by hilzoy
Melissa McEwan has a post up that has to be seen to be believed. It includes images of sixty five disembodied breast novelty items, many of them very odd (I mean, who, exactly, is the target market for the Boobie Pacifier?), and some, especially the very realistic breasts meant to be sucked or squeezed in some way, flat-out revolting.
[Picture of revolting shower dispenser is now below the fold, with the other pictures.]
I don’t know about you, but I think that anyone who uses this might as well put up a large sign saying: I don’t expect to have women over to my house, ever, for the rest of my natural life.
As Melissa says:
“I can, quite genuinely, understand why people look at one—or maybe even two, or three—of these items and dismiss them as “just a joke.” If I wrote a post about just a frying pan that turns eggs into boobs, I’m certain even some truly feminist women and men would defend it as just a bit of harmless kitsch. It’s just a joke; what’s the big deal? I get that; I really do.
Which is why I went for critical mass.
It isn’t just one “boob novelty” (or, as they tend to be called, “boobie novelty”). It’s sixty-five. If I hadn’t totally run out of steam, I probably could have included sixty-five more. And these things aren’t relegated to adult stores and websites—ads for the Jingle Jugs are being run on radio and TV during ballgames, and many of these items can be found in regular old party stores and gag shops like Spencer’s Gifts, which has franchises in every bloody mall in America. The “Stress Chest,” “Beer Boob,” and “Boobie Fuzzy Dice” are all sold at Spencer’s, right alongside Harry Potter action figures.
The ether is permeated with boob novelties (which is to say nothing of vagina novelties, women’s ass novelties, the women-as-toilets products, etc.), and while each on its own may not be such a terrible thing, the combined effect is having turned disembodied women’s body parts into just so much cultural detritus to be consumed or ignored. No rational person can argue that makes no difference to how women are viewed, as a group and as individuals, by men and by themselves. And that isn’t a laughing matter.”
Well, that’s just Melissa being a humorless feminist again. Because, honestly, what red-blooded American girl could fail to see the fun of, say, her body parts mounted as trophies?
[Picture of boob trophy racks]
And if Melissa doesn’t think the toilets she posted here and here are funny — well, I guess some people just can’t take a joke, is all.
The Ur-Troll
The man you’re about meet is named Oliver Crangle. Mr. Crangle is a dealer in petulance and poison. He’s arbitrarily chosen four o’clock as his personal Götterdämmerung, and we are about to watch the metamorphosis of a twisted fanatic, poisoned
Hil: it gets worse:
h/t Lucinda Marshall @ Feminist Peace Network, who also points to this on point quote from chemorox (proprietress of ‘the original bitter cancer blog’): “Misogyny as a fundraiser! Let’s help out breast cancer victims by reminding them that they had to get their TITS CUT OFF”
Maybe Graydon Carter was right.
I can never decide how to react to such things. How would men react to the proliferation of male body parts being displayed like this? You’re right that it’s not just a matter of a few isolated incidents that can be shrugged off as a tasteless joke, but on the other hand, is there any viable way to critique this? Obviously the boys that enjoy these things are the ones that are still mad at mommy and want to piss women off, so what’s the point of lecturing them? It’s just playing into the dynamic. Maybe it’s best just to view these things as symptoms of inadequacy, sneer at them, and refuse to have anything to do with the boys that display them. In other words, react as if they were wearing T-shirts that said “I’m an insecure jerk who’s really bad in bed.” It’s not like we can teach people not to be idiots if they don’t want to learn.
I can never decide how to react to such things. How would men react to the proliferation of male body parts being displayed like this? You’re right that it’s not just a matter of a few isolated incidents that can be shrugged off as a tasteless joke, but on the other hand, is there any viable way to critique this? Obviously the boys that enjoy these things are the ones that are still mad at mommy and want to piss women off, so what’s the point of lecturing them? It’s just playing into the dynamic. Maybe it’s best just to view these things as symptoms of inadequacy, sneer at them, and refuse to have anything to do with the boys that display them. In other words, react as if they were wearing T-shirts that said “I’m an insecure jerk who’s really bad in bed.” It’s not like we can teach people not to be idiots if they don’t want to learn.
I have no idea why it posted my comment twice–sorry about that!
This male reacts to it by at least immediately thinking of vibrators and dildos. Of which there are a lot. And many that most men couldn’t reasonably live up to in terms of size, girth, and/or “stamina.”
Not saying that this isn’t disturbing. I recognize that there’s a difference between a sex toy and a toilet, and that the fact that one can view ads and buy the jingle boobs in the same states where dildos are illegal says something.
Don’t really have a deeper point aside from that, I guess. I think Jess is right on in terms of how to deal with it. It is pretty pathetic to want one of these things…
Jess is right – the best reaction is disdain. But of course there exist “novelty toys” on penis themes, and many seem aimed at sales to women. I well remember an ironing board that had a big naked man on it except for a strategically placed burn mark in the shape of an iron. Worthy of similar disdain.
And have you ever noticed how soap, etc ads these days always portray the male as really dumb and the woman as wise? I dunno if that’s any progress from the car ads of my youth where the girl was generally portrayed as an airhead.
Another thought… how popular are these things? Seriously?
I don’t know a man that owns one of the items on Shakes’ list. Not one. I’m also a guy and I wouldn’t buy one.
I’m not saying sexism is over, nor am I defending the stuff… It’s sort of like finding a wingnut in open comments, right? These are examples of some behavior that may or may not be typical of most males. I’m not sure how many people actually buy these things.
If the Jingle Jugs are actually getting advertised on TV, then that crosses a certain line but the existence of the products doesn’t in and of itself say anything bigger than, there are some f’d up people out there?
Sujal
“I can never decide how to react to such things. How would men react to the proliferation of male body parts being displayed like this?”
Since I would imagine that there is substantial overlap between men who would buy these “boob” products and men who buy castings of bull testicles to hang off their trucks (along with plenty of other penis/testicle-themed products), I bet they would be perfectly fine with it. See examples of such products here: http://www.bullsballs.com/index.html
Not to minimize the problems of patriarchy, etc., but I must opine:
Jackasses come in all sizes and genders. And some of them have realized that P.T. Barnum had a money-making point when he remarked that a sucker is born every day.
I mean, really, how many men (aside from a few drunken 19-year-old TKE brothers) are going to view that wall decoration and at the very least fail to murmur: “Dude, that’s kind of lame, are you joking? Why is it on your wall?”
To echo sujal, I just don’t think that feminists get to complain about disembodied boobies until we stop talking up masturbating with disembodied penises (ie dildos/vibrators). I also think there’s a clear dividing line between women as toilets (misogyny!) and anus-themed fleshlights. For that matter, I kind of think that these sorts of products do a reasonable job of satirizing lust. If we’ll set lameness aside (of course these things are in bad taste – that’s the point), I’m happy to set most of these things in the category of “just a joke even if it’s a really really lame joke.”
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using models of a person’s anatomy as a masturbation aid. It’s only having disaggregated body parts out in public, used as urinals or wall trophies forgodsake, that’s creepy. Because that sends a message, whereas masturbating with a dildo doesn’t make any kind of public statement about gender or whatever.
I can accept the boob bong as amusingly ironic, though.
Walk into a sex store recently? There are walls and walls of dicks. More dicks than you can shake a stick at. Every single size and shape that you can think of. Dick pencils, dick heads, and even dicks in party hats. You can literally walk out of the store with a bag of dicks, some so large you can beat someone to death with, much less bruise a man’s ego. Using the power of the interwebs I can also find you plushie stomache, influenza viruses, and even a plushie companion cube.
The sanrio catalog has so much hello kitty stuff that you could drown an army in it. This includes the hello kitty vibrator.
Does this mean that the dildo shops of the world are oppressing men, that the blow up dalls are oppressing women, or that sanrio is oppressing all of our feline friends?
I think it just says that people like to make models of things they like. Humans like boobs. They are life-giving when you are an infant. Humans like dicks. Where do you think those babies came from? Humans like kitties and “hello”. Not touching that one.
At any rate modeling something is human nature. Wether making an effigy to burn or a statue to honor, making representations of things is the essence of abstract thought. Words are representations of ideas, and of every thing you can possibly describe.
Now, feel free to question the taste of someone with a boobie soap dispenser, or a hello kitty vibrator, sure. But don’t view it as an assault on all women to be “Objectified”. George Washington is “Objectified” on the one dollar bill, and I don’t think that’s a sign of disrespect.
People like tits. People like dicks. And it’s ok to have portable versions that don’t come with the baggage of carrying the whole thing along. We’re grown ups. We can deal. We have much bigger problems to worry about than fake tits and dicks.
You personally might find them distasteful and that’s fine. That’s a personal problem. But someone railing about how these things are horrible and demean all women are just as bad and as prudish as the people that outlaw dildos in Georgia. It’s infantile and sanctimonious to try and deny other people access to their fake tits and or dildos.
It’s not sexism. If anything it’s lack of sexism.
My screen was scrolled down somehow when I reached Obsidian Wings a few minutes ago and there was the title “Happy Veterans’ Day” underneath the Jingle Jugs advert ….. and that was it.
Thanksgiving is coming up soon.
I can’t explain any of this. It seems Henry Miller had some pretty good images regarding disembodied female body parts (living on their own, renting an apartment, going to ballgames), but the crazy plasticized sexual fetishism is a source of wondrous banality or banal wonder to me (I like my female body parts connected to the actual female).
I expect that centuries from now our crypto-religious cultural artifacts will be excavated by future archaeologists and displayed in museums. I can envision a reliquary unearthed from the tomb of Bob Jones or Larry Craig containing the second and fourth volumes of the Left Behind Series, an array of flexible plastic G-spot gizmos, batteries included, and a newspaper article detailing the beginning of the end times when Pat Robertson gave over his plastic dashboard Jesus to the campaign of the beast Rudy Guiliani, despite the former’s opinion that 9/11 was punishment for America’s iniquities and the latter’s regret that his iniquitous treasure trove of sex toy collectibles was turned to dust in the calamity.
I’m just worried about the guys who purchase the plastic blow up doll through the mail with the “vagina dentata” included.
Now THAT is loneliness.
P.S. Didn’t I read a review of a movie recently about a guy who falls in love with his plastic blow up doll and the relationship is touchingly accepted by his family and friends and coworkers?
“DILDOS in Georgia”
yet another great band name.
“And it’s O.K. to have portable versions that don’t come with the baggage of carrying the whole thing along.”
I think it’s good, too, that we’ve gone to wireless technology and we don’t have to lug the extension cords and the generators around.
Did I mention that I feel kind of badly for all of the plastic humans who have been dismembered and have had their body parts sold over the counter by a surly, faintly disapproving guy whose own body parts are covered in tattoos of the 12 Apostles at the Last Supper.
John: Over the counter is so last century. Today’s plastic human body body parts are traficked over the internets.
“Walk into a sex store recently?”
Um, no. — Maybe I was put off by the fact that when I was a kid, I was going somewhere with my family, and we drove through Boston’s red light district, such as it was. I remember all the signs saying “Adult Books!”, which I assumed was analogous to Children’s Books; and wondering why all the shops seemed so dingy and sad, since all the adults I knew loved books.
It was a mystery.
However, if there are “walls and walls of dicks”, I’ll probably give it a pass, since I follow Thullen in preferring (in my case) male body parts attached to the original guy. Plus, I have never wanted them in quantity. One usually does just fine.
True story.
Among other things, my wife consults with a marketing agency based in NOLA. Part of their deal is that, every Mardi Gras, they host lots of their clients for a week of parties and shmoozing.
This generally turns into a bit of a boy’s club, where the men go off, ride the float, and look at nekkid women, while the ladies eat lunch and get bored. So, my wife and a couple of the other women decided to make another plan.
They got themselves some fake rubber boobs, which apparently are not hard to come by in NOLA, especially at Mardi Gras, put them on above their blouses but below their jackets, and hied themselves to one of the parade routes.
An eager fellow with beads to spend asked them to show him something, and one of my wife’s companions obliged. The gentleman, realizing even in his drunken haze that what he was seeing was not fair dinkum, cried out “Hey, those aren’t real!!”.
My wife’s friend replied, “Neither are your beads!”.
Thanks –
I don’t think sextoys are comparable, but I think that for instance the manneken pis corkscrew is. My mother thought it was great fun and bought one for my husband, which me managed to loose 😉
There are quite some examples of penis shaped sweeties, guest soap, cake tins and candles and I know that there are many similar things in the gift shops here.
I just don’t think that feminists get to complain about disembodied boobies until we stop talking up masturbating with disembodied penises (ie dildos/vibrators).
I don’t think you can compare sex toys (which need not be made shaped like a “disembodied penis”) with something that’s meant to be hung on the wall on public display in the buyer’s home.
OTOH, in the UK, whenever I’ve seen silly “boob” items for sale, I’ve always seen them paired with equally silly “dick” items.
The boob things are in my view for the most part just lame jokes and therefore harmless (while the toilets are simply disgusting and could do with a visit from a sledgehammer).
Sexual body parts can make respectable art (A certain sculpture in A Clockwork Orange comes to mind for example*).
The pillows are, I think, the least objectionable, although I think embracing arm pillows are more suitable for the lonely of both sexes.
Btw, I simply don’t understand the boob obsession and from statistics I read only about 50% of men (at least over here) are interested in size at all (of those again only 50% think that large is beautiful).
*not the chairs in the milk bar, that’s borderline.
At a science-fiction convention, a fan who won a dark chocolate penis filled with vanilla creme (yes, you can buy this in UK sex shops, though I’ve never had any desire to find out how good the chocolate is) said happily “Oh, thank you! But I’ve already got one!”
I’m fairly sure her husband wasn’t blushing.
“Walk into a sex store recently?”
You’ve also probably never witnessed a bachelorette party in action in the bars around here. I assume that most of the items you mentioned are most often found in the privacy of someone’s home.
At the busier times of the year my wife and I can’t enjoy an evening out without being subjected to the spectacle of a half dozen young ladies walking around with penis shaped lollipops, penis shaped drink straws, and many other creative representations of male genitalia.
Thanks muchly for the link Hilzoy.
I should note, re: comments above, that the disembodied penis novelties thing is addressed in my post.
Melissa: I should note, re: comments above, that the disembodied penis novelties thing is addressed in my post.
I commented above before I looked at your post.
Um… no, you’re right: not funny, and the disembodied dick thing – not equivalent.
