’s a lot of pressure on them to conform to it, and it looks (in the short run) like it’s advantageous to do so. In the long run, there isn’t — which is why I think that the roots of the problem are outside the relationships between ordinary men and women. Something keeps deliberately reinforcing the problem.
I don’t think I can agree with this at all. These quotidian interactions are the cement that holds the whole structure together.
To take a hopefully not-to-strained example: say I make every effort to include a female classmate in discussions, to honor her right to speak, and to listen and respond to her comments. I’m just one student. I’m not her professor, or her thesis committee, or her future employers. I have no direct control over her interactions with them.
But my minor contribution will help her. If I help give her her rightful face-time with the professor, she might get a fairer grade. She might have more confidence in defending and expanding her arguments. She might be more inclined to expect equal treatment in future discussions. She might eventually have more confidence in demanding promotions and raises.
And if (when) she encounters extreme misogyny that MRAs always bring up when they’re accused of the smaller kind, she might be better equipped to fight it.
And if every man in her life made the same concerted effort, the world would change.
These things are very small, and embarrassingly easy once you get past the sense of entitlement. But in the aggregate, they are extremely important.
Piny, then maybe I was unclear. I’m not saying the sort of action you’re describing is ineffective or unimportant. Conscious resistance is tremendously important.
What I’m saying is that the ruling class, consciously, pursues policies that reinforce sexism (as well as other forms of bigotry), and that defeating sexism requires linking the local struggle to the struggle against the system as a whole. Focusing on the local to the exclusion of the global means that all our acts of resistance get defeated in detail.
I did misread you, then. And I can definitely agree with what you’ve said. I need to think a little more about the idea of a “ruling class” in this scenario, though.
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I’d call myself an admirer of Christina Hoff Sommers. I think that much of her analysis of radical feminist thinking is spot on–some feminism is frankly anti-male and divisive. However, I’ve got to say, I was disappointed in her reaction to the Vagina Monologues.
Sommers seems to be caught in an absolutist rejection of anything coming from current liberal feminism, which is stupid. I can certainly say that I disagree with some of the things that Ensler believes. I’ve seen her on Oprah blaring the 1 in 3 rape statistic, which is incorrect. I’m fairly certain some of what Eve Ensler thinks is anti-male.
I think it’s stretching it a bit to say the PLAY is anti-male, however. And that’s what Sommers claims to be discussing. The play excludes men, for the most part. I suppose one could argue, as Sommers has, that the violence perpetrated towards woman in the play is all by males and therefore the play is anti-male, but if one did that, they’d simply be missing the whole point of the play, which has practically nothing to do with men.
Ensler’s point is less that men have forced women out of personal sexual knowledge, but that society has. On top of that, I don’t think the play is about pointing fingers. The play is more about celebrating female sexuality, female knowledge of sexual self, and about not being so weirded out about our “down theres.”
Maybe Sommers grew up feeling perfectly comfortable with her sexual organs. Maybe she never thought they were ugly or dirty. Maybe nobody ever made her feel as if she couldn’t have sexual feelings because she was a girl. If that’s the case, I can see why she couldn’t connect with this play. Apparently, a whole lot of other women, myself included, had a far different experience, and that’s why, when this play asked us to celebrate the fact that we could leave all that behind and step into a freer, more open world, we just did it, cunts and all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, divisive and anti-male. Haven’t heard that one a thousand times. Hoff-Summers is nothing but a cheerleader for men.
I really have to ask—something is called “The Vagina Monologues” and you think it excludes men? Do you feel that way about gynecology? I mean, it’s not like we don’t already know what men think about vaginas or anything—just go to the porno section of any dirty bookstore, and you’ll have your answer. Is it just so terribly awful that women get to talk about themselves for a change?
I mean, it’s not like we don’t already know what men think about vaginas or anything…just go to the porno section of any dirty bookstore, and you’ll have your answer.
Massively generalize much?
Welcome, Valerie. Nice to see a polite fan of CHS post here.
With all due respect, I don’t think Hoff Sommers can accurately be described as criticizing “radical feminism” (not that I’d agree with her if she was).
What CHS criticizes is a category of her own invention, called “gender feminism,” which includes virtually all feminists who are not right-wingers. I wrote a brief essay critiquing her “gender vs equity” feminist notion; part one is here, in case you’re interested.
