Saturday, April 7, 2012

The audience for ASCII porn

Taranto puts it succinctly:
Women write dirty books for other women to read. Bill Bennett blames men.
Even if you don't agree that "woman" is a legal form of child in the United States, it would be hard to deny that many opinion leaders behave as if they are. This article in the WSJ should underline what has been previously observed as the conservative reflex to always put women on pedestals and hold men responsible for female shortcomings.

Personally, I think Fifty Shades of Grey is a great example of what sexual equality hath wrought. In only a little less time than it took to produce Shakespeare following the birth of the English printing press, women's liberation has permitted women to reach the artistic heights of The Vagina Monologues, Twilight, and now Fifty Shades of Grey. That suffices to settle the old "suppression" theory with which women once explained the historical surfeit of female intellectual accomplishment.

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahem..

BRONTE SISTERS, ANYONE??

Sistaaaahs are doin it for themsellvesss

Trust said...

What's hilarious is women actually believe Twilight is a love story.

Stickwick said...

This article in the WSJ should underline what has been previously observed as the conservative reflex to always put women on pedestals and hold men responsible for female shortcomings.

Once again, we have men taking credit for female accomplishment. If there is one area in which women have proven to excel, it's in the exploitation and debasement of their own selves. Why deny them credit for this remarkable accomplishment?

... Fifty Shades of Grey is a great example of what sexual equality hath wrought.

Some of my male friends are confused by this book's popularity (and they're obviously not familiar with female romance novels, or they'd know this is the logical end-point of a long-existing trend), but it's easily explained in terms of Newton's third law as applied to human behavior: for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. The more women try to deny their true nature, the more bizarrely they will express that nature. But that expression is always indirect at first, e.g. as experimentation in art and literature. The initial indirectness allows intellectuals like Helen Fisher to write it off as mere fantasy, causally unrelated to any other aspect of female existence. But human nature being what it is, we can expect the expression to become more frequent and direct in the future. It'll be interesting to watch the ensuing feats of cognitive contortion that will be required to explain it all without acknowledging female nature.

M said...

I doubt that the author of that book was trying to reach artistic heights any more than the average porn producer is. Most of what men produce is also lacking in intellectual greatness. Great minds are few and far between and unless we are giving all men credit for accomplishments of a few men then men in general also suffer from a lack of intellectual accomplishment with no "suppression" to be blamed.

Anonymous said...

It's a wonder more men aren't growing out 'staches and heading for the gym.

Anonymous said...

Funny, I began reading Vox about five years ago. I hadn't had time to read any "chick lit" in about the same time until I bororowed a book from an author I used to enjoy (pre-children/pre reality check).

In a nutshell,the plot..

Mid-30s women who is chubby, not beautiful but very smart comes into contact with former special forces soldier who is "tired" of the drama of high-maintence, beautiful, young women. They get into some kind of drama, and she insists on physically protecting him. They have sex, it is awesome, he falls madly in love with her and convinces her to marry him by feeding her donuts and being sexually aroused by her sexual reaction to the donuts.

I am not kidding, this was the basic plot.

After I nearly hurt myself laughing I actually returned it and attempted to explain why this was one of the most hysterical "fantasy" books I had ever read.

My friend honestly had no idea what I was talking about.

Sigh, I miss the blue pill sometimes....

Carlotta

Stickwick said...

At least it was a special forces guy and not a vampire.

(Warning: snowflakes ahead.) The plot sounds pretty dumb, and yet it isn't wildly off-base. I'm married to a former SF soldier who was tired of the models and assorted babes he had been dating, and fell in love with me when I was a slightly overweight physics student. We're friends with other former SF guys, and some of them actually prefer overweight chicks. But the donut-eating arousal bit is freaky fantasy. No dude gets off on chicks stuffing their faces unless he's seriously neurotic.

enna said...

50 Shades started out as Twilight fanfiction, so I'm not even sure it could be counted as its own "artistic height."

rycamor said...

As a teenager I read one of my Mom's romance books cover-to-cover out of curiosity (something about a woman imprisoned in a castle by a domineering male chauvinist Italian billionaire), and was surprised at the lack of respectful romantic gestures I would have expected my feminist mother to approve of. Teased her about it and at first she tried the "it's just fiction" excuse, but when I pressed, she had to admit there was "something about dominance/submission" that women couldn't help liking.

I guess I can thank my mother for being honest with me. And of course, every time she started giving me the feminist shtick too heavily, all I had to do was mention the romance novels.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Too true. Delete female writers and the glorious literary output of Western civilisation would be unaffected.

It's a wonder more men aren't growing out 'staches and heading for the gym.

Some of us are doing just that, and still the chicks won't leave us alone. ;-)

Orville said...

Can't wait for the sequel - "69 Shades of Mauve".

stg58 said...

Twilight is simply the story of a young girl's choice between bestiality and necrophilia.

stg58 said...

zing

Boogeyman said...

what's with the donuts you ask? Look up 'Splooshing'. Narrow fetish where a person gets off on seeing another person having food smeared over themselves. Back when I worked at an adult bookstore we had a movie where a girl was tied to a chair while 10 gallon buckets of spaghetti and meatballs were poured over her. Scene went on for 20 minutes. Couldn't keep it in stock.

Or it could be because the writer likes the idea of being a fat pig and still getting the hot guy to like her. Donuts, deep fried bread covered in sugar paste. Bad idea.

Anonymous said...

"But the donut-eating arousal bit is freaky fantasy. No dude gets off on chicks stuffing their faces unless he's seriously neurotic."

I believe you have just described the George Costanza Omega.

LP2021 Bank of LP Work in Progress said...

How much emo porn can one women consume, when is it ever enough? How many more utter talentless dreck in movies and books must you busy yourself with instead of something more useful?