I’d point out that, at least in this case, ‘Western’ needs to be appended to patriarchy. In pre war Japan, there was apparently no fetish concerning breasts, and women often worked beside their husbands in the fields bare-breasted, a practice which stopped when occupation troops would drive thru the countryside to view the sights. In this article, the author discusses the changes in perceptions of breasts in Japan. While there is now a fetishistic relation to breasts here frex, take this movie ‘oppai seijin or ‘aliens from the Planet Breast’ and there is stuff like this and this, though it is always hard to figure out is it is fetishistic or post modern irony (or both).
Also, while the absence of modern consumer goods in the shape of phalli might be taken as indicative (no pun intended), traditional Japanese culture had no problem displaying them for various festivals, though it is again difficult to understand the original impulses versus the recasting of the festival for young people showing how hip they are.
Well then you really should walk into a decent sex shop at least once, if not only for the aforementioned graphic images, then at least to enjoy the vast amount of puns. Just reading aloud the names of the different lunes should be good for a laugh.
Some years ago, I ended up on a mailing list for a catalog of dragon-themed products. Some of them were pretty cool, really. But you know what would have been an unconvincing argument? If I counted each and every one of the items in that catalog to try to conclude that society at large has a dragon appreciation issue (look! 6500 items and collectibles featuring our fetishized industrial greed-complexes!) (Certainly, one could argue dracophilia is alarmingly present in our society, but the sheer count of collectibles is itself meaningless).
Sex sells, bad jokes about sex are common, and there’s a lot of opportunities to give gifts in the US. Penes are probably under-represented; if I were to interpret that, I’d say they represent an escalation in the sexual games. (Much like faux lesbian antics are “less serious” than faux-gay antics). Which is probably a discussion in and of itself, but entirely different than what it seems McEwan was saying.
De Gustibus non est Disputandem
“There’s no accounting for taste.” (especially when it comes to sex)
People do all sorts of objectively strange things in regard to sex. Some people like to have sex with animals. Some like children. Some like to have sex with others of their own gender. Some think it’s exciting to have private sex in a public location. Many cultures have Dionysian festivals celebrating wild sex. Phallic symbols are everywhere — and many things that aren’t phallic are interpreted as such. And if you extend your range of consideration even further, you get tattoos and body piercing, which I’m sure an appropriately stuffy person could find lots of reasons to condemn.
Condemning other people for harmless actions that seem strange is narrow-minded, self-righteous, and parochial.
Yeah, the number of different available items hardly suggests to me a permeation of the ether. These things may be objectionable, but their purported ubiquity is lost on me. I don’t really see much of this stuff, so I would assume you still have to look for it to find it.
I personally think things shaped like sexually significant body parts are cheap, boring and stupid. I think most of the people who buy this stuff agree about the cheap and stupid part, but think there is some marginal humor to be found in these items in certain contexts. I would also imagine these are mostly throw-away items that tend to go quickly from production to the trash heap. And the world has gotten good at very cheap and varied production.
Some people think about things and the (possible) meaning behind them more than others. When thinking people look at the things that unthinking people sometimes do, there may likely be some problems found. How real those problems are may require futher research.
If there were a correlation found between, say, purchasers of booby items and rapists, I’d say “bingo!” Right now, I say, “hmmm…maybe.”
I certainly don’t fault anyone for being offended by this stuff, but I’m not sure that I necessarily see some deep-rooted misogyny behind much of it. I got bored looking at the pictures and skipped to the text in Melissa’s post, but the toilet stuff does sound really bad. But a lot of it seems, if not harmless, not all that harmful. Bigger fish to fry, I guess.
Oh, and I blame Queen Victoria and the Puritans.
As for the cheap and varied production: I recall an article on those presidential bobble-head dolls where the people who started making them said they got a line for something on the order of $5 or $10k to start making it. And I suspect that bobbleheads are comparatively complicated compared to breast keychains.
To put more of a point on it, I’d say that cheap and varied production capability means that the number of booby items available doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion that society is significantly invested in them.
I once saw a boy in my class have one of those boob things inside his locker. Didn’t bother me, plus he was quiet and if anything polite to everyone.
Having said that, how many people who’d stand up for the right of guys to own things like this will also stand up for the right of women to breastfeed their babies in public? I know most of the commentators here will, that goes without saying, but what about those with no commitment to antisexism?
Yeah, sorry, can’t get too exercised about something as stupidly trivial as the mammary equivalent of the Singing Bass, or a restroom where the architecture reflects the theme of the establishment, however tastelessly. Can’t say as how I’d find it particularly offensive to see a women’s restroom with dicks for faucet handles, or a well-hung plastic man straddling the back of the toilet. I’d just snicker and shake my head.
This just strikes me as a perfect example of someone going out of their way to find something to be offended by, detracting from their larger narrative in an attempt to shoehorn everything into the realm of patriarchy and misogyny. In a day and age where women still do not have parity with men in their salaries, have to fight for birth control to be paid for by insurance the way men can get Viagra, and are still subject to a sea of laws aimed at controlling their lives and sexual choices, I can feel nothing but contempt for someone who wastes their time getting up in arms about stupid kitsch like this.
A thought that occurs to me, as I head off to work: the policy on ObWi is to avoid words that may stop people from being able to read the blog at work; but a picture of breasts is much more an issue (pictures being much more visible across the room, and so much more prominently involved in “hostile environment” lawsuits).
I’m just glad I happened to read this entry on my home computer first, so I know to avoid checking on this entry.
I don’t know what college art departments are like now, but back in the year dot when I was an art student all of the men, students and faculty alike, thought that good art meant protraying, in some media, dismembered women. This was back when De Kooning’s exploding women were still considered cool, even though, by the seventies, he’d been painting the same painting over and over for years. But that’s a digression. I don’t find these boob fetish things offensive. On the other hand I do remember feeling uneasy, almost scared, while attending a faculty show—almost every piece in the room was composed of pieces of a woman put together in a nonliteral manner. It was like being in the basement of an ax murderer’s house.
Catsy: I can feel nothing but contempt for someone who wastes their time getting up in arms about stupid kitsch like this.
Someone who claims to feel “nothing but contempt” for Melissa McEwan (or any other feminist blogger, including Hilzoy) what she may or may not “waste her time” writing about, is clearly not playing with a full deck.
The notion that because some issues are more important than others, anyone who writes about issues which are less important is somehow wasting their time is… just basically anti-blog. Also, a typical means of attempting to control feminist discussion. (“You girls shouldn’t be talking about men fondling plastic boobs! That’s not important! You should be talking about this!”)
My only exposure to novelty breasts was in an episode of Blackadder, where Queen Elizabeth wants to see what the boys are up to at their booze-up. Much comedy ensues from the presence of Blackadder’s Puritan relatives at the same time. So I have to say, they all seem kind of goofy and innocuous to me, but I’ve never met a real life person who would own anything like those, so I can’t really put it into a real life context.
But I’ve never been bugged by dildoes or vibrators either, so I’m not really concerned about obviously fake parts out of context.
is clearly not playing with a full deck.
I’m pretty sure this is a posting rules violation, Jes, as calling someone insane seems to not be ‘reasonably civil’. I have no objection to your disputing Catsy’s argument, but personal attacks have no place here, or shouldn’t. Please restrict your ripostes to arguments and not people.
True, though Catsy’s “nothing but contempt” comment was also a posting rules violation. Still, one doesn’t justify the other.
Well, saying you have “nothing but contempt” for the poster and some other commenters is pretty uncivil too.
Show of hands, b/c I can’t tell how many of the commenters who think this is no big deal are female, how many of the women on this thread agree it’s just harmless kitsch? If none of the women here are at ease, that might clue us men off that we’re missing the point. So to speak.
As a Jew, I’m trying to imagine how I would feel about a circumcised-dick trophy (singing!), or toilets modeled after a Hasid or a Torah scroll. I would be sure that the makers and consumers were rabid anti-Semites, not just over-ebullient jokesters. Granted, the step from standard porno objectification (which I consider harmless & healthy in moderation) to body parts as household objects is much smaller than the step from most people’s normal interaction with Jews, but I’m not sure that makes the final step any less disturbing.
That said, I don’t know that there is a problem that can be addressed in any practical way. I cannot jump to the conclusion that buying or using these items will provoke violence towards women, any more than the use of S&M porn does (no, it doesn’t). The use of these jokes seems to my layman’s eye to indicate a profound anxiety about sex and/or the desire to abuse women — but a) that’s their problem, b) I’m no psychologist so I could be wrong, and c) it’s no great surprise to me that some men have that sort of problem, anyway. Remember, if you’re one in a million, then in the modern world, there are enough of you that you would need to rent a hall to meet. The number of men who are dumb, tasteless, and disturbed about women does not have to be very great to justify 65 products for sale. So, yes, this is unpleasant, but not terribly significant IMO.
I was amused to note that the boob-themed computer mouse was left-handed. Anyone that serious about his internet browsing habits probably doesn’t need to worry about what women will think of his apartment.
Catsy,
Feeling nothing but contempt for someone simply because you disagree with what she chooses to write about is equally inappropriate. If you feel Melissa should write about other subjects, that’s fine, but it doesn’t require you to attack her personally.
Ah…lots of cross posts while I was fixing my earlier error. My apologies for not pointing out both violations at the same time.
The number of men who are dumb, tasteless, and disturbed about women does not have to be very great to justify 65 products for sale. So, yes, this is unpleasant, but not terribly significant IMO.
I’d also add that the cost to make this stuff is phenomenally small. In fact, the things that I have seen have been pretty shoddily made, which acts as a built in excuse, if someone is going to buy one of these things, you’d dismiss it if it was a cheap polymer mold but you might look in askance if it were a hand crafted, ultra realistic, one of a kind.
And yet, as a market develops, people then start creating a higher end market of those products. I assume this because when I was a kid, I did modeling, and while it is still possible to get those cheap models, I recently saw some in a specialty modeling shop and was flabbergasted by the prices and envious of the amount of effort that people were able to put into them (I think Catsy is a modeller iirc) The low end models of when I was a kid who dreamed of getting enough money to buy a cheap airbrush and figure out a way to make it work with out a compressor (I think there was something about using a fully inflated tire as a substitute though this may have been the hairbrained idea of a kid who couldn’t imagine spending the kind of money needed to bet a full set up) basically set up the space for people to invest more seriously in the art. I’m wondering if it is the same way for these kinds of things.
Well I’m female and I will put a hand up for harmlessness. That is, I don’t think this stuff is harmful to me or other women. I do think it is indicative of a certain pathology on the part of some of the purchasers– like Hilzoy, I doubt the abiity of the purchasers to have healthy relations, sexual or otherwise, with real women.
But I don’t feel threatened by it. I don’t sseriously feel threatened by the fad for painting dismembered women either, although I never had quite as much respect for my art profs who painted that way after seeing their work. For one thing it was crappy art. Banal. I do wonder sometimes why that particlualr kind of banality is so widely accepted.
Thullen: “P.S. Didn’t I read a review of a movie recently about a guy who falls in love with his plastic blow up doll and the relationship is touchingly accepted by his family and friends and coworkers?”
Lars And The Real Girl. Currently in release (it’s playing a few blocks away here). 77% excellent, mostly rave, reviews on the Tomatometer. Ebert liked it.
I still have to get around to Half Nelson, in which Gosling also got fantastic reviews.
“I don’t sseriously feel threatened by the fad for painting dismembered women either”
I swear that I pondered for a couple of seconds, after reading this, “there are artists who dismember women and paint them?”
Because finding them that way fresh would seem unusually difficult to make a practice of.
And knowing little of the art world, or trends, the notion that people would want to paint realistic illustrations of dismembered women, as a regular practice, or whatever it is you’re referring to, only struck me as even less likely, apparently. (Besides, painting on canvas is so old school.)
“there are artists who dismember women and paint them?”
…and then photograph them, yes.
how many of the women on this thread agree it’s just harmless kitsch?
I do. But I don’t call myself a feminist just because the overload of anger on trivia combined with the evangelical attitude towards how one should lead ones life grated too much.
Knowing Jes that probabely puts me in the mysogenists corner for her 😉
“…and then photograph them, yes.”
The couple I sampled via the links were of men, actually, but more to the point, Witkin’s art seems to be (I could have a misapprehension from such a tiny sampling) photography, not painting dead body parts, and presenting them as an installation.
Not that I actually want to find anyone doing that, nor would it surprise me if someone does that.
And if there’s a club of such artists, I’d rather not have a fellow New Yorker point to me when listing dis and dat member.
Sorry — but boobs are fun, and some objects that exploit that are harmless gags.
According to Melissa, is there any acceptable form of art, kitsch or other depiction that utilizes women’s body parts? Is this statement by her:
The objectification and exploitation of women’s bodies is one of the most basic expressions of misogyny…
true as to any object?
Without question, tasteless kitsch can be evidence of a degrading attitude, and some of the items are clearly evidence of it (the toilets and washbowls are gross).
But the thesis here is that it is all subjugation. And it simply is not.
For example, is penis pasta (“it gets bigger when cooked”) evidence of women’s loathing for men just as boob pasta allegedly is of misogyny?
Or how about the penis pinata – Whack It!?
The couple I sampled via the links were of men, actually, but more to the point, Witkin’s art seems to be (I could have a misapprehension from such a tiny sampling) photography, not painting dead body parts, and presenting them as an installation.
yes, he’s a photographer, but his photographs are of carefully-assembled scenes (as opposed to say, landscapes or candid portraits where the image is something anyone could stumble upon). and he often uses disassembled corpses as subjects. i’m not sure if he favors men or women, but he definitely uses each. and yep, sometimes the body parts are painted (or sliced, chopped, impaled, used as flower pots, etc.).
no it’s not an installation – didn’t know you were looking for that particular medium. IMHO, though, that’s a minor difference: many of his scenes are quite elaborate, as complex as any diorama or setup you’re likely to find. he just disassembles things after he takes the photograph instead of shipping the whole mess around like some extra-ghastly Bodies exhibit.
As an obligatory non-token upper-middle-class white male, I have to say that while I find the Singing Breastasses (or whatever) to be no more stupidly revolting than the usual Singing Bass — which I find a crime against art, culture, the human race and the idea of a better tomorrow, but that’s neither here nor there — the women-as-bathroom-installations are pretty creepy. I’m not offended by them per se, they’re too kitsch for that, but you’d have to be pretty demented to find that kind of thing funny, let alone arousing, in ways that even jocks and fratboys are unlikely to be.
dmbeaster: The British Museum now has a couple of rooms on Roman Life that are quite wonderful. Each display case focuses on one aspect of everyday domestic life, like cooking or propitiation of the household gods. My favorite case by far, though, was the entire display devoted to penises. No grandiose phalli or anything, just simple penis rings and bracelets and charms designed to grant the wearer good fortune, virility or any of a dozen humdrum wishes.