I certainly think that there are legitimate criticisms of some things feminists have said over the years (given the scope of the feminist movement, it would be impossible for it to be otherwise). But I think that Hoff-Sommers is so determined to criticize feminists that she sees every glass as half-empty, and often her “debunkings” are themselves factually unsound. (I thought her attack on Mary Koss’ work was particularly unfair.)
Massively over-generalize much?
Uh, Robert? You were the guy defending the way Richard used a 1% figure as 33% of his examples of lying. If that’s not massively overgeneralizing I d on’t know what is. And you’ve got to be fucking kidding me if you don’t think porn is all about men and their pet vaginas.
And their pet boobies, don’t forget them, too!
And this is where Robert (or any other non-feminist, really) comes in with, “Oh YEAH?!? Well, whattabout GAY MALE and/or LESBIAN PORN?”
Because of course, the mere existence of minorities always more than cancels out the sins of majorities.
Yep, there’s Condoleeza Rice, don’t forget her, so racism and sexism doesn’t exist!
And when you consider that there’s also Oprah, well………really WOC are practically running the world, aren’t they?
Yes, they are, so stop bitching right now!
God, and people wonder why I hate exceptions. Tah Dah!
And this is where Robert (or any other non-feminist, really) comes in with, “Oh YEAH?!? Well, whattabout GAY MALE and/or LESBIAN PORN?”?
Well, we know that stuff doesn’t really exist. And if it does, it shouldn’t.
I just wish I could figure out why any woman who describes any man as less than Jesus, Buddha, and Elvis all rolled into one is automatically relegated to the status of “man-basher” ? Oh, hell– read the works of Jesus and Buddha, Goethe, Plato or Schopenhauer. Go to a “classic” opera like *Turandot* or pop in a Led Zepplin CD, for pity’s sake ! The list is endless. None of those guys thought of women as full-fledged human beings. For thousands of years, women have been expected to hail their greatness and overlook/accept this. Now any woman who dares to turn the tables on men’s de-facto assumption of themselves as the gold standard of human behavior has to wear the label “man-basher.” That label obscures anything else she might do or say, quite unlike the misogyny that has been part of virtually every male’s creative, political, or philosphical work since we started speaking to each other in words. Feh.
and, of course, if anyone points out ‘how’ Condi or Oprah got where they are … well, it’s US that are being sexist and racist …
There are a lot of men out here who don’t use porn. There are a lot of men who think it’s degrading to women, and incompatible with a healthy mutual sexuality. Are these men a majority? Don’t know, but I’d wager they are close to one.
Out of curiosity, I wonder what percentage of patriarchal-misogynistic-sexist men use pornography, versus liberal-enlightened-progressive men.
I always love the, “You said all men are rapists!” style of defensiveness.
“it’s not like we don’t already know what men think about vaginas or anything – just go to the porno section”
Oh. So you meant SOME men. So I could say “it’s not like we don’t already know what women think about hot 14-year olds – just look at Mary Kay LeTourneau” and that would be cool.
It might be more productive to focus on individual behavior, when the range from happy-normal to deviant-sicko is so broad.
Yeah, because there’s so many Mary Kay Letourneaus out there, Robert. Really. I do love the way some conservatives try to demonstrate their faith at every turn by doing the miracle of the loaves and fishes with female offenders.
And of course who wouldn’t compare the rare phenominon of female child molesters with the entire female population? I mean, compared to the billion-dollar porn industry that features tits and ass and hetero fucking above all else, all to gratify its majority male customers.
A billion dollars versus one female molester. From which you then try to extrapolate to women in general.
Versus you’re defense of Richard’s sexist stereotypes of women.
Yeah, I think I’m going to sign up with the ‘Don’t talk to me either’ club. That’s just too disgusting when looked at all at once.
Yeah, being tarred by a generalization sucks.
Since you apparently find comparatives offensive, let’s try to figure out whether your generalization is fair.
How many men use porn? What are they like (age, experience, attitudes)? What proportion of the hard-core anti-female contingent (the rapists, the spouse-beaters, and so on) use porn? What proportion of the general population?
Once we know all of these things, then perhaps we can find a female comparative that won’t push you over the edge.