Where is the sexual/chemical charge for women?

(Just googled the book)

Oh! Now I see!

What a bunch of NWO, torture worship sh-t, to hell with shades of sh-t.

With respect to WSJ and Bennett...James must be damn bored to write about this nonsense and Bennett. Maybe the Game theoreticians should try to get an interview with Bill, if he still has his boring radio show. But no way! Bill similar to other media outlets, won't give any attention to anything pro-male and Game related.

Tango Eliminated said...

That's like asking how many first person shooter games do there need to be! There's always room for another one -- we will never have "enough"!

Anonymous said...

Number one, that is AWESOME!
Number two, never saw that coming at all.
Number three, I thought you were the fitness model...or am I confusing you with someone else?
Number four, an SF guy proposed to me once before I met my Husband. I had no idea they enjoy the chub that I am constantly having to battle. Wow, a hot man and not having to work out. That is a freakin FANTASY.

Hold on to your man Baby LOL.

By the way, you didn't by any chance also save him from a serial killing madman and form your own family unit with your three cats and assorted motley characters as well did you? I believe that was the "drama" part. When they were not doing it or eating donuts she was protecting him.

Please let me know, the suspense is killing me :)
Carlotta

Anonymous said...

And when I did the same thing (reading Mom's lit) I told her that I thought the whole "romantic hero spanking the heroine thing" was way off base. She blushed, she did.

Mom was a feminist, who knew.

And I still don't get the spanking thing with romance novels. I mean a real, honest to goodness, " that women disobeyed me and now I am going to spank her (not a fun sexual thing) butt good and teach her something" thing.

Not for me, I probably would have shot someone who tried that on me.

But hey, I am spicey.
Carlotta

Anonymous said...

I am going to go with number two. It was a female author.

However, especially with the economy, there are worse ways to make a living then having a bucket of pasta dumped on you. Of course, I would demand royalties.

And the sequel would have to be chocolate.

I am beginning to wonder if I married the wrong guy. I have to work way to hard to keep his attention. All this working out and taking care of myself crap. And constantly fighting off other chicks is getting ridiculous.

I had no idea fabulous former soldiers loved a little chubby, my goodness I have been so deceived! And there are men that just want to watch me have some food poured on me?

I was so naive :)
Carlotta

Anonymous said...

The problem is you will want the donuts more then him because him liking you eating donuts will gross you out.

It is part of the curse on Eve ;)
Carlotta

Anonymous said...

It is all part of a very sinister plan Eliza...mwhahahahah.

Women prefer vampires and werewolves and donuts...and men prefer computers and robots and apparently buckets of pasta dumped on women (and those real losers who get off on poping ballons..I just accidently saw a promo for some show on that and nearly puked).

Evil is progressing nicely....

Carlotta

mmaier2112 said...

Can't remember who said it first but ever since I read over at Vox' that Bella's choosing between a dog and a dead dude, that's been how I refer to Twilight ever since.

Serves perfectly to shut gushing females up.

Stickwick said...

Yes, it's pretty awesome; but don't let me give you the wrong impression. First, I wouldn't say most SF guys prefer overweight chicks, just some. Like our good friend, who is very handsome, and successful in his post-SF career; but he wouldn't even look at normal-sized girls in college.

My husband, OTOH, doesn't prefer overweight, but he was willing to accept some excess weight on a woman who is smart, relatively sane, warm-hearted, and desiring the leadership of her husband. I'm currently working out like the dickens to add "hot babe" to that list, because it will make him happy. (As for fitness model, maybe you're thinking of Spacebunny. I used to be a competitive athlete in superlative shape, but that ended with an injury. I've been fighting some excess weight ever since.)

And, no, I've never saved my husband from a serial killer (LOL) with my band of cats (double-LOL), but I did stand up for him once in a really nasty situation that involved several liters of alcohol and a lot of stitches.

Stickwick said...

Apparently we've both been laboring under the false assumption that "Pour Some Sugar on Me" was just poetic license.

Mike M. said...

You throw the specially trained attack cats at the serial killer as a distraction, then use your carefully honed donut-fu combat skills to defeat him. :-)

Anonymous said...

To know then what I know now LOL.

Carlotta

Anonymous said...

Mike, excellent. You mind if I steal that from you...I have an idea in mind for some chick lit I am going to write. It is going to be HUGE!

Stickwick, Gotcha, sounds like a good guy! Pretty much same here. Ohhh, so you have had some adventures. Fun!


In more news, I decided to run a test to see if I am reading things wrong in my own marriage. I decided to eat some cookies in front of my Husband and see if he got turned on.

He sighed, asked me if I was still doing paleo and then calculated the calories and told me my P90x for today was only going to cover about three of those suckers.

What the hell? The book said he would be in throes of passion by cookie number two. Maybe I should have used donuts.

Carlotta

Lucas said...

Twilight serves the female fantisy bkz it has dominant males. Period.

John Robie said...

I came for the ASCII pr0n, I stayed for the Twilight bashing. GG.

Wendy said...

It'd be funny to write some chic lit fully tongue in cheek and have it taken seriously and take off in popularity.

Anonymous said...

You are forgetting the #1 rule about eating cookies...the milk.

Next time try pouring the milk all over your best features. Then bust out the cookies.

Anonymous said...

And that's organic milk, of course.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4uuGvmAxTI

Yep, pretty much the same formula for 50 Shades.

Anonymous said...

The problem is they want this, but they also want the right to lock you up if they happen not to be in the mood and there is no way to tell if they are in the mood reliably (and they can change their mind after).

Anonymous said...

I believe "surfeit" should be replaced by "dearth," an antonym of the former.

jay c said...

Unless it was supposed to be sarcasm. I can't tell.

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