Well, apparently I got Melissa rather annoyed commenting at her site. I said I thought they were wrestling with pigs rather than slaying dragons; while sometimes stupidity is a threat to civilized order, sometimes it’s just stupidity and it causes more damage to try to stomp it out than to let it be. (She does seem to be very touchy about dissent…)
Anyway, now that I’m over my initial befuddlement at the sheer stupidity and crassness of the novelty boobs, I’m firmly convinced that derision, not outrage, is the best response. But if we’re going to insist that the religious right stay out of people’s sex lives, shouldn’t we do the same? If we’re going to argue that gay marriage doesn’t threaten straight marriage, and that women buying sex toys isn’t going to lead to the Decline of Western Civilization, shouldn’t we lighten up about a few plastic boobs?
The toilets are disgusting, true, but that’s what boycotts are for–it’s the best those who object to certain museum exhibits or music lyrics can do, and, unless we want to grant them more censorship power, we need to limit ourselves to the same tools of protest.
Tasteless, sure. Kitschy, sure. Worthy of derision, definitively. Harmless? I’m not quite certain of that. At minimum, I would get a “you’re not welcome here” message. And the mounted “rack” is tasteless in a way that belongs to a different category than, say, garden gnomes. Perhaps they belong in the same category of tastelessness that lawn jockeys do.
“no it’s not an installation – didn’t know you were looking for that particular medium.”
The point of my joke, such as it was, was the notion of bodies having paint applied to them, as opposed to the creation of images of bodies.
But I guess you didn’t laugh in the first place, which is ok. Some jokes are just dead on arrival.
Put me down for mostly harmless (Douglas Adams, RIP), though the toilets are really creepy. And I am definitely a boob man (reminds me of Seinfeld when Elaine says she thought Jerry was a leg man and he says, “Why would I be a leg man? I have legs.”) but I wouldn’t own any of those products.
But speaking of guys falling in love with dolls, this video was fascinating and sad.
Personally, my view of these things is roughly Jackmormon’s and Anarch’s: this would not be at the tippy-top of my list of things to get outraged about (I mean, the various things this administration alone has done ensure that ‘s probably not in the top 100, and when you add in things like rape in the Congo and Darfur and so on, it falls even farther), and I definitely think derision is in order, but I don’t think it’s harmless either.
Random thoughts on the initial post and comments in this thread:
Only ones that creep me out are the toilets.
I’d feel kind of vaguely sorry for someone with the girlfriend lap pillow.
Most of the others I just find tasteless.
Large varieties of products do not automatically correlate with high sales volumes.
Cultures with common female toplessness do not automatically lack breast fetishization. This should be obvious, but if its not, consider- women now commonly wear pants. The female shape has not become de-fetishized.
I don’t really think that the comparison of breast kitsch with dildos is apt. A better comparison would be with penis kitsch, of which there is a fair amount.
Isn’t it odd that, in states where sales of dildos are legal, the upscale “shop for lovers” type shops don’t sell pornography? They’re basically just vibrator stores. I can come up with reasons why this is so, but it does seem a bit counterintuitive.
There’s some odd mismatch between declaring dildos acceptable but breast kitsch unacceptable. Shouldn’t the fact that the dildo is a masturbatory aid make it *more* objectifying? Or does this reflect a judgment that its ok to masturbate, but not to leer?
Sometimes I feel like people like Melissa are being willfully obtuse. Witness her comments about the insult, “c***s***er,” which I have handily edited to match OB policy. She claims that it has a demeaning connotation because its a female activity. Is she kidding? That’s a “hate on gays” thing, not a “hate on women” thing. I’m not saying that there are no stigmatizing insults directed at women that relate to oral sex, but that isn’t one of them.
I really don’t get why people think dildos and vibrators are an example of penis fetishism. They’re a similar shape because some women like to insert them, and penises are a reasonably good shape for stimulating the g-spot. It’s functional. I just– I mean, I hate to disillusion you all, but women aren’t necessarily thinking about cock when they use a dildo, you know. In fact, I bet gay women are slightly more likely than straight women to use dildos, and they are much less likely than straight women, gay men or straight men to have a penis fetish.
(yeah, I know you get a few vibrators with veins on, and the like. I’d agree with anyone who thought those are really creepy. But they’re a pretty small minority of sex toys.)
I love that we have political blog sites where we can discuss the proper use of dildos and vibrators (although I doubt we’ll ever top the thread over at Balloon Juice a few weeks ago that devolved into a discussion of baby jesus butt plugs!).
re Patrick’s of 5:04 pm–
I recall a few years ago a friend of mine used that term (that begins with co- and ends with -cksucker) in talking about someone he loathed (IIRC it was Rush Limbaugh) in the presence of a gay friend of ours, and this gay friend was deeply upset by its use. It was in fact the only time I ever saw him get really angry. It is no doubt a patriarchalist term, with the connotations of sexual domination and contempt it has, but it isn’t essentially misogynistic in the same way that, say, c**t is now (at least in the US). At the same time, I don’t think it’s right to claim it’s just a homophobic term. I suspect, for instance, that even if you were a man with a homophobic girlfriend, you’d be wise to avoid using that term unless you had no interest in receiving blow jobs at all.
As for the various items shown on Ms. McEwan’s site, aesthetics alone would keep me away from all the boob stuff. If I saw one of those washstands or urinals, though, I’d be tempted to try to find the owner and piss on his leg instead.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s right to claim it’s just a homophobic term.
i don’t think i’ve ever heard it applied to a woman. maybe i’m sheltered.
the only time i can imagine it being applied is if the woman in question was either a, umm, professional, or an adulteress – and in either of those cases it would be a (nearly) literal insult. calling a woman a ‘c-sucker’ doesn’t really seem like an insult, in the general case… maybe it’s crude, but it’s not like the action so-described is so far out of the realm of normal behavior that you’d get much of a response. there are a dozen more offensive words to go with, if you want to insult a woman…
Witness her comments about the insult, “c***s***er,” which I have handily edited to match OB policy. She claims that it has a demeaning connotation because its a female activity. Is she kidding? That’s a “hate on gays” thing, not a “hate on women” thing. I’m not saying that there are no stigmatizing insults directed at women that relate to oral sex, but that isn’t one of them.
I always understood the contempt attached to that particular word/concept as a twofer — gays are despicable because effeminate. YMMV.
As long as I’m posting, some further thoughts: I found most of the boob-joke items harmless though not especially funny. Like, say, South Park. Only a very few, and especially the toilet thing, struck me as unhealthy and cruel. So does about the same percentage of South Park. I don’t have to watch or approve of either one, but I doubt either one warps the minds of those who like them. I see at Feministas that a recent study may show that misogynist humor reduces sympathy for women. Then again, it may not. And I doubt that the boobie novelties are worse in that regard than Hillary Clinton jokes. Change the channel and walk away.
Once upon a time, someone called me — I am not making this up — “you c*cky c*nt”. Only without the asterisks. It was a complete stranger who had asked what I was writing about. I said ethics. He said, oh, just your opinion? I don’t think so, I said; I think it’s a sound argument for a true conclusion. He took offense at the idea that I, or anyone, might claim to know that any moral claim was true, and called me that, right before emptying a pitcher of beer over my head.
He wasn’t a philosopher, or for that matter in any obvious way intellectual. Just a guy in a bar. Who took exception to the idea of moral objectivity.
Sometimes, I find my life really odd.
re: c**ks**cker…I think that Melissa is closer to the historical origin of the underlying insult here. In Roman and Norse cultures there was no stigma attached to the active, ‘masculine’ partner in homosexual activity. One’s manliness was not compromised by who one penetrated, but rather by “playing the woman’ and being penetrated by a man. They didn’t have a concept of homosexuality per se, but did have terms (e.g. ergi in the Norse) to describe men who took on womanly roles in sex.
The cultural stigma has carried over. It’s just been extended to include the pitcher as well as the catcher for homosexuals.
There are some people in this world who really just need a punch in the face.
There comes a point at which the cultivation of moral indignation passes into the realm of obsessive behavior.
He took offense at the idea that I, or anyone, might claim to know that any moral claim was true
The Violent Moral Relativists’ first album was great. it’s too bad that they just couldn’t sustain the quirky charm.
Can we please put the pictures below the fold? Otherwise, I don’t think I am going to be able to access this site at work until this post gets off the front page.
“He wasn’t a philosopher, or for that matter in any way intellectual. Just a guy in a bar. Who took exception to the idea of moral objectivity.”
If that was the opening of a novel, I would keep reading.
re “c**k%*&@+=: It has never occurred to me to use that term in reference to a woman.
However, as some of you know, I will use that term (in reference to Rush Limbaugh once here), but it doesn’t mean what you think when I use it. When you are talking to a homophobic, machismo tough guy who thinks maybe war and so on and so forth is fun, and they go on to insult your mother, your patriotism, and perhaps accuse you of being politically correct, I will call them that name just to see if they can handle the political incorrectness of it.
Not one of them can, not because I’m insulting gays, but because they are homophobes and they can’t handle an insult (in their walnut-sized minds) thrown their way that equals their demagoguery.
In the recent New Yorker magazine, Sam Zell, the real estate mogul, is profiled. Interesting guy, has built a lot of businesses. But part way through he refers to Hillary Clinton by what is referred to as four-letter word and I think we know what that is: c**T., a term I find highly offensive when used against a woman.
It’s low bullying.
This because she might raise taxes, etc, blah-blah-blah, blah blah.
It occurs to me that Zell should have been asked immediately and brightly: “In that case, does that make you a c4443377er or a p$s%y?”
He might want to fight, and in Hillary’s case, he would lose.
Then again, he might be intimidated for once, which is a good thing for bastids, albeit productive, like him to experience.
The coercive get coerced.
If I ever meet Glenn Beck, I will refer to him as Benito, and if I ever meet Rudy, I will refer to him as Duce, and if I ever meet Rush Limbaugh, well, you know what’s coming his way.
Grover Norquist may require more than name-calling.
Well, apparently this stuff really is prevalent, though I don’t recall seeing any of it. I certainly have seen penis ashtrays, though. You can google it!
“Once upon a time, someone called me — I am not making this up — ‘you c*cky c*nt’.”
It’s rare that one is actually called an oxymoron.
Alternatively, this intersects with the ENDA thread.
Less fake-breast and penis-clawing female condom blogging please.
I blame the Y chromosome. What, it’s news that the sexes find the outward physical manifestations of their opposites facinating? Fat chance there’d be a next generation, otherwise.
I’m with Ugh; Fewer NWS posts, please.
His rhetorical style may have been unpolished but I think he had the sounder position…
Brett: What, it’s news that the sexes find the outward physical manifestations of their opposites facinating? Fat chance there’d be a next generation, otherwise.
Hate to break it to you, Brett, but a man who tries to have sex with a woman’s breasts is not actively “trying to produce a next generation”.
Further, the notion that sexual desire and the desire to have children are somehow positively connected has been long since disproved.
That said: I’d agree that pics and text that might make a blog NSFW should go under the fold.
Witness her comments about the insult, “c***s***er,” which I have handily edited to match OB policy. She claims that it has a demeaning connotation because its a female activity. Is she kidding? That’s a “hate on gays” thing, not a “hate on women” thing.
When I use it, it’s a “hate on John From Cincinnati” thing. (And, no, its having been canceled doesn’t help a bit.)
He took offense at the idea that I, or anyone, might claim to know that any moral claim was true, and called me that, right before emptying a pitcher of beer over my head.
Calling you names and drenching you with beer was indisputably a morally incorrect act, and thus a convincing argument for your position. I expect that wasn’t much consolation at the time.
I find it offensive.
maybe other posters on here are younger and don’t have kids-but I do. A daughter-14.
Even for those that have male kids-for your parents to have shit like this at thier house-what kind of role model/sterotype are you sending to them?
As women who’ve grown up “just used to it”_having a daughter has cured me of that self-imposed silence.
While you can say wheres’ the harm?
Look at where we are today in terrm of womens’ movement? I think we’ve moved BACKWARDS (especially since the GOP has been in power).
This is the result of women everywhere mistakenly thinking “it’s just harmless”.
Collectively-it does damage.
Gotta say, Jes, you have a remarkably unsophisticated understanding of the interactions involved in human sexuality. Having sex with breasts won’t result in children, but men being attracted to people with breasts certainly helps them end up having sex with the right gender to produce kids.
“Further, the notion that sexual desire and the desire to have children are somehow positively connected has been long since disproved.”
No, but absent birth control, (Most of our evolutionary history!) sexual desire and having chidren whether or not you wanted them were certainly connected.
Having sex with breasts won’t result in children, but men being attracted to people with breasts certainly helps them end up having sex with the right gender to produce kids.
And still you cling to the notion that sexual desire = the desire to have kids.
No, Brett, it doesn’t. Men “being attracted to people with breasts” may be gay chubbychasers or straight breast fanciers, but either way, it won’t help them produce kids.
No, but absent birth control, (Most of our evolutionary history!) sexual desire and having chidren whether or not you wanted them were certainly connected.
No, Brett, it wasn’t. A woman doesn’t have to feel sexual desire for anyone to get pregnant: a man may have to get hard/shoot to get a woman pregnant, but he doesn’t have to feel sexual desire for the woman he is impregnating.
beth in cary: Even for those that have male kids-for your parents to have shit like this at thier house-what kind of role model/sterotype are you sending to them?
As women who’ve grown up “just used to it”_having a daughter has cured me of that self-imposed silence.
I agree, needless to say.
I do wonder who the hell buys these things, though?
“And still you cling to the notion that sexual desire = the desire to have kids.”
No, I don’t, and you’re being remarkably obtuse here.
Sexual desire leads to… sex.
Most people are heterosexuals.
Heterosexual sex leads to babies, even among people who don’t want to have kids. Wanting to have kids not being a necessary step in eggs being fertilized, in case you were unclear about this…
Therefore, sexual desire leads to babies. Indirectly, but not so indirectly that you should have trouble with the connection, given that I was quite explicit about it.
Heterosexual sex leads to babies, even among people who don’t want to have kids.
Sometimes, yes – sex during the period when a woman is either just about to or has already dropped an egg, and bearing in mind that about 50% of fertilized eggs miscarry before birth.