How many men rape, Robert? How many men bitch and bitch and bitch about Mary Kay Letourneau, like she makes up a huge crime wave all on her own? How many men whine about how feminists generalize about men when they spend more time bitchinga bout feminists than sexists? How many men don’t think about women much at all? How many compare apples and oranges and then bat their eyelashes and claim it’s the same thing as when YOU compare apples and watermelons?
Men commit 90% of all violent crime. Men commit something on the order of between 92 to 98% of all rapes. You want to talk about Mary Kay Letourneau because it enables you to deflect attention from you being defensive about something. How many men watch porn, Robert?
HEre’s your answer, which you should have picked up the first damned time: Enough so that it’s a billion dollar business. What do you not get about that?
A billion dollars, Robert, but by that God that leads you to call rape a ‘temptation’ you’re going to whine about one fucking female child molester till the cows come home.
And whining about generalizations does not suit a man who thinks that lying female rape victims make an appropriate sample of common lies. You stil haven’t dealt with that.
Ginmar: yes, it’s a multi-billion dollar business plus the black market and expanding mobile phone services, but everyone knows that while the biggest porn industry is in the US all the porn consumers are in Europe and Japan, so you see, Robert is right. You’re massive generalising!
Yup, he’s caught me. It’s perfectly okay to suggest that 33% of the time women lie about rape, but a billion dollar industry has nothing to do with men at all.
Hey, let’s talk about Mary Kay Letourneau, as opposed to, say, Father Porter. How many kids did she molest? One. How many kids did he molest? Several hundred. That ought to make the Roberts feel much better.
I don’t think that anyone on “Alas” has suggested that “33% of the time women lie about rape.”
Noodles, there’s a multi-billion dollar market for movies about superheroes. It would not be correct to generalize from this into an assumption that all Americans, or all men, are superhero fans.
There’s a multi-billion dollar romance novel industry, but not all people (or all women) read romance novels.
There’s a multi-billion dollar “Left Behind” books and merchandising industry, yet the vast majority of people I know have never purchased one of those books.
Etc, etc..
I mentioned LeTourneau once, as a casual example. You’ve devoted two posts to ranting about it. Which one of us is obsessing?
Sure, porn is a multi-billion dollar business – in a national economy of about what, twelve trillion? The highest reasonable estimate I’ve seen for porn is 10 billion; other writers say that’s exaggerated.
We’ll use it anyway; that’s a whopping 0.08 percent – out of every $100 spent in America, eight cents go to porn.
You get pretty worked up whenever two broadly different concepts are considered together; I imagine you’ll get REALLY worked up at the idea that eight cents out of a c-note is some kind of massive marker of the behavior of a hundred and fifty million human beings. Oops, except that’s YOUR conflation, so I don’t know if it still has the rant-generating effect.
Is porn a big problem? Definitely. I think it’s very destructive for people to consume, and it’s extremely bad for women in general. (It’s bad for men, too, but let’s focus on the women.) Before being able to make a reasonable assessment, however, we need to know if it’s very destructive like cigarette smoking – which used to affect nearly everyone – or if its very destructive like crack – which affects a relatively small number. And since you’re wanting to characterize porn as revelatory of men’s beliefs, then we also need to know how much of it gets consumed by women; if it’s a substantial number, then it must be revelatory of women’s beliefs, too. Right?
I suspect that pornography is consumed by a substantial minority of American men, and a smaller but still substantial minority of American women, too.
So let’s play with these numbers. What does a porn consumer spend?
Well, I used to use pornography, and I had a pretty broad circle of friends who also used it; my expenditures seemed reasonably typical. Maybe a purchased movie once a month ($15-25), a magazine now and again ($4-10); definitely a membership to one of the online sites, call it $25 a month. Say, $50 a month for this charming hobby of turning people into objects.
At that rate of expenditure, the porn industry is supported by a bit under 17 million people. Haven’t been able to find any decent figures about male vs. female usage; the only stat I can find is both unsourced and uncredited. It says the usage is about 78-22, male to female. That seems superficially plausible.
That’s less than ten percent of the population. If we go with 78-22, it’s about nine percent of all men.
Do you think it’s reasonable to ascertain the opinion of “men” on the basis of the choices made by 9% of them?
In fairness, these numbers are rough – they could very easily be wrong. So let’s approach the question from a different perspective.
At what percentage of the population does it become reasonable to make a broad generalization? 1%? 10%? 50%? 80%?