But, again – sexual desire doesn’t affect this. A woman can feel no sexual desire for a man she has sex with, and still get pregnant. A man need not feel sexual desire for a woman and still manage to get her pregnant. This is basic biology. (And you accuse me of being “obtuse”?)
Feeling nothing but contempt for someone simply because you disagree with what she chooses to write about is equally inappropriate. If you feel Melissa should write about other subjects, that’s fine, but it doesn’t require you to attack her personally.
I disagree one hundred percent. I didn’t call her any names, I didn’t describe her in any unflattering way, disparage her lineage or mental state or any other personal aspect of her being. I didn’t use any profanity. I expressed that I feel a certain way about the writer–contemptuous–when I read a certain thing. In this case, that “thing” is manufacturing outrage about harmless trivia.
If things around here have really degenerated to the point where /that/ is a posting rules violation, then you people need to grow a thicker skin and rethink what the point of the posting rules was in the first place, because you’ve thoroughly lost the plot on that count.
Someone who claims to feel “nothing but contempt” for Melissa McEwan (or any other feminist blogger, including Hilzoy) what she may or may not “waste her time” writing about, is clearly not playing with a full deck.
And let me tell you, I can’t possibly express how little weight your analysis of my mental state carries with me.
I’m not deriding Melissa McEwan as a feminist. I don’t know who she is, and frankly I don’t care. I’m neither invested in hero worship nor have anything personal against her.
I’m responding, at face value, to her breathless hysteria over tasteless interior design and Spencer’s boob kitsch. It’s the sort of overblown, overreactive nonsense that tends to causes folk in Peoria to roll their eyes at activist feminism. For that matter, it gets /me/ to roll my eyes, and I give as much of a damn about women’s rights as you do, albeit from a different perspective.
The notion that because some issues are more important than others, anyone who writes about issues which are less important is somehow wasting their time is… just basically anti-blog.
No, it’s really not. I happen to like blogs. I happen to like the philosophy behind them. But that doesn’t prohibit me from having an opinion about whether or not someone’s making much ado about nothing, or making a stink that actually hurts a cause I believe in.
Also, a typical means of attempting to control feminist discussion.
Help, help, I’m being oppressed!
Seriously though, I have no idea how people type words like this while keeping a straight face. Or whether they do, in fact. Regardless, the bottom line is that I think making an uproar over harmless silliness like this actually hurts progressive feminism rather than helping it, by relegating the argument to “crank” status in the eyes of the people who most need their minds changed.
But hey, feel free to keep jousting those windmills. There’s a reason why the words “politically correct” have become a term of derision even among most liberals. Think about it for a minute.
Yes, Jes, I’m calling you obtuse, for persisting in denying the obvious connection between sexual desire and little babies showing up 9 months later.
If our species didn’t like to have sex, we’d have gone extinct. Women don’t get fertilized by pollen drifting on the breeze, they get fertilized as a result of sex, and sex happens, mostly, as a result of sexual desire.
It’s hard to be a proper feminist these days. In one area you are supposed to see all breastshaped objects as demeaning, in an other area you are supposed to go bare breasted in the name of true feminism.
allow me to Nth the call for a new post (to push this one down) or adding a fold to this post.
breasts are great and all… but i hate worrying that my boss is going to walk over to my cube and give me a talking-to, every time he strolls down the aisle.
Catsy: I expressed that I feel a certain way about the writer–contemptuous–when I read a certain thing. In this case, that “thing” is manufacturing outrage about harmless trivia.
You feel contemptuous about Hilzoy? Wow. I don’t know how you manage it, and I don’t really want to know.
Regardless, the bottom line is that I think making an uproar over harmless silliness like this actually hurts progressive feminism rather than helping it
It is precisely the point under discussion whether plastic/rubber models of disembodied breasts are “harmless silliness”.
And I have no idea how someone can manage in one sentence to argue that it’s ludicrous to say they’re trying to control feminist discussion, and in the next sentence try to argue that this is not something “progressive feminists” should be talking about, without suffering an irony overload and burning out.
I think part of the point here is that we were discussing the sexual desire on the part of men for women, as brought about by the way women’s bodies look. So whether a woman needs to feel sexual desire to conceive or not is not relevent to that particular discussion. Though a woman who fancies a man and makes that known to said (otherwise preoccupied) man can start a process of procreation which otherwise might not have occurred. It happens.
Marbel: It’s hard to be a proper feminist these days. In one area you are supposed to see all breastshaped objects as demeaning, in an other area you are supposed to go bare breasted in the name of true feminism.
How is it “hard”? If men are allowed to run around topless, so should women be. What does this have to do with objecting to the proliferation of fake plastic boobs?
What always seems ludicrous to me is people who say that the proliferation of fake plastic boobs, or topless, airbrushed “models” displaying impossibly perfect breasts, or indeed any use of female body parts to “sell” anything from airtime to cars, is all just harmless silliness that no one should object to… yet find it objectionable when women breastfeed in public.
Not that I’m saying any of the people arguing that plastic boobs are harmless silliness have argued against public breastfeeding. But I’m prepared to bet (say, two plastic chrysanthemums) that at least one of them will, and most likely, very shortly after I post this.
I vote for penis ashtray photos! Over the fold!
Sorry, I am incapable of being serious about this topic. Though I am quite serious about my vote.
hairshirt: I think part of the point here is that we were discussing the sexual desire on the part of men for women, as brought about by the way women’s bodies look.
Women’s bodies do not look like disembodied plastic boobs.
Really. We don’t.
If our species didn’t like to have sex, we’d have gone extinct.
Correction: if our species didn’t have the desire to have children, we’d have gone extinct.
An unwanted human baby abandoned without a human adult to provide food, affection, and shelter, will die.
Fortunately for our species, we have an inbuilt desire to have children, which is completely disconnected from our desire to have sex.
Correction: if our species didn’t have the desire to have children, we’d have gone extinct.
That’s not really a correction. It’s a addendum. The desire for sex and the desire to have children are both required.
And, Jes, I’d guess you probably don’t actually believe that I think that women’s bodies look like disembodied plastic boobs. But plastic boobs do look something like boobs, which is why we are all calling them plastic BOOBS. I don’t find plastic boobs arousing. There are probably very few people who do find them truly arousing on their own, but they suggest something that is arousing for many men – boobs. That sort of arousal, brought on by the way women’s bodies, including certain prominent parts, is what Brett was talking about. It’s a simple thing really. In fact, human breasts look the way they do because of upright walking. Breast cleavage simulates rump cleavage. It’s a gloriously simple evolutionary adaptation.
You feel contemptuous about Hilzoy? Wow. I don’t know how you manage it, and I don’t really want to know.
Apparently you also don’t want to know what people actually write, since ignoring it helps you maintain your well-honed outrage. No, in point of fact I feel contempt for Melissa, for raising such a stink about this in the first place. I believe I’ve said in more than one place in this thread that the brunt of my ire is directed at her. That you persist in ignoring this and attempting to claim that I blasted Hilzoy I can only chalk up to an attempt to draw people to your argument by playing on everyone’s (well-earned) respect for Hilzoy. Knock it off already. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not, but if it is, it’s extremely dishonest.
And I have no idea how someone can manage in one sentence to argue that it’s ludicrous to say they’re trying to control feminist discussion, and in the next sentence try to argue that this is not something “progressive feminists” should be talking about, without suffering an irony overload and burning out.
It’s a question of using loaded terms combined with a practiced indifference to nuance when it suits you. You know perfectly well that using terminology like “controlling feminist discussion” casts the other person in a bad light, implying that they are part of the oppressive patriarchy et al ad nauseum, thus rendering their argument suspect in the eyes of anyone else keyed in to that kind of language. Disagree with me? You’re trying to control women! See how easy it is?
If you can’t tell the difference between my actual actions and your mischaracterization–expressing annoyance at a tedious topic and concern that the raising of this kind of stink hurts a cause I care about, versus trying to control women and what they can and can’t say like some mouth-breathing /man/–then you really need to take a step back from this until you figure it out. Because as it stands, you don’t seem to be able to distinguish between the expression of opinions and genuine oppression, and that is honestly your problem to sort out, not mine.
“Women don’t get fertilized by pollen drifting on the breeze, ……”
Before, say, the middle of the 1950s, they (at least white people) surely did. Heck, as late as 1966, Rob and Laura on the Dick Van Dyke Show slept in separate beds, as did the Cleavers, for example. That’s why the female in the sitcoms was always putting fresh flowers in vases —– to attract the bees for pollen delivery.
The point at which all of this began to change was when Elvis Presley and his hips appeared on the Ed Sullivan show in the 1950s, after Elvis found out himself from black rhythm and blues artists that pollen just didn’t do the job. He taught white women the new method of pollination, much to the consternation of the southern Baptists and Protestants, who were still into pistils and stamens — but not too much, over-fertilization being the province, according to the former, of the Catholic Church.
Then Little Richard, James Brown, Sammy Davis Junior, and Clarence Thomas felt obliged to teach white women directly what Elvis had stolen from them.
At which point, the southern white Democrats started bolting their party and the Republican Party came up with its southern strategy.
You didn’t really believe Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign way down there because of states rights, did you? No sirree, his money people wanted things to return to the status quo, in which white women tended the garden and black men pollinated the cotton fields.
Later, of course, all hell broke loose, when people started going to a place called the bathroom to engage in numbers one and two. Before, I believe, the middle 1970s, this practice was completely unknown outside of the third world. Americans apparently held it all in for nearly two centuries, which is why so many of our parents and grandparents were full of it.
It all seems pretty normal now. Heck, even Republican Larry Craig, who believed strongly in the original methods of pollination, gave in. He now uses bathrooms for numbers three and maybe seven, though he still gets pollen all over his pantleg.
Rolling back the 1960s would ruin all the fun, though the upside would be that Republicans might finally give a crap about the great bee die-off of recent years.
Henry Ford famously said that history was bunk, but who cares what he thought.
It’s all in the presentation.
How is it “hard”? If men are allowed to run around topless, so should women be. What does this have to do with objecting to the proliferation of fake plastic boobs?
My experience with British culture leads me to believe that there is a reasonable change I’m more at ease with nudity and topless than the average Brit. It’s just hard to find the political correct attitude towards boobs though, if you want to be a proper feminist. Can they be enjoyed or should they be neglected? Are push-up bra’s and cleavage a sign of feminists enjoying their own body or subservient women selling themselves? I remember the early feminist waves where women weren’t allowed to wear make-up and where quite a portion actually believed that having sex with a man was politically incorrect.
If you want to complain about the projected images and what they mean for the role of women in society there really are much more serious issues than fake boobs for the taste-challenged.
hair: The desire for sex and the desire to have children are both required.
Not since our species figured out that there was a connection between a man having sex with a woman and the woman getting pregnant. At that point – sometime prior to recorded history – sexual desire became irrelevant to having children.
As far as we can tell from our nearest non-human genetic relatives, the reason we as human beings are such a sex-desiring species has no connection with continuing the species: we like to have sex, and we have sex a lot, because as a species, we probably evolved to use social sex as a means of bonding a troop together.
If we as a species had evolved only to have sex to reproduce, women would be desirable to men only when fertile, and nobody would be interested in having sex purely for fun at any other time. Self-evidently, this is not the case.
This relates (she says, flailing a bit) because sex for social purposes – sex as a means of creating human bonds and liking – is still a valid purpose of having sex. (Though personally, with most members of my troop, an invitation for coffee and bagels is much preferred. That’s civilisation for you.)
The creation of plastic/rubber boobs is not a heterosocial bonding activity. It doesn’t cause a woman who sees them to feel warm and social towards the man who owns them – rather the reverse. These boobs create homosocial bonding between men, which is not the kind of social grouping that leads to the preservation of the species through heterosexual sex.
In short, given that if a man owns any or all of these booby toys a woman is unlikely to find him socially attractive, and therefore not likely to consider him a potential mate, contrary to Brett’s theory, these boobs actively work against species survival, not for it.
(I’m being slightly ironic here. But you get the point.)
Catsy: No, in point of fact I feel contempt for Melissa, for raising such a stink about this in the first place.
And yet, you complain here, where Melissa did not post: this thread is “I Blame The Patriarchy” by hilzoy. And as this post by Hilzoy is not an attack on Melissa for posting, nor a contemptuous comment about Melissa for writing this post: it’s an approving link, raising the topic here. In short, Catsy, if you’re sincerely feeling contempt for anyone who “raises such a stink about this”, that includes Hilzoy. Unless, of course, you’re just prejudiced against Melissa.
You know perfectly well that using terminology like “controlling feminist discussion” casts the other person in a bad light
Why, yes, I do. Should I therefore avoid using this terminology about someone who is attempting to control feminist discussion with their “contempt”?
Why do you have a problem with casting a bad light on someone who is arguing angrily that feminists should stop having a discussion about a specific issue because this person thinks “the feminists” ought to be discussing other issues which this person thinks are more important, and not this issue, which while important enough to get someone very angry, is somehow not important enough to be discussed? Just because, in this instance, the “someone” is you?
I hear ya, Jes. But I don’t think anyone was claiming that the owners of plastic boobs are helping to continue the species. I also don’t disagree that humans have lots of sex not connected with procreation. But that doesn’t change the fact that, if people didn’t want to have sex – at all – there wouldn’t be a human race. So I’d say from a purely procreative standpoint, we have more sex drive than is needed, but that doesn’t meet that no sex drive is needed for procreation at a species-continuing level, particularly back when a smaller precentage of infants survived. And let’s face it, lot’s of babies came about from “social bonding” over the millenia. It’s a much simpler mechanism to have the sex drive on all the time if you can afford it. If you can’t get some on the 10th, you might not stick around ’til the 15th, if you know what I’m saying.
Marbel: It’s just hard to find the political correct attitude towards boobs though, if you want to be a proper feminist.
That’s odd, Marbel, because I’ve never found it at all difficult. But I often find that people who do not identify as feminists argue a lot about what “the proper feminist attitude” is, almost as if they cared.
hair: But that doesn’t change the fact that, if people didn’t want to have sex – at all – there wouldn’t be a human race.
Well, yes, there would, if this sudden “people didn’t want to have sex at all” had overcome the human species at any time after we’d made the intellectual discovery that heterosexual sex sometimes leads to having babies. Because if people still wanted to have babies, they’d force themselves to have this undesirable sex in order to be able to do so.
If your argument is that if sexual desire hadn’t evolved no one would have had sex ever, a whole lot more species than just humans would have become extinct, or rather would probably never have existed.
John Thullen–
don’t forget the effect of the world changing from black and white into color over the middle of the last century as well!
“Because if people still wanted to have babies, they’d force themselves to have this undesirable sex in order to be able to do so.”
Oh, fooey. We DO like to have sex, and we’re below replacement in most developed nations. If you didn’t have contraceptive failure and teens taking chances, the human population would be plummeting through most of the world.
It’s still to be established whether the human race will survive the invention of effective contraceptives.
I’m not sure I’m arguing anything anymore. If the existence of a sex drive doesn’t (or didn’t) lead to more sex than there would otherwise be (or have been), and if more sex doesn’t (or didn’t) lead to more reproduction than there would otherwise be (or have been), then I guess I’m just wrong. And, yes, sexual reproduction based on a drive for sex would be required for many a species, not just us. In closing, I’d like to add AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marbel: It’s just hard to find the political correct attitude towards boobs though, if you want to be a proper feminist.
That’s odd, Marbel, because I’ve never found it at all difficult.
Since you know yourself best you are probabely right there. Some people like easy black and white worldviews and do not question the right course – but I try very hard to not raise my kids that way.
And yet, you complain here, where Melissa did not post
Because–guess what!–I don’t read Melissa’s blog. And I’m not really in the habit of jumping over to an unfamiliar comment section and crapping all over the person’s rug; if someone at a blog I regularly comment on links to something elsewhere, I’m going to comment on the matter here, not at the place that was linked.
And judging from what I’ve read on this thread and in the comments on her post, that’s a good thing, because she seems about as adept at dealing with contrary views as you are.
I don’t really have as much of a problem with what Hilzoy wrote. Part of that is, of course, because I’ve been reading Hilzoy a long time and know her to be reasonable. The other part is that Hilzoy wasn’t the originator of this nonsense; she linked to it and commented on it. If Hilzoy shares Melissa’s opinions, that’s unfortunate, and takes her down a notch in my eyes.
Why, yes, I do. Should I therefore avoid using this terminology about someone who is attempting to control feminist discussion with their “contempt”?
No, you shouldn’t. What you should do is avoid applying it to people who /aren’t/ just because you don’t like their opinions. Which is, in case you were wondering, what you’re doing here.
Part of the reason so many people have trouble taking your arguments on this blog seriously is because you have a tendency to label anyone who contradicts your worldview as some kind of sexist or misogynist. You may not realize that’s what you do, but it is /in fact/ an accurate description of your behavior.
In short, Catsy, if you’re sincerely feeling contempt for anyone who “raises such a stink about this”, that includes Hilzoy. Unless, of course, you’re just prejudiced against Melissa.
Dear gods, I don’t know why anyone tries to communicate with you on subjects like this. It’s almost like you’re pathologically determined to shoehorn the other person’s argument into your vision of how sexist they are, facts or their own words to the contrary notwithstanding, even when they’re on your side. At least now I know how Sebastian and Von feel.
Why do you have a problem with casting a bad light on someone who [insert textbook example of “begging the question” fallacy here] … Just because, in this instance, the “someone” is you?
No. Because I have a problem with /any/ flavor of dishonest argument that attempts to twist someone else’s words and actions to fit their own personal agenda. I don’t know why you persist in lying outright about my words or the purpose behind my saying them–and that is what you’re doing at this point, lying, because I’ve corrected you several times already–but since you’re not even making a superficial attempt at comprehending the difference between expressing an opinion and trying to “control women”, I am officially /done/ with you and your particular brand of BS on this thread.
Post whatever triumphal follow-up you like, Jes. I quite honestly don’t give a tinker’s damn from this point forward.
“Heck, as late as 1966, Rob and Laura on the Dick Van Dyke Show slept in separate beds, as did the Cleavers, for example.”
Was the inside of Ward and June’s bedroom ever actually shown?
In any case, dismally puncturing myth and legend with fact, as is my cruel wont, the first sitcom tv couple in the same bed on American tv was Mary Kay and Johnny, a sitcom that ran from November, 1947 for three years, on three networks sucessively: Dumont, NBC, and CBS. It was never kinescoped, which is why it’s forgotten today, despite being extremely popular — among those who owned tvs — at the time.
Less forgettable should be the fact that Ozzie and Harriet ran from 1952 to 1966 — yeah, I never watched it, either — and showed them sleeping in a double bed together. (Also, The Flintstones and The Munsters did the same in the early Sixties.)
The networks were later more squeamish about Rob and Laura, and Lucy, and the Bradys, but the fact is that couples were in bed together in American tv from the very first tv sitcom in 1947.
If you bribe me sufficiently, Thullen, I might consider discreet silence when inconvenient facts arise in future. Nice little satire you have there, you know: be a shame if any facts were to happen to it….
Some people like easy black and white worldviews and do not question the right course
Indeed. I find it quite easy both to believe that women must have the same basic rights as men – ergo, if men can go topless, so can women – but that women should not be dehumanized, that we should not be reduced to nothing but displayed bits and pieces, and that women should not be forced or required to make ourselves appear sexually attractive to men if we don’t feel like doing so – or, of course, denigrated or condemned for doing so*, I don’t find any of these basic feminist ideas difficult to understand, agree with, and support. But if you find them so, well, I sympathize with your inability.
*Far more common and more recent examples of this happening are not women being attacked by feminists for wearing make-up, but women told that they obviously wanted to be raped since they’d gone to the trouble of making themselves sexually attractive – not by feminists, but by defense lawyers and judges.
Catsy: Dear gods, I don’t know why anyone tries to communicate with you on subjects like this. It’s almost like you’re pathologically determined to shoehorn the other person’s argument into your vision of how sexist they are, facts or their own words to the contrary notwithstanding, even when they’re on your side.
Wait, what? Now you’re trying to claim that somehow your argument that you have nothing but contempt for anyone who “raises a stink about this” – Melissa, Hilzoy, anyone – puts you on my side?
Good grief.
Catsy- I’m responding, at face value, to her breathless hysteria over tasteless interior design and Spencer’s boob kitsch. It’s the sort of overblown, overreactive nonsense that tends to causes folk in Peoria to roll their eyes at activist feminism. [emphasis added]
And what will the folks in Peoria think? Will they think that poor Melissa is [insert favorite dismissive term for an outraged woman…perhaps ‘hysterical’]? We don’t want them to get disturbed or dismissive, because then we might be forced to choose sides and we will have to side with Peoria in order to maintain decorum. We do have our priorities.
Feminism would be much more easy to support if all these women would just stop embarassing us in public with all these overwrought emotional displays.
Dang women, being all PC and telling us what we should and shouldn’t say.
“Look, I came here for an argument. I’m not going to just stand –”
“Oh, oh, I’m sorry, but this is Abuse.”
Paging Charles Bird, to provide an opportunity for a nice, civil thread!
Jesurgislac, I assure you from experience that it is difficult at best for a man to have sex with someone he finds completely unarousing – as one might expect from the literal meaning of “arise.” I doubt that most women are impregnated by men who are not aroused at least in part by them, and I doubt extremely that if a man had literally no sexual drive and yet wanted to sire children, he could succeed in ejaculating enough to accomplish his goals (absent expensive artificial means). The equipment doesn’t work that way. I thought all grownups knew these basic facts of male human physiology, but apparently not.
Re public breast-feeding, it’s not really the same as going topless, in practice. Most women have the common sense to find a relatively private area to feed their babies, and to keep baby and clothing mostly between themselves and passers-by. Actual bare breasts still reliably draw attention.
For the love of all that is holy, I beg you, please, please, please put this monstrosity of a post below the fold.
Don’t you realize, fake b00by posts kill LOLcatz!
Uncle Fester slept alone on a bed of nails, which I believe also was the fate of Donald on “That Girl”, who never got beyond a dry peck on the lips from Marlo Thomas, who played Ms. Vagina Dentata on the show.
The Skipper and Gilligan, if I’m not mistaken, slept in the same hammock, from which the Professor was forever banished, leaving Mary Ann and Ginger as his only source of Platonic island heat.
Lassie spent alot of time beckoning and signaling and barking to Timmy’s mother to follow him/her to the old mine shaft, where Timmy was trapped, but I think it was a ruse.
Thelma Lou once kissed Gomer right on the jaw, which caused Barney’s long slide into alcoholism, onanism, and vacuum cleaner sales.
Pepino on “The Real McCoys” slept in the henhouse, which is why Hassie and Little Luke took turns collecting the eggs.
Then there was Trigger and that will be enough about that.
Facts are what gets reality in trouble.
But if you find them so, well, I sympathize with your inability.
I regularly wonder wether you actually want to discuss things with others or not. The habit of cherrypicking comments, taking them out of context, extrapolating them into statements that bear no ressemblance to the intent of the writer all indicate that you are not.
@nous: women’s right and their position in society matter a great deal to me. Which is why I think the energy put into silly fights like this could be directed much more constructive. As a women striving for equal rights in todays society I feel that I am entitled to irritation when I feel that the cause is harmed by a bunch of zealots.
I actually cancelled my 27 yr subscription to the oldest Dutch feminist magazine because they stated that they wouldn’t hire a women with a headscarf since they decided that that is a symbol of submissivness. I am old-school; I think that economic independence is much more important for the emancipation of women. Showing that being religious doesn’t mean that you can’t have your own career and embracing that whole group of women is much more important than dictating how they should emancipate themselves. Headscarves are a more relevant issue than fake boobs (come on, how many people do you know who *have* those kind of items and how many of those are changing their worldview because of it) – but it still boils down to people who have a problem with distinguishing important and less important issues.
If you want to change societies view on women, address commercials and how they portrait women. I don’t see enough US media but in the Netherlands you still quite often see women sitting and men standing, or other subtle ways of visualizing power patterns. Check how often language to and about women differs from language to and about men. Those are sneaking up on people and influencing them. Fake boobs are silly, almost everybody sees them as silly and I doubt that there are many people buying them for themselves. When my mum bought a manneke pis corkshrew for my spouse she really just thought it was a laugh (yup, she was one of the taste-challanged) and didn’t have any messages about how she perceived his standing in our society.
Feminism would be much more easy to support if all these women would just stop embarassing us in public with all these overwrought emotional displays.
Do let me know if that strawman ever starts fighting back. I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.
By the way, dutchmarbel FTW, for getting across the points I was trying to make with considerably less vitriol than I managed.
Catsy, there is an “almost” in your 2:20 that can be removed to make the comment more accurate.
Dutchmarbel, the answer to the question implicit in the first sentence if your post above mine is “no, no she does not. ”
Marbel:
come on, how many people do you know who *have* those kind of items
Well, I know several women who have fake boobs, if that counts. 😉
If you want to change societies view on women, address commercials and how they portrait women. I don’t see enough US media but in the Netherlands you still quite often see women sitting and men standing, or other subtle ways of visualizing power patterns.
I guess we are ahead you in this area then. For the most part, men are portrayed as generally harmless buffoons in American commercials. Women are portrayed as strong, smart, and resourceful. The husband in the commercial can’t tie his own shoes. The wife/gf gently chides him to manage him. If the wife isn’t readily available then his 13 yr. old daughter will help him with the online banking etc.
The UK is even worse about making women on TV sit in front of their superiors. Like the Queen, that poor, oppressed female. I see it all the time. How long until Britons everywhere unite to let the poor woman stand up?!? Oh, the humanity!
Well, I know several women who have fake boobs, if that counts. 😉
Only when you’re dealing in eco-funerals. recycle or not? chemical disposal or not?
I guess we are ahead you in this area then. For the most part, men are portrayed as generally harmless buffoons in American commercials.
But it is often sneaky, people aren’t aware. Like the visualisation I mentioned (because I did some research in that area once). But I remember seeing bits of a talkshow with all the spouses of the presidential candidates – but no Bill Clinton. There are a lot of people talking about Edwards, Obama and Hillary without even noticing the difference in adressing them. Those are the sneaky differences, and discussing those is much harder than discussing fake boobs.
Now that I am not reading from my phone . . . I kinda sorta agree with Catsy to the effect that things like this have the potential to be distracting minutae that have little to do with abortion rights, wage equality, child care, etc.
But I do think there’s a bigger-picture tie-in, which relates to the discussion of female toplessness* and breast-feeding, which is that the proliferation of these kinds of products are a (continuing) signal that we’ve objectified and sexualized the breast to such an extent that, in some circles, a woman discreetly breast-feeding her infant is seen as an affront akin to me jerking off at the table of something.
Yes, breasts can be and in many cases are an erogenous zone, but that isn’t their only function. We’ve divorced them so much from their anatomical purpose, and sexualized them so much, that I can see how these products are taken more seriously by, say, McEwan than they otherwise might be. Heck, think about the extent to which, in our culture, women have difficulty being taken seriously for no other reason than that they have large breasts.
*Given my druthers, both men AND woman would keep their shirts on in public pretty much everyplace but at the beach. And, in the abstract, I agree that women have just as much right to take their shirts off at the park as men do. But, again, we’ve sexualized the breast so much that even if the laws were all modified tomorrow to say that women and men alike can go topless, I have little doubt that any woman so doing would be the recipient of constant lewd comments, harrassment and probably sexual assault or battery.
DM, I don’t understand your point about sitting versus standing. As Trilobite implies, sitting is generally a higher-status position.
And I think we’ve covered the “Hillary” thing before here. First, HRC must be distinguished from another Clinton who is frequently discussed (much as Saddam Hussein had to be distinguished from King Hussein, though no other parallel is intended). Second, HRC’s campaign itself uses “Hillary” (much as “Rudy” and “Fred” and “Arnold” have used their first names).
OCSteve, Roy Edroso aptly deflects some complaints about the portrayal of men in American advertising here.
You know what they said about Joe DiMaggio, that his dread of a fan asking for an autograph was exceeded only by his dread of a fan not asking for his autograph.
And I think this thread is a vivid ratification of my earlier observation:
There comes a point at which the cultivation of moral indignation passes into the realm of obsessive behavior.
But, again, we’ve sexualized the breast so much that even if the laws were all modified tomorrow to say that women and men alike can go topless, I have little doubt that any woman so doing would be the recipient of constant lewd comments, harrassment and probably sexual assault or battery.
That’s habit I think. Being topless in the park or on the beach over here won’t lead to more harassment than with a top on. But I had (female) friends who would sit topless without problems but would not feed their baby in public because the sucking made them feel uncomfortable.
I actually think the feminist action in the UK where they put stickers of drinking babies on every nude breast in billboards was great.