If we can get that number, then we can know whether its reasonable to describe men’s attitudes about women’s genitals as being exemplified by the porn industry. So whaddya think? Is the magic number 9? Or maybe something a little higher?
Noodles, there’s a multi-billion dollar market for movies about superheroes. It would not be correct to generalize from this into an assumption that all Americans, or all men, are superhero fans.
True, but then again, I didn’t think anyone was saying that literally all Americans are porn addicts.
I think it’d be fair to say most people have watched at least a couple of movies about superheroes in their lifetime, and that a lot of people have watched more than a couple, no? So movies about superheroes are a big part of popular culture.
Besides, revenue for porn is estimated as superior to that of all Hollywood productions, so we’re talking a really big industry.
Personally I’m rather neutral on the matter so I’m not going to get into the social or ethical debate, but I have never heard anyone deny the pervasiveness of porn in recent years, whatever their opinions.
Well, I used to use pornography, and I had a pretty broad circle of friends who also used it…
Well duh!… then what are you arguing with?
I didn’t think anyone was saying that literally all Americans are porn addicts.
Right. Ginmar said that porn exemplified male attitudes towards the female genitals – “if you want to know what men think, go to the porn store”.
I think the more likely scenario is that there is a population of men, significant but not majoritarian, for whom that it is true.
The question here is how large that group would have to be for Ginmar’s generalization to be reasonable.
Well duh!… then what are you arguing with?
The notion that my misguided youth is legitimately generalizable to “men”.
Except your ‘misguided youth’ is by far not an isolated case, Robert. The figures are all estimates, but when they say that the revenues are ‘larger than the combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises’ and ‘US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of television networks ABC, CBS, and NBC ($6.2bn)’, not counting the black market and online illegal downloads I guess!, well, then you’d have to get mad at someone ‘generalising’ when saying that a lot of people like tv, or football, baseball or basketball games.
Ginmar said that porn exemplified male attitudes towards the female genitals – “if you want to know what men think, go to the porn store”?.
And I wouldn’t have thought anyone would take that to mean “ALL men like porn and purchase a lot of porn”. I thought it was a point about how there is a huge industry that caters mostly to male sexual fantasies about women. Wether we think that it’s bad or good thing is beside the point. That industry exists and most of its customers are men. Fact.
I think the more likely scenario is that there is a population of men, significant but not majoritarian, for whom that it is true.
The question here is how large that group would have to be for Ginmar’s generalization to be reasonable.
First, it’s not like Ginmar is the first human being to have ever put forth that outlandish idea about porn and men.
Secondly, the question is how large an industry has to be to be deemed socially and culturally relevant enough to generalise about it? You seemed to react as if someone had said that “if you want to know what men think about vampirism, go ask your dentist how many people have asked for canine enlargement”.
You could have simply said, hey I used to watch a lot of porn but now I hate it and if you’re implying that all men like it, you’re wrong. There you go. But attempting to deny that it is everywhere or that it overwhemingly caters to men is a little disingenous, you’ll concede, perhaps?
If that’s all that Ginmar meant, then I certainly can’t disagree.
The question about the “porn is soooooo big” industry statistics, for me, is that I’m not convinced that these numbers are not vast exaggerations. In the end, many of those numbers seem to come indirectly from porn producers trying to claim that they’re big shots, and that doesn’t seem like an objective or trustworthy way of gathering statistics, to me.
There’s also a very profitable and socially acceptable industry that caters to women’s sexual fantasies about men–at least the fantasies we’re *supposed* to have, and only in print, because we’re not supposed to like actually *looking* at naked men.
Secondly, the question is how large an industry has to be to be deemed socially and culturally relevant enough to generalise about it?
Ginmar is not generalizing about the porn industry. She’s generalizing about men. (Oooh, you just made the man disappear! I feel disempowered.)
Let’s make this easy.
Non-porn TV and broadcast media are big industries. Is it legitimate to say “if you want to know how women feel about housework, just watch the commercials on television!” ?
If not (I say not), isn’t a reasonable counter-statement something along the lines of “hey, you know, a lot of women do in fact do housework just like they show on the TV commercials…but it’s not all women, and it’s probably not even most women.” ?