I think breastfeeding should always be possible, as far as I’m concerned you can be topless everywhere as long as you wear a top when you’re not sunbathing. If it were just up to me I’d be willing to make an exception for some blokes though 😉
KCinDC: I would have to go through a lot of US advertisements to show what I mean. I recognize it here in the Netherlands, but often have making people aware. Maybe it is less in the US – the Netherlands is pretty backwards with womens lib. But the bits of tv I see regularly have little things that make me cringe so I think there is still some residue left.
sorry, way past midnight here, so bedtime for me.
Phil: Roy Edroso aptly deflects some complaints about the portrayal of men in American advertising here.
Man, he needs perma-links. I had to browse through a lot of ah “interesting” stuff to get to it.
I’m sure it is all about the money. If I don’t agree with anything else I saw on that page I agree with that.
In my experience the wife has the most control of the household purse strings. So it makes sense to play to them. Even in some cases where the product is targeted at the husband they still play to the wife (he needs her permission to spend the money).
That makes me wonder though if that’s not the case in the Netherlands and other European countries. I would think that those same formulas would work regardless of nationality if women have the same purchasing power.
So if you get back here tomorrow Marbel: Do you think there is a difference? Do women in the Netherlands have as much or more purchasing power as their husbands?
trilobite: I assure you from experience that it is difficult at best for a man to have sex with someone he finds completely unarousing – as one might expect from the literal meaning of “arise.”
And I assure you that many gay men managed it because they had to – and if gay men can manage to have erotic fantasies for long enough to get an erection with a partner he finds completely unarousing because he knows he must, I’m certain it’s not beyond the capacity of any man: it’s just that more gay men have been forced into situations where they had to find the capacity to become aroused enough to have sex without a desirable partner. (In fact, my understanding was that most men can do this all by themselves – and the rest lie about it.)
Marbel: The habit of cherrypicking comments, taking them out of context, extrapolating them into statements that bear no ressemblance to the intent of the writer all indicate that you are not.
Well, Marbel – you claimed you found it “too hard” to achieve a feminist position on breasts, and outlined a couple of situations you said you found contradictory. I said I didn’t find it difficult, and outlined why. Instead of responding to my outline, you list a bunch of things I didn’t do, and claim I’m “obviously” not interested in discussing things with others. Yeah, right.
Marbel: I actually cancelled my 27 yr subscription to the oldest Dutch feminist magazine because they stated that they wouldn’t hire a women with a headscarf since they decided that that is a symbol of submissivness.
Good for you. I’m appalled that a feminist magazine would make such a racist decision.
– women should not be forced or required to make ourselves appear sexually attractive to men if we don’t feel like doing so –
I’m all in favor of the government encouraging women to be sexually attractive – that is a good thing, like being a non-smoker. The question is, whether we should tax unattractive women, much like smokers, in order to discourage negative outcomes. It is all for the greater good.
“There are a lot of people talking about Edwards, Obama and Hillary without even noticing the difference in adressing them.”
Not to disparage the frequency of sexist usages still out there, but the usage I’ve really been noticing in recent months is the prevalence of references to “Clinton, Edwards, and Barack.”
Or some other mix of presidential candidate names, and “Barack.”
And I’m sure that most of the people doing it don’t even notice they’re doing it.
Although
it’s HillaryClinton.com, the front page is crammed with links to “Women For Hillary,” “HillaryHub.com, THE Source For Hillary News,” “Hillary For President” coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and other swag for sale at the “Hillstore,” where they can be bought by “Hillstar” volunteers, a request to “Send Hillary to the next debate with…,” suggestions to join “Team Hillary,” “Be a Hillraiser” (I’m not making that one up, but I’m guessing they’re not thinking Clive Barker), news that “Veterans Speak Out For Hillary,” video of “Hillary At The Iowa JJ Dinner,” that “Governor Strickland Endorses Hillary,” and, yeah, KCinDC is entirely correct that the campaign is running a person named only “Hillary” for President. Just ask them.
This makes filtering out and identifying sexist usages of “Hillary” versus “Edwards, Obama, Dodd,” etc., impossible in most situations.
“Or some other mix of presidential candidate names, and ‘Barack.'”
That should be “Or some other mix of presidential candidate last names, and ‘Barack.'”
It’s arguably either anti-Muslim or anti-religious (do they also refuse to hire Orthodox Jewish women who believe in covering their head outside the home with a scarf or wig?) — or not, but what “race” would be involved here?
DaveC has won the thread.
Speaking of who buys these boob novelties, I must confess that my father buys a breast-shaped coffee mug every year to give out at his organization’s annual awards breakfast. One of these awards is “Boob of The Year” and the “winner” of that award receives said mug in recognition of his achievement.
Second request to put the pictures below the fold so I can read this at work!!!
I sometimes think Jes goes too far in debate, but didn’t think it happened here.
To Gary—I think the word “racist” is often extended to cases of discrimination or hatred expressed towards members of some religion. Antisemitism is often thought of as a particular type of racism, or that’s my impression, but taken literally that implies that Jews are a race.
I wonder if the C, E, & Barack is to avoid problems with the resemblance of his last name to OBL. The belittling factor might be thought of as being less bad than the misidentification factor. I’m not sure which one is more powerful though.
Third request on the picture below the fold thing.
Hear, hear. Oh, and by the way: http://flickr.com/search/?q=penis+ashtray
For the most part, men are portrayed as generally harmless buffoons in American commercials.
Depends on the ad. Household cleaners and groceries, maybe so. Trucks, beer, sporting goods or sports TV programs, not so much.
Guys that show up in ads for baby stuff are quite often perfect dad dreamboats targeted at new moms — hunky and cuddly all at once, and all about the newborn.
Marlboro and WWE ads are a toss up, it’s not clear if they’re targeting macho men or if they’re gay porn.
It’s all about the benjamins.
The question is, whether we should tax unattractive women, much like smokers, in order to discourage negative outcomes.
Sure, right after we impose a tax on folks who waste bandwidth.
Thanks –
Movies made while Queen Victoria was still alive showed husband and wife in the same bed (with usually the wife being extremly unattractive in contrast to the dream the man has before the bed is shown). Put that in contrast to Victorian libraries that would not put books of male and female authors on the same shelf (exception though: authors married to each other).
—
I think universal toplessness would lose its (sexual) appeal after a comparatively short time. Hints of boobs work better than the blank thing and few women fit the (hyped) “ideal” anyway.
—
Personally I think “fake” breast (=implants and the like) on women are justified only for repair and correction, i.e. to compensate for an imbalance or loss (e.g. after breast cancer). A view of “you are only attractive with huge boobs” (or for males a huge penis) is demeaning imo.
We DO like to have sex, and we’re below replacement in most developed nations. If you didn’t have contraceptive failure and teens taking chances, the human population would be plummeting through most of the world.
And…this undermines Jesurgislac’s point how, exactly? She’s not saying we don’t like sex. She’s saying that the urge to have children is why we have children, not the urge to have sex.
You’re seriously mistaken if you think we’re only have kids because of contraceptive failure and teens taking chances. We have kids because we want them; our population drops because we only want one or two of them, three at the most, because we (“we” meaning “developed nations”) are no longer mostly farmland and there’s little economic benefit to having a large family.
Basically, there is little support for your notion that people don’t want kids and would not have them were it not for contraception. People in general will always want one or two kids; whether or not they want more will depend on the society and the economy.
I can never decide how to react to such things. How would men react to the proliferation of male body parts being displayed like this?
There are PLENTY of pneis novelties too.
Last Labor Day I was at a friends and he had two gay neighbors there. One was at the grill wearing an apron which, when lifted, exposed a very large cock hidden underneath – apparently an old gift from his lover. Everyone got a laugh and no one, women or men, gay or straight, seemed put off in the slightest.
dutchmarbel–
I saw a little example of the sort of thing you’re talking about last night which I seem to recall having heard someone else mention on another blog somewhere– on the medical drama House, during the credits all the actors’ names are shown with some kind of medical picture with the exception of Jennifer Morrison’s, which has an outdoor scene behind it. (To be fair, it must be noted that Lisa Edelstein does get a medical picture background.) One does get the sense of a subtext that Ms. Morrison’s character, Dr. Cameron, who after all is the one most concerned about patients’ feelings etc. etc., isn’t really as much of a “real” doctor as the others.
I’m not sure why I feel the need to address this arguably irrelevant and certainly tangential topic, but I’m really, for lack of a better word, annoyed with the notion (well, at least Jes’ notion) that the human race would exist or would continue to exist without the drive for sex. I must be a weak person. How one could honestly believe that a complex biological system would continue with one of its most integral and basic components removed is beyond me. Of course, it might happen, but I wouldn’t be so blithely convinced of it. (BTW, none of this is intended to justify the existence of disembodied-plastic-breast novelty items. It is a tangent to a partial explanation for their existence.)
Even Jes, I think, agrees that the desire for sex was a prerequisite for continuing the human species before humans sufficienty understood the connection between sex and reproduction. So I’ll stick to a disappearance of sexual desire at some time after such understanding came to be.
I can accept the idea that, were the sex drive to disappear for humanity tomorrow, there would be some humans who would engage in purely utilitarian sex for reproduction. I’m also quite sure that many more would stop having sex, since most people have it for fun (and many a baby is born because of fun sex). This trend of limited utilitarian sex, I think, would wane over time. I’ll get back to why I think this soon.
As Jes asserts, sex has been expanded beyond being a just a means for reproduction to a means for social cohesion. Part of this social cohesion involves committed, long-term relationships between men and women who become parents. Raising human children in a fully functional way requires much more than, say, raising bear cubs, so two long-term parents helps. So acceptance of the expanded role of sex in human beings furthers the idea that sexual attraction is necessary for the successful continuance of the species. It is part and parcel of the desire to have (and ability to raise) children, which Jes claims trumps the desire for sex in maintaining a viable human population. The successful having (and rearing) of children is dependant on the desire for sex beyond the simple act of fertilization.
To get back to purely utilitarian sex – after some time, those now in long-term relationships would die off. Most of those people came to be in those long-term relationships by way of sexual attraction. So the question becomes, how would new long-term, committed relationships between men and women come about in sufficient numbers to continue the species minus sexual attraction? (I would imagine that a significant number of men and women would cease associating with the opposite sex almost entirely minus sexual attraction. Many men would stop showering and begin drinking themselves to death, all the while watching sports and fighting.)
And whom would people want to have their children with, if they wanted to have them, were it not for sexual attraction? (I guess the UN would have to get together to institute a worldwide utilitarian mating program. China would object, and it would go nowhere.) I would suggest, beyond this limited question, that the desire to have children is often dependent upon already having a loving mate with which to have them. That is – many people do not simply decide one day that they want to have children and go out to find a mate, rather they decide they want to have children specifically with the person they have already fallen in love with. Before that, it is a general notion reserved for a down-the-road someday, not a strong desire.
The long and short of it is that sexual attraction is an integral part of a very complex system of modern (in the anthropological sense) human reproduction. The assumption that this system would fail without it is the common sense position simply because the system has worked with it for some time. The assumption that this system would continue to work, were sexual attraction removed, is absurd. It might make for a theory, but one that would require monumental backup to be compelling. Simply stating that it is physically possible for a man to impregnate a woman whom he is not the least bit attracted to does not suffice. It may convince one that there will be some number of pregnancies among humans who do not experience sexual attraction, but it does not show that the human species would last in significant numbers beyond a few generations. Certainly not in sufficient numbers to mass produce plastic boobies in an economically viable way. And, no, none of us would be here were it not for sexual attaction. The routers would have fallen into disrepair and blogs and the internet would cease to be with so few (and unfun) people on the planet.
BTW, what’s wrong with me? Why did I bother to write this?
You know, I don’t see too many meninists going off about the proliferation of “completely unrealistic” expectations set by peter north, arnold, and the dildo industry.
When someone calls me a pretentious cock I don’t think my entire gender is being insulted. I just grin with the smug satisfaction that I was able to reach new heights of pretension.
However I must say, that scene at the bar WOULD make a great opening for a short story. It has you hooked in the first two sentences, while allowing for all kinds of philisophical ramblings to follow.
Oh for Christ’s sake, GUYS LIKE BOOBS. Duh! There’s nothing WRONG with that. And feel free to mix up the gender/parts combination as you wish.
Oh, noes! The only appropriate manner in which to celebrate the bits we love is when the real ones are lovingly displayed by a person with whom we are in a suitably meaningful relationship, probably only on alternating Tuesdays between 9 pm and 9:15 unless something good is on TV.
Sorry! We’re messy primates, not sexless, chaste CareBears.
Thirsty male Macaque monkeys preferred to push a button to look at rear ends of female monkeys than to drink the juice or water provided, no matter how much was provided when they pushed that button.
We’re primates, we’re wired to like to see the naughty bits, GET USED TO IT.
It’s not the ‘objectification of women’ when there are boob stress balls. It’s the iconification of the breast. There is, I would argue, a difference.
That said, the urinals *are* rather disturbing – way too much unpleasant subtext there.
“One does get the sense of a subtext that Ms. Morrison’s character, Dr. Cameron, who after all is the one most concerned about patients’ feelings etc. etc., isn’t really as much of a “real” doctor as the others.”
Maybe that’s just to set the tone that she’s an outsider, external to the core social group?
Oh, and one last thought: I’d think it would be far preferable to ‘objectify’ objects, rather than attached body tissue.
(And one last last thought: compare vibrators and dildos to simulated vaginas and blow up dolls sold to men. The women’s products are far more socially acceptable. The men’s products are either gag gifts or are treated the way Austin Powers treated the penis pump. And yes, I know many vibrators are not phallic, which is beside the point, ’cause there’s an awful lot of the phallic ones).
So if you get back here tomorrow Marbel: Do you think there is a difference? Do women in the Netherlands have as much or more purchasing power as their husbands?
Oh, we have the same stereotypes. But he is seen as henpecked in those ads, and they usually assume it is his money.
She’s saying that the urge to have children is why we have children, not the urge to have sex.
But Russels idea that enjoying sex is natures way to ensure more children is not awkward either. Reliable anticonception methods are relatively new.
IMHO having these fake boobs is a sign of being immature (sorry chuchundra) rather than being sexist (with the exception of the toilets; those were creepy).
hair: but I’m really, for lack of a better word, annoyed with the notion (well, at least Jes’ notion) that the human race would exist or would continue to exist without the drive for sex – with people of the opposite gender.
As noted by multiple queer parents of my acquaintance: if everyone in the world turned queer at once, the main difference would be that every child would be a wanted child. The notion that sexual attraction is tied to the desire to have children is kind of blown out of the water by the number of same-sex couples who have children and/or want children. Or was your mind all tied up in thinking everyone has to be heterosexual in order to reproduce?
And whom would people want to have their children with, if they wanted to have them, were it not for sexual attraction?
What makes you think same-sex couples don’t feel sexual attraction?
Part of this social cohesion involves committed, long-term relationships between men and women who become parents.
Yes – but not necessarily in mixed-gender pairings.
Eh, there’s no point in pounding on this any longer; A person doesn’t remain this resistant to the obvious unless they’ve got strong reasons for not seeing it.
Brett: A person doesn’t remain this resistant to the obvious unless they’ve got strong reasons for not seeing it.
You’re right. I shouldn’t bother. But, hey: I hadn’t actually noticed some more people had come along who appeared unaware that (a) sexual desire is not linked to the desire to have children, and (b) lack of sexual desire does not make a person sterile.
Your points A and B might actually be relevant, if anybody had been asserting the contrary.
The real points are,
1) Sexual desire leads to people doing things that result in having children. So it contributes to reproduction even if it doesn’t have squat to do with the desire to have children.
2) Lack of sexual desire usually results in the fact that you’re technically fertile becoming irrelevant, because you probably won’t be having sex.
Does this mean that if people didn’t have sexual desires, there’d be no children born at all? No, of course not.
Just not enough to keep the species going.
Sexual desire leads to people doing things that result in having children.
Only if they’re heterosexual and interfertile.
Lack of sexual desire usually results in the fact that you’re technically fertile becoming irrelevant, because you probably won’t be having sex.
Unless you’re a woman, living with a man, in a country or at a time when the man does not have to care whether or not the woman feels sexual desire for him or indeed for anyone. Which applies to one hell of a lot of people in the world, Brett.
To repeat: Sheesh.
Have you ever heard the term “Birth dearth”? “Demographic transition”? Developed countries, where contraception is routinely available, mostly have reproduction rates below replacement.
And this, with everything lust can do to boost the number of children.
Take away such a major factor contributing to the number of children born, and regardless of the fact that it was still possible to reproduce, the whole world would be below replacement.
Where “Below replacement” is a nice way of saying, “On the way to extinction”.
With six billion people ontis por planet extinction of humans isn’t a problem. I’m all for disconnecting sexual intercourse from procreation.
Brett: Have you ever heard the term “Birth dearth”? “Demographic transition”?
Yes: they’re generally used by right-wing anti-choicers who object to the fact that when women decide how many children they want to have, they generally don’t have large families. (Further studies show that more education a woman has, the fewer children she will have, and the better they will be looked after.)
Take away such a major factor contributing to the number of children born, and regardless of the fact that it was still possible to reproduce, the whole world would be below replacement.
You’re still kind of overlooking the fact that most women want to have children. (Some don’t, of course – it’s by no means universal, but few things are.) A woman who wants to have children will, providing that obstacles are not placed in her way*, have he number of children she wants to have.
*There are a whole bunch of such obstacles – economic discrimination against women with children is the main one in Western countries, but discrimination against women who have children outside marriage is still a significant one in many countries and cultures.
wonkie; With six billion people ontis por planet extinction of humans isn’t a problem. I’m all for disconnecting sexual intercourse from procreation.
I was trying to leave that aspect of it out. After all, the insuperable problem with the number of people on this planet isn’t so much the sheer numbers, as the scale of resources used by the relatively small number of people living in developed countries.
“Yes: they’re generally used by right-wing anti-choicers who object to the fact that when women decide how many children they want to have, they generally don’t have large families. “
Yes, I’ve noticed that this is the problem in rationally discussing virtually anything with you: You inhabit a world where there are no “brute facts”, where everything has ideological implications which override such trivial considerations as whether something is factually true.
“You’re still kind of overlooking the fact that most women want to have children.”
A fact which is perfectly consistent with our going extinct, if they don’t want to have enough children to prevent that.
Brett – the extinction argument assumes that decreasing numbers won’t change the conditions that lead people to have too few children to maintain the population.
Dkilmer, I think you’re up against a religious barrier with Bellmore. The best evidence for people’s ability to change their behavior about families comes from the Third World, with women who have access to education and birth control reducing the size of their families even before outside circumstances like starvation and poverty end. Link to charts. (I hope I got the HTML right. I keep trying to do it as BB code.)
But acknowledging that we have something to learn from the behavior of Third World women would take on the foundations of Bellmore’s faith in the scientific superiority of the white race in general and men in particular. His God the general intelligence quotient is just as prone to playing favorites as the fundamentalists’ Father is, but Bellmore loves Q anyway and would never forsake him just for the sake of better understanding other people’s choices.
Brett: You inhabit a world where there are no “brute facts”, where everything has ideological implications which override such trivial considerations as whether something is factually true.
Projection, Brett. Pure projection.
Jaden – I was just trying to be rational and whatnot :).
I believe deeply (maybe too deeply) in assuming good faith in any argument. I don’t think it turns out too badly, because people who are arguing from what they want to believe (or from plain old bad faith) will tend to choose arguments that are only satisfying to someone who wants to believe them in the first place.
Which is to say that I’d never claim to know anything about Brett aside from what he’s said directly.
Re changing behavior, I’d agree that we have a lot to learn from the Third World. In the U.S (and elsewhere, too), we have this counterintuitive situation in which affluent people are having children at a lower rate than poor people. From the simple perspective of resources, it just seems wrong — but the information you’re talking about from the Third World (change in behavior prior to affluence) helps to make sense of it.
Jes: The notion that sexual attraction is tied to the desire to have children is kind of blown out of the water by the number of same-sex couples who have children and/or want children. Or was your mind all tied up in thinking everyone has to be heterosexual in order to reproduce?
Not at all, on both counts. These same-sex couples became couples how? [Or was your mind all tied up in thinking that only heterosexuals feel sexual attraction? (That’s a joke, BTW.)] That’s what I was getting at. Most people, of any persuasion, want to have children as a couple, and couples come about by way of sexual attraction.
Maybe I wasn’t as clear about the premise that sexual attraction would disappear for all humanity – n0 heterosexuals, no homosexuals, no bisexuals, just asexuals.
I actually could see the human race continuing if everyone became homosexual after modern science made various options for reproduction available, perhaps even after simply the knowledge of the connection between sex and reproduction without all the . That latter would be a bit tougher, though – less likely.
I think the male and female roles would be interesting in an all-homosexual world. It’s a lot easier to get (or be) a sperm donor than a surrogate mother. I think gay men would have a tough time of it having kids.
hairshirthedonist, I suspect in a completely asexual world, people who wanted children would still get together – just because it is easier with two or more people to share childcare. They just wouldn’t base “who will help me best with childcare?” on “who am I sexually attracted to”?
(I have to admit, I did misunderstand what you were getting at – my apologies. That’s a much more interesting idea than I’d assumed…)
I think the male and female roles would be interesting in an all-homosexual world. It’s a lot easier to get (or be) a sperm donor than a surrogate mother. I think gay men would have a tough time of it having kids.
Well, if all children were being engendered by sperm donation, men who wanted involvement with the children would need to hold out for a mother who wanted the biofather to have involvement with their child. (And would need to be the kind of man that a mother would want to be involved with their child…)
“I suspect in a completely asexual world, people who wanted children would still get together”
Well, yeah. The only point I’ve been trying to make, is that there’s no reason to suppose that there’d be enough such people to keep the species going. And plenty of reason to suppose otherwise.
Just as “losing weight” is just a nice way of saying “anorexic”.
Honestly, Brett, I don’t know where you get this notion that decreasing birthrate is a slippery slope. We want decreasing birthrate. If we don’t achieve that, world population will continue increasing.
Which is a bad thing, no?
I’m not saying it’s a slippery slope in the real world.
A discussion of why some guys are attracted to fake boobs led to a discussion of instinctual drives, which led to Jes’s expressing the rather amazing belief that sexual desire does not contribute meaningfully to human reproduction.
Which led to me pointing out that, in this counter factual world where humans lacked sexual desires, we’d go extinct.
We don’t lack sexual desires. OTOH, effective birth control is progressively severing the causal link between getting it on and kids showing up nine months later, and I think there’s substantial evidence in the form of the demographic transition, (Which Jes thinks is an excuse to rape, or some such, and not an actual phenomenon.) demonstrating that my point about that counter factual world is spot on.
Discussing the real world, I don’t think the demographic transition is an immediate cause for concern, depending on how we handle it. Though clearly the imbalances in where the people are being born has some dire implications for the long term survival of certain cultures.
But the results of severing the causal link between lust and reproduction does demonstrate how lust played an important part in our evolutionary success.
Brett – Holy soft-shoe.
You are talking about severing the link between lust and reproduction beneath a picture of disembodied plastic boobs!
That is a severed link.
Shorter Brett: Make more white people faster, please!
What’s latin for “Shorter version”? Or maybe “Re-writing the argument”? This tactic unquestionably deserves to be on the list of classic fallacies.
No, Dkilmer, the rather silly object above is a form of compensation for guys who have decided they have no real prospect of getting at the real thing. It no more severs the link between lust and reproduction than pacifiers sever the link between suckling and infant nutrition.
Brett: The only point I’ve been trying to make, is that there’s no reason to suppose that there’d be enough such people to keep the species going. And plenty of reason to suppose otherwise.
But this is nonsense, Brett. Most people do want children. That “want” is separate from “wanting to have sex with someone”. There is no reason to suppose that the desire to have children would just go away if sexual desire disappeared completely: and we know already – from same-sex couples, straight/bi women who use AID because their male partners are sterile, couples who adopt – that people do want children, actively seek out means of having them.
The stat frequently quoted by people who want to decrease the number of abortions in the US, is that half the pregnancies in the US are unplanned and 4 out of 10 end in abortion – but it follows that half the pregnancies in the US are planned, and the vast majority of planned pregnancies do not end in abortion. If all pregnancies in the US were planned, that would cut the number of children born down by, what, 25%? (but decrease the number of abortions massively). That could only be a good thing: all children born would be wanted children.
effective birth control is progressively severing the causal link between getting it on and kids showing up nine months later
Not when the couple who get it on actually want to have a baby…
It no more severs the link between lust and reproduction than pacifiers sever the link between suckling and infant nutrition.
That’s a perfect analogy to use if you’re arguing that contraception doesn’t sever the link.
Wait a minute…. are we still talking about the counter-factual world, or are we talking about the real world now?
…and we know already – from same-sex couples, straight/bi women who use AID because their male partners are sterile, couples who adopt – that people do want children, actively seek out means of having them.
One problem I see with this argument is that these couples you speak of became couples mainly because of sexual attraction. That was the point I was trying to make in my earlier comments. Sex isn’t simply a matter of fertilization; it’s also a mechanism for coupling. Most people, gay or straight, fertile or infertile, decide they want to have children after they have coupled. Sexual desire is interwoven into the dynamics of human reproduction on a great many levels and in ways too complex for us to fully understand. At this point, I would suggest that there’s no way we’re really going to convince each other of our opposing views and we should go consult the foremost authorities on human sexuality and evolutionary biology. Maybe we’ll listen to them.
And I think it’s really lame to paint Brett as a racist based on what he wrote in the context of this discussion. I know it’s easy to be rude on the internet, which is why everyone has to try that much harder not to be.
hairshirdonist: One problem I see with this argument is that these couples you speak of became couples mainly because of sexual attraction. That was the point I was trying to make in my earlier comments. Sex isn’t simply a matter of fertilization; it’s also a mechanism for coupling.
Yes, that was a fair point.
Most people, gay or straight, fertile or infertile, decide they want to have children after they have coupled.
Most men, maybe. Most women know whether or not they want to have children independent of whether or not they’ve coupled. (Anecdotal evidence, I admit, but so widespread it’s practically data.)
Therefore, if you remove sex as a motivator for coupling, what we would see would most likely be women who want children getting together with other people who also want children (who might mostly be women, if you’re right that men mostly don’t decide they want children until after they have a partner) and bringing up their children together.
And I think it’s really lame to paint Brett as a racist based on what he wrote in the context of this discussion.
In the context of this discussion, yes. In the wider context, the terminology and ideas Brett is using are consistent with those used by people who are concerned about white women having fewer white children. If Brett is unaware of this context and was using the terminology in all innocence, he ought to be made aware that he is accidentally using terminology and ideas routinely put forward by people who are white supremacists in all but name.
hairshirthedonist (sorry to get your handle wrong, btw) – not to blog-whore, but something about this here, ages ago. The terminology Brett is using is absolutely classic of its kind.
I’m absolutely unconcerned about how we handle it, other than that we get the citizenship part right. If you’re concerned about birthrate in countries (Mexico and the like, for instance) that tend to send a lot of people our way, I think (although I won’t look around for it just now) that there’s some evidence that birthrate and standard of living are inversely related. I don’t think there’s anything intrinsic to other cultures that makes them reproduce uncontrollably.
This is one of my many pet peeves with what I consider to be the Buchananite wing of the Right: that there’s this scary Replacement Birthrate thing going on. The suggestion is that there’s something wrong with a culture that reproduces below replacement rate, and that those cultures should just try and out-consume, reproduction-wise, the competition.
Horse-pucky, I say. Even the (as I see it, anyway) ideologically stodgy PRC has seen the folly in that.
I am slack-jawed with amazement. Ihonestly had no idea that there were people on this poor overburdened planet who were actually sincerely worried that the human population might go down.
I gues I shouldn’t be so surprised–afrer all there are stillglobal warming deniers around.
Sheesh.
Given that these same concerns were expressed about other countries and earlier immigrant groups (Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, German, Irish), I think it would be safe to say that they shouldn’t be taken at face value. Note that ALL of these groups, when they immigrated to America, saw their birthrates plummet after a generation or two of acculturation and economic uplift.
Most people, gay or straight, fertile or infertile, decide they want to have children after they have coupled.
I don’t believe this. It certainly doesn’t apply to me (a straight male), and not to other people I know.
This is one of those rare occasions when Slartibartfast and I find ourselves absolutely in agreement. (Brett, fwiw, I think the last time was probably something about Yes, Torture Is Bad.)
“The suggestion is that there’s something wrong with a culture that reproduces below replacement rate,”
In a normative sense? Not at all. In a Darwinian survival sense, if it continues indefinately? Most assuredly.
The question, then, and I think it’s still an open question, is whether it will continue indefinately. And to what extent it’s cultural, and not a result of the intersection between our evolved drives and modern society. We did not, after all, evolve in an enviroment which included convenient birth control. Our instinctual drives may not be such as to assure our continued survival in such an enviroment.