Ampersand, Robert defended Richard’s use of a woman lying about a rape that never occurred as an example of ‘happens all the time lies.’ He only had three examples, and one of them was a gender-neutral spousal abuse case. You said that you didn’t think we shouldn’t talk about false rape reports, but using them as an example of common lies is not the sort of thing that should be allowed to slide under the wire. Robert defended that: now he’s upset about this, which he claims is offensive.
Sorry, but no dice. It was a toss away remark but Robert’s got a different standard when his gender is maligned. All of a sudden he wants facts and statistics that were totally missing from his defense of that one third of examples.
Do women lie so commonly that they should be the third thing one should bring to mind when discussing common lies? Is domestic violence happening equally so that ‘spouse’ can be used?
Someone’s commented here before on the subtle linguistic tricks people use to conceal their racism, sexism, whatever. I’d say this qualifies.
But attempting to deny that it is everywhere or that it overwhemingly caters to men is a little disingenous, you’ll concede, perhaps?
Yeah, Robert’s too busy waving the traditional flag of, OMG, you saidthis.
What next? He’s going to accuse us of hating him because he has a penis?
Noodles, there’s a multi-billion dollar market for movies about superheroes. It would not be correct to generalize from this into an assumption that all Americans, or all men, are superhero fans.
Superheroes don’t effectively rule America. Also, superheroes suffer from the handicap of being imaginery.
There’s a multi-billion dollar romance novel industry, but not all people (or all women) read romance novels.
What do romance novels teach women? PA did a post on that recently.
There’s a multi-billion dollar “Left Behind”? books and merchandising industry, yet the vast majority of people I know have never purchased one of those books.
And yet Christians are having more and more of an impact on this country, due to the power they hold. You’ve noted this yourself.
I find this whole argument entirely disingenous, given the comparison of powerful to powerless people, and the failure to recognize that power makes a huge difference.
“There’s also a very profitable and socially acceptable industry that caters to women’s sexual fantasies about men”“at least the fantasies we’re *supposed* to have, and only in print, because we’re not supposed to like actually *looking* at naked men.”
When you study the imagery and supposed plot-line of the average bodice-ripper, what’s most interesting is the similarities it has with mainstream porn. Leaving aside for a moment the inevitable differences between a film and prose, the remaining differences are largely a matter of how crudely voiced the fantasies are in porn films versus a bodice-ripper. Yeah, bodice-rippers have plots, but writers recycle the same one or two plots over and over again. The sex –with all its particular mores and traditions– leads the plot, not the other way around.
Ampersand, I don’t think all figures come directly from porn producers without any other kinds of research, data, estimates at all. In any case, I am really suprised there can be any doubt on the immense profitability of the market. Both in the US and globally.
I was just reminded of that public bid for 3G mobile phone network licenses that the UK had a few years back, and how everyone was saying the figures being paid were absolutely insane and besides the technology still wasn’t there and besides, what uses could it even have… Well then it turned out that even before those licenses were being sold, there had been already deals with porn providers to offer video downloads of porn on mobile phones. That’s how they recouped the costs of purchasing the licenses. That’s why the bidders could afford bidding on those insane prices before the video via mobile networks had even been perfected. They knew they’d get it all back and more, thanks to porn. And they are.
Anyway. I of course am not speaking for Ginmar (and I apologise to her in case I’m mistaking her) but her point seemed quite clear to me. I am amazed that there’s any need to dissect it as if it was an incredible thing to say, that’s all.
Robert – Ginmar is not generalizing about the porn industry. She’s generalizing about men. (Oooh, you just made the man disappear! I feel disempowered.)
Let’s make this easy.
Let’s make this clear: porn industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men.
Do you disagree with that statement, or not?
I’d add, and an overwhelming number of men have purchased porn at some point in their lives.
Also, Robert, re: commercials – you’re comparing movies, magazines, videos, cable tv channels, that people – yourself included – deliberately pay for, with tv commercials that get broadcast to them while they’re watching ER?
Regardless of the difference in actual content and context, do you realise no one pays to watch a tv commercial, duh?
Surely?
Anyway. I of course am not speaking for Ginmar (and I apologise to her in case I’m mistaking her) but her point seemed quite clear to me. I am amazed that there’s any need to dissect it as if it was an incredible thing to say, that’s all.
No, Noodles, I appreciate the back up. I especially like it when he responded, “Well, women do it too, you know!” So to speak. God forbid I get sarcastic or anything.
Let’s make this clear: porn industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men.
This statement is entirely reasonable. I endorse it.
But so what?
Nobody is arguing that the porn industry is somehow doing a bad job of serving the preferences of the mostly-men who make it large and profitable.
Nobody is arguing that the porn industry is not large.
Nobody is arguing that the porn industry is not profitable.
What is being argued is that it is not fair or accurate to generalize “male person” into “porn consumer”.
Do you disagree with that statement, or not?
OK, Noodles, fair enough on the commercials.
Non-porn broadcasting is a big industry. Is it legitimate to say “if you want to know how women feel about housework, just watch the sitcoms on television!”? ?
If not (I say not), isn’t a reasonable counter-statement something along the lines of “hey, you know, a lot of women do in fact do housework just like they show on the TV shows…but it’s not all women, and it’s probably not even most women.”? ?
Women+housework certainly equals porn, Robert.
Christ on a crutch.
This whole exchange is basically Robert going, “Women do it, too!” But when men do it, of course, it’s not nearly as bad even though he appears to be utterly determined to ignore power differences and sexism. Yeah, that works. Let’s treat unequals equally.
Robert – ‘Let’s make this clear: porn industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men.’
This statement is entirely reasonable. I endorse it.
But so what?
I’ll tell you what: for ten comments you’ve been arguing with a statement that now you endorse.
The only difference between what Ginmar said and you protested against, and what I wrote above and you say you agree with, is that the very same concept has been unrolled for you in its actual meaning – which was obvious already at least to me – , and you can no longer misread it or nitpick it as if it literally meant “all men=porn addicts” which it so obviously never meant.
So, so much for that ‘so what’.
Is it fair or accurate to generalize “male person” into “porn consumer”?
“What is being argued is that it is not fair or accurate to generalize “male person”? into “porn consumer”?.”
Which was not AT ALL how I read Ginmar’s original point: what I saw was her saying that porn reflects the majority of men’s attitudes towards vaginas. And you know what? EVERY FUCKING THING I see about this in my day-to-day life tells me unequivocally that IT DOES. OK? I’m really sick of some of the men here blithely blowing off any little thing that might threaten them personally and whinging on and on about how the big, bad feminists are making them feel bad. You know what? Fucking deal. We have to every day. We can’t even take refuge inside our own homes unless we seriously want to shut out every form of media there is.
Men in general think, at least on some level, that vaginas are dirty, ugly and gross. Even though they can’t wait to get hold of one. So what if that’s contradictory, that’s the way it is and what’s more there is not one single person here who doesn’t know that. And THAT’S what is fucking pissing me off so much: the tap-dancing and the game-playing and the outright whitewashing that’s going on.
There isn’t a person raised in Western society who doesn’t have that message loud and clear. Even if they themselves were brought up in a more enlightened manner, they are still aware that “cunts are YUCK!” is the general message in society. So, please, just stop with the comedy of trying to say any different.
Crys T, I have not once mentioned my feelings or emotions. Indeed, if my posts were any more analytical, I would have to go in for the ear and eyebrow surgery.
I respectfully submit that you have no data concerning my feelings towards genitalia.
You know, I’ve been trying to find a good definition of “logic chopping” online, and I can’t find one. Yet the Internet is the great festival of logic chopping, isn’t it?
Robert, I’m tired of your tap-dancing. You know full well this is what MOST MEN believe, and you also know full well that most men is what we here are talking about. I actually don’t give a flying one what you personally feel. I DO give a flying one that you’re yet again playing little word games and being far, far less than completely honest.
Having watched you in action for quite some time now, I think you get a real kick out of baiting women, especially feminist women, by making silly and outrageous, obviously bullshit comments just to watch how we blow our gaskets.
It’s all very amusing for you, I’m sure.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ginmar/444558.html
How many of these tactics has Robert used?
What is being argued is that it is not fair or accurate to generalize “male person”? into “porn consumer”?.
Robert, you can keep on pretending it was some divisive, anti-male statement (you’re kind of validating Ginmar’s point without even realising it) about all men being regular porn consumers like you and your friends were (so why were you even offended? I’d have expected a ‘well I never!’ not an admission of having been a regular consumer), or you can carefully re-read the actual comment in its context:
I really have to ask…something is called “The Vagina Monologues”? and you think it excludes men? Do you feel that way about gynecology? I mean, it’s not like we don’t already know what men think about vaginas or anything…just go to the porno section of any dirty bookstore, and you’ll have your answer. Is it just so terribly awful that women get to talk about themselves for a change?
Please tell us, how does the point being made with more than a touch of sarcasm by Ginmar differ from the statement you said you endorse, which is: porn industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men.
But of course, you only reply to whatever you feel like replying. You started questioning the largeness and profitability of the porn industry, questioning the male to female proportions of consumers, then get back with ‘oh no one was denying any of THAT’. You just did three comments earlier, but nevermind.
You acknowledged the porn / commercials comparison was absurd, and come back with porn / sitcom comparison. Hello?
You know full well this is what MOST MEN believe, and you also know full well that most men is what we here are talking about.
I have no such knowledge.
I DO give a flying one that you’re yet again playing little word games and being far, far less than completely honest.
Words have meanings. If asking people questions about their words is a game, then I guess it’s a game to you. However, these are real questions we’re talking about, and real people.
Do YOU think that it is fair or accurate to generalize “male person”? into “porn consumer”??
Words have meanings, Robert, but you’re nitpicky only when it suits your purpose. I think Crys T is right. You just want to bait women. You said that porn is a male-propelled industry. Now you want to argue how many dildos can dance on the head of a vibrator.
Robert, the adjective you’re looking for is not ‘analytical’ but ‘devious’.
Do YOU think that it is fair or accurate to generalize “male person”? into “porn consumer”??
Do you think it makes that question any more honest, if you keep repeating it?
Do you realise that Ginmar’s comment was not ‘any male person we can take at random from the phone book is going to be an avid porn consumer because all males age 12 and onwards are’, but a point about how there’s a whole porn industry where female sexuality is overwhelmingly serving standard male fantasies so people whining about the VM being anti-male and divisive are really taking the piss?
Kinda like what you’re doing with your insistence on ignoring the context and intent of that comment, on comparing porn to standard tv fare that’s not even in any overwhelming manner directed at one gender (unless you have some ultra-limited definition of ‘sitcom’, it includes things like Friends and Will & Grace and in what universe did those not have as many male fans as female ones?), are not encrypted, are not pay-per-view, and even when people are so fanatic they buy the DVD boxset of the whole series 1 to 999, nowhere near making any of the profits that porn makes.
You do say you have objections to porn, you do acknowledge it is overwhelmingly a male-for-males industry, you do acknowledge it makes a lot of money go round, and you did acknowledge you yourself consumed porn and knew lots of other males who did.
You just don’t like someone else making that very same bleeding point by using the phrase ‘men’ in general, because if one wanted to be a pain in the arse about it, it could be read as ‘every single man’ and that would be an outrageous offense? Do you disagree with Ginmar’s general point? Or just her phrasing? Or? Not getting the point of all your outrage at one line picked out of a perfectly clear paragraph, frankly.
How many of these tactics has Robert used?
In reality, or in the imaginary posts that it usually seems you’re responding to?
how does the point being made with more than a touch of sarcasm by Ginmar differ from the statement you said you endorse, which is: porn industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men.
The bris industry is run overwhelmingly by men who cater overwhelmingly to other men, but that doesn’t mean that all men want to have the tip of their dick chopped off.
Ginmar stated that you could tell what men thought of vaginas by looking at their depiction in pornography. The fact that some men depict vaginas in a certain way does not speak to how other men feel or think. The porn industry caters to the preferences of a specific set of men. It does not necessarily follow that the product they deliver also appeals to the men that are not served.
The discussion of the porn industry was not questioning the profitability or size of the industry; it was challenging the association between that industry and the entire male population, in an attempt to explore the very question raised in the paragraph above: how representative is it? It’s relevant, because if 95% of men view pornography, then I’d say that Ginmar’s association was completely reasonable. If 10% of them view pornography, then Ginmar’s association is complete crap.
You acknowledged the porn / commercials comparison was absurd, and come back with porn / sitcom comparison. Hello?
My analogy was critiqued for having a functional difference, which I acknowledged and fixed. Hello, yourself.
Nobody has yet been willing to answer my very simple question.
Do you think it makes that question any more honest, if you keep repeating it?
No. It just puts the intellectual dishonesty of the people I’m arguing with into contrast. I note that you still haven’t answered the question. Why not?
You just don’t like someone else making that very same bleeding point
She’s not making that point. Her point was that you could ascertain the opinions of men by observing the way that one subset of men portrayed something.
Kinda like what you’re doing with your insistence on ignoring the context and intent of that comment, on comparing porn to standard tv fare
I am not comparing porn to standard TV fare. I am demonstrating the logical error that Ginmar is committing by reframing it into a less emotionally-charged parallel.
Do you disagree with Ginmar’s general point? Or just her phrasing? Or? Not getting the point of all your outrage at one line picked out of a perfectly clear paragraph, frankly.
My outrage? Am I calling anyone names? Yelling? Even being rude?
Ginmar’s general point, that certain cultural artifacts are basically “for” one gender or another and that its silly for members of the other gender to complain about “exclusion” from such artifacts, is un0bjectionable to me. My objection is to her inappropriate generalization.
Coherence and clarity are important, particularly in an environment like this one where there are widely divergent views and the issues are controversial or charged.
Yeah, Robert, your logic was pretty effectively demonstrated when you didn’t understand why treating women who lie about being raped as a general rule was offensive. If it’s bad there—which you still won’t admit—then bite me here, basically. You don’t like it? Then you don’t like it for everybody. But the only people you give a shit about are men.
I like to think that the people I give a shit about are people.
I’m sorry we were not able to have a productive conversation.
Do you think it makes that question any more honest, if you keep repeating it?
No. It just puts the intellectual dishonesty of the people I’m arguing with into contrast.
Sure…
I note that you still haven’t answered the question. Why not?
Would you answer the question ‘do you think it is fair to imply every woman wants to fuck Will in Will & Grace’?
It’s a question about something that was never said.
And I did answer it – in fact, I did more than that, I did point to your absurd nitpicking in turning a general point about who porn is targeted to into a ‘tarring every male person with porn consumer brush’ generalisation.
She’s not making that point.
Really?
Ok, then, if Ginmar thinks that the statement about porn being overwhelmingly targeted at men and being a big industry, that you, Robert, ended up agreeing with – even ‘endorsing’ – is not basically making the same point she herself was making with her comment on men who buy porn, she would have perhaps disagreed with my associating the two statements as making the same point. Duh.
She didn’t.
But that’s not you being deliberate obtuse.
Her point was that you could ascertain the opinions of men by observing the way that one subset of men portrayed something.
Ah, again, with the literal decontextualised reading of:
I really have to ask…something is called “The Vagina Monologues”? and you think it excludes men? Do you feel that way about gynecology? I mean, it’s not like we don’t already know what men think about vaginas or anything…just go to the porno section of any dirty bookstore, and you’ll have your answer. Is it just so terribly awful that women get to talk about themselves for a change?
Also, since you shifted twice already on this: is porn a large pervasive industry, or a minority phenomenon? Pick one answer and stick with it.
I am not comparing porn to standard TV fare. I am demonstrating the logical error that Ginmar is committing by reframing it into a less emotionally-charged parallel.
You could have simply said, hey Ginmar, if you are implying all men are into porn, that’s not true, I was, but I no longer am, and my friends who were, well we don’t know what happened to them, but see, I shall not be brushed with such tar. So there.
Besides, you’d have to try to find an industry that is actually comparable in its targeting overwhelmingly females to the way the porn industry overwhelmingly targets males, and for which the nature of that targeting is comparable. Good luck with that.
Otherwise, apples and oranges.
My outrage? Am I calling anyone names? Yelling? Even being rude?
Why, does outrage have to be rude or loud? Call it something else then. Call it with a term as neutral and calm and cool and collected and analytical and manly as can be. Call it reaction.
You reacted to a comment, to end up acknowledging the point it was indeed making, you even ended up acknowledging you were one of those males who go to the store to buy porn, but you are still bitching about ‘being tarred by a generalization’. ?
Ginmar’s general point, that certain cultural artifacts are basically “for”? one gender or another and that its silly for members of the other gender to complain about “exclusion”? from such artifacts, is un0bjectionable to me.
Exactly. So you’re wasting everyone’s time here with straw men.
My objection is to her inappropriate generalization.
Which was not the straw man generalisation you turned it into, and not inappropriate either, because you did validate the point yourself.
Coherence and clarity are important, particularly in an environment like this one where there are widely divergent views and the issues are controversial or charged.
Hear, hear.