“In a Darwinian survival sense?” Hotsefeathers. Evolution doesn’t act on cultures. It acts in individuals. Humans are humans, and we’re in no danger of running out of them regardless of which arbitrary subdivision of them reproduces more quickly.
We did not, after all, evolve in an enviroment which included convenient birth control.
No, we evolved in an environment in which we could be eaten by hyenas, and in which a common cold or an infected scratch could be fatal.
I don’t see any danger that the world will run out of humans. There might be some subpopulations that are, in fact, in danger of extinction, but Americans (of any, or no particular, color) are not among them.
Thanks –
Brett: Our instinctual drives may not be such as to assure our continued survival in such an enviroment.
Elaine Morgan pointed out (in The Descent of Woman, 1972) the flaw in this.
If you assume that in Generation AA every person in the world has absolute control over their own fertility, and can decide for themselves exactly how many children they want to have (which is by far from being the case now, of course, but let’s suppose it) then it follows that that Generation BB is made up only of children descended from people who actively wanted to have children.
If there’s any genetic component involved in the desire to have children, then it follows that Generation BB will be proportionally much more likely to want to have children than Generation AA: and the same applies (more so) to Generation CC. Further, since each generation from Generation BB onwards is composed only of children who were planned and wanted from conception, it greatly decreases the likelihood of abusive families, children who knew they were unwanted, children who were actively rejected, etc.
Far from leading to species extinction, while there would undoubtedly be a dip in population as Generation AA died off, Generation BB and following generations would probably be more likely to reproduce, not less!
Why, Jes… You’ve finally articulated an argument for your position which makes sense! 🙂
Shucks, Brett, it’s only that your position makes no sense at all: I’ve seen hills, in comparison with which you’d call that a valley.
But if it’s literally never occurred to you that many people really do want to have children, then all I can say is, your circle of acquaintances must be mightily restricted.
“But if it’s literally never occurred to you that many people really do want to have children”
And she loses it again. 🙁
How many times have I, in this thread, acknowleged that, and merely questioned whether enough people did?
How many times have I, in this thread, acknowleged that, and merely questioned whether enough people did?
Yes, rather ridiculously. Since you seem to be under the impression that most people don’t like to have children, you were reading from your own mightily restricted circle and extending that to the whole human species, while stubbornly refusing to look at the evidence against this assumption.
Sure. But global birthrate is still above replacement, Brett. And you’re concerned that we don’t have enough people?
As far as I’m concerned, world population could be cut by a factor of six or more without any ill effects, and with many advantageous ones.
And let’s get this straight: people are having fewer children because they choose to, not out of any lack of sexual or reproductive desire.
“Since you seem to be under the impression that most people don’t like to have children”
Nope, made no such claim. Try again.
“Sure. But global birthrate is still above replacement, Brett.”
Um, yeah. And most of the world’s population does not yet have good access to effective birth control. Your point being?
“And you’re concerned that we don’t have enough people?”
Not particularly.
“As far as I’m concerned, world population could be cut by a factor of six or more without any ill effects, and with many advantageous ones.”
As long as it happened very slowly, I agree. If it happened over the course of only two or three generations, OTOH, the distortion of age related demographics would have horrible implications for the average productivity of the population. I mean, who’s gonna run all those nursing homes?
I have no idea why you think that matters, Brett. Birthrate slows in developed countries not because of diminished desire, or because of diminished fertility, but because people can and do choose to have fewer children.
Perhaps now would be a good time for you to summarize your point, as I suspect that one of two things might be happening, the second of which is that we’re talking past each other.
Brett: Nope, made no such claim. Try again.
Try again?
Okay, straightforward question: if you understand that most people want to have children, then why in the world would you be worried that universal access to effective birth control would result in only the people who want to have children, having children?
Because if you do understand that most people want to have children, then there’s absolutely nothing to worry about, is there? (I mean, in terms of species survival with effective birth control: obviously there is still a hell of a lot to worry about outside those narrow parameters…)
Me: Most people, gay or straight, fertile or infertile, decide they want to have children after they have coupled.
Amos: I don’t believe this. It certainly doesn’t apply to me (a straight male), and not to other people I know.
We might not necessarily be talking about the same thing. People may “decide” they want to have children in the general sense (i.e. someday). But they may take no active steps to actually have those children until they’ve found a mate.
The conversation I was having mainly with Jes was one involving the disappearance of sexual attraction from the human race, which is not quite the same as the tangent that seems to have recently become more developed among a bunch of people (and Brett – not that Brett isn’t a person – he just seems to be the only one on his side).
So my question to you, Amos, is what do you think you would do about having children in a world in which you were sexually attracted to no one and no one was sexually attracted to you? (I assume that is not now the case. “Amos Newcombe” is a pretty studly sounding name.)
Ok, Jes, let’s do the math:
Suppose that 70% of the population “want to have children”; That’s “most”, right?
Suppose, for the sake of simple math, they pair up in nuclear families, and on average each of those families has 2 children.
For every 100 people, that scenario would generate 70 children. In one generation, 100 people become 70. With the next generation, 70 become 49. With the generation after that, 49 become 34. You noticing a trend here?
“Most” people wanting to have children is perfectly consistent with the population declining exponentially, and eventually becoming too small to sustain industrial civilization.
As I say, it’s not enough that some people want to have children. To keep the species going, enough people have to want to have enough children.
You’ve actually got the basis of a strong counter argument in that evolutionary issue you raised: Assuming any genetic basis at all behind “wanting to have children”, eventually we’d evolve to want enough children. Assuming there IS that genetic basis, and assuming we lasted long enough to finish that evolution.
Both contingent assumptions.
Brett – the simple math having any validity is contingent on the assumption that decreasing numbers won’t change the conditions that lead people to have too few children to maintain the population.
I think the “wanting to have children” thing is being presented in too binary a fashion. I think many people not only (really and seriously) decide they want to have children only after finding a mate (by way of sexual attraction, BTW), but that many others decide they want to have children after having children. So maybe Billy Joe and Bobby Sue didn’t really want to have kids, but nature took it’s course (Birds and Bees, or maybe beers), they considered medical intervention, decided against it and figured they’d see how things would go. Lo and behold, the baby’s born, they absolutely fall in love their new baby, and can’t imagine life without their baby. They love caring for their baby so much, they decide to have another 2 years later. All this because at one point they simply wanted each other’s bods.
“So my question to you, Amos, is what do you think you would do about having children in a world in which you were sexually attracted to no one and no one was sexually attracted to you?”
Order one from the replimat?
Seriously, we’re about ready to clone people now, and mixing and matching to order is obviously just down the road, including, within a few decades, the technical ability to genetically engineer just about any characteristic/design that’s physically viable.
Meanwhile, people don’t have sex to obtain cats and dogs and other popular pets, but there’s neither a lack of available puppies and kittens, nor people to support the professional dog and cat and pet industries, which, incidentally, includes the facts that 63% of U.S. households (71.1 millions homes) own a pet, and that the American pet industry will bring in $40.8 billion in 20078.
If sexual desire, and even current reproductive ability, was eliminated tomorrow by an alien virus, or planetary radiation attack, or whatever imaginary device you prefer, but we have no problem creating test-tube babies, it seems reasonable to speculate that the resulting industry would be at least a fraction of the size of the current pet industry.
Brett: For every 100 people, that scenario would generate 70 children. In one generation, 100 people become 70. With the next generation, 70 become 49.
Actually, we’re talking bigger numbers.
There are about 6 000 000 000 people in the world. About 1.7 billion of them are under 14. Suppose that every person in the world under 14 automagically became able to control their fertility, and in future would only have the children they wanted to have.
So we start out with 1 789 461 717 people. If you’re right, and the number of those people who don’t want to have children is as high as 30% (you haven’t cited anything to back that up, but what the hell, I’ll give you that for this generation AA) that means generation BB will consist of “only” 1 252 623 202 people.
And if you’re further right that this 30% not-wanting-to-have-children is as innate and inevitable as sexual orientation, then the CC generation will consist of “only” 876 836 241 people. And the DD generation will consist of “only” 613 785 369 people. By this time human beings who could not control their fertility have all died out, so we’re saying that in DD generation, the human species consists of “only” 4 532 706 528 people – only 4.5 billion people on a world where once 6 billion people roamed – and only six hundred and thirteen million of them under the age of 14!
Now it’s true, if you keep right on down the line assuming that no matter what, there are always going to be 3 out of 10 people who just don’t want to have children, not under any circumstances, and won’t, you do – in only half a dozen generations! get to the point where the number of people under the age of 14 will be only about a hundred million. And in half a dozen more generations, you get to the point where there may be only as many children under 14 born and living as there were individuals who migrated out of Africa, way back when our species was a one-continent turn only.
And yes, if you extend this assumption of yours forever – that the human species has become able to consciously regulate our own fertility, no one ever has unintended unwanted children any more, and 3 out of 10 people will never have children – we might, in about 20-plus generations, be looking at extinction. Maybe.
But the idea that wanting to have children is as fixed and unalterable as sexual orientation is a pretty big assumption. As is the assumption that this would never change no matter how low the population got, and how consistently the population reproduced only from people who did want to have children.
Got anything more to say?
hairshirtdonist: So maybe Billy Joe and Bobby Sue didn’t really want to have kids, but nature took it’s course (Birds and Bees, or maybe beers), they considered medical intervention, decided against it and figured they’d see how things would go. Lo and behold, the baby’s born, they absolutely fall in love their new baby, and can’t imagine life without their baby.
Sure, I agree. But I know plenty of Billy Joes and Bobby Sues who do want children, whether or not they’ve met their perfect BJ or BS… 😉
…it seems reasonable to speculate that the resulting industry would be at least a fraction of the size of the current pet industry.
Excerpts from me:
“How one could honestly believe that a complex biological system would continue with one of its most integral and basic components removed is beyond me. Of course, it might happen, but I wouldn’t be so blithely convinced of it.
“Sexual desire is interwoven into the dynamics of human reproduction on a great many levels and in ways too complex for us to fully understand.
“The long and short of it is that sexual attraction is an integral part of a very complex system of modern (in the anthropological sense) human reproduction. The assumption that this system would fail without it is the common sense position simply because the system has worked with it for some time. The assumption that this system would continue to work, were sexual attraction removed, is absurd. It might make for a theory, but one that would require monumental backup to be compelling.”
That’s my high-level take on it. The paper-clip industry is probably pretty large and has little or nothing to do with sexual attraction. What that says about having kids, I don’t know.
hairshirthedonist: The assumption that this system would fail without it is the common sense position simply because the system has worked with it for some time.
We note that the system works without it because we note the existence of single women who identify as heterosexual who go to fertility clinics to get AID in order to have a child. Because they want the child, without actually wanting a partner.
The assumption that this system would continue to work, were sexual attraction removed, is absurd.
It’s not an assumption: it’s straightforward reasoning from the evidence.
It might make for a theory, but one that would require monumental backup to be compelling.
Actually, I think it’s your theory – that sans sexual desire, not enough would want children enough to go to the trouble of arranging to have children to carry on the species – that requires monumental backup.
Even Brett isn’t arguing that that fewer than 70% of any group just don’t want children. You haven’t shown any evidence to back your hypothesis that the desire to have children goes away if the desire to have sex goes away. Several people have spoken up to say that your assumption that people only know whether or not they want to have children after they “couple up” is false in their experience.
Several people have spoken up to say that your assumption that people only know whether or not they want to have children after they “couple up” is false in their experience.
And I addressed that. I’m not sure they mean what I mean. And, again, most people don’t decide to have children until after they’ve coupled (in some fashion).
We note that the system works without it because we note the existence of single women who identify as heterosexual who go to fertility clinics to get AID in order to have a child.
That isn’t “the system.” It may constitute a very small sub-system within “the system.”
I guess I’ll just repeat this: At this point, I would suggest that there’s no way we’re really going to convince each other of our opposing views and we should go consult the foremost authorities on human sexuality and evolutionary biology. Maybe we’ll listen to them.
I do sincerely mean the “we” part of that with regard to “listen[ing] to them.” It goes for me as well as anyone else with an opinion on the subject.
Maybe we’re all THAT close:
Not can’t; just that it doesn’t work very well, yet. And getting it to work well might take some work.
we’re not all that close, is what I meant to say.
In addition to the single straight-identifying women Jesurgliac referred to, who take active measures to have children without also seeking out partners, there are a lot of gay and bi (and, I guess, straight) men who try to do the same. It’s hard to adopt or be a foster parent in a lot of jurisdictions if you don’t have the government-standard orientation, but a lot of men still try, because they want very much to be fathers, for lots of different reasons.
There are communities of hard-core child-loathers, in all orientations. I used to know men like that when I was still foolish enough to think Mensa membership was worth something, but eventually I decided that I just didn’t want to be around people so tied up with hating others for participating in one of biology’s most basic things. There are more people who just don’t feel any urge they want to acknowledge toward parenting now or in the foreseeable future. But they’re still very much the minority when it comes to humanity overall–the wish for children is very widespread, and thoroughly independent of sexual orientation.
The more I think about this, especially after Gary’s proposition of an alien virus, the more I think it would make a great premise for a sci-fi treatment of some sort. (I know there was a film out recently, the name of which I can’t recall, although I really wanted to see it, dealing with a cessation of human births. I don’t believe it had anything to do with the demise of sexual desire among humans.)
But, were sexual desire to disappear tomorrow, it would cause incredible upheaval and great unrest in every corner of the world. Witch doctors, therapists, scientists, theologians, philosophers, psychologtists would all be scrambling for answers and remedies. Suicide rates would spike. Conspiracy theorists would rule the airwaves. Just about every commercially viable script or book, old or new, would become obsolete along with a lot of poetry. Pimps, prostitutes and pornographers would be out of work. Adolescents wouldn’t know what to be hung up on, obsessed with or confused about. Plastic surgeons would have to find worthwhile uses for their skills. All the facilities for alternative fertilization methods would have to find ways to rapidly increase their capacities under government mandate. Atonal music would soar in popularity. Totally nuts.
“Not can’t; just that it doesn’t work very well, yet.”
Yes, I didn’t mean anyone would be cloned next week, Slart. I meant that it would likely be what some people will consider reasonably safe “within the next decade or so.”
By “some,” I mean enough to work a lab here or there, and a handful of people here or there willing to go somewhere, to some state with imperfect control and surveillance of all, and able to throw a couple of ten million dollars — or euros, or the equivalent in yen or rubles or whatever — or more at their whims, or perhaps personal tragedies.
The entire question of whether there should be human cloning I didn’t address at all, as for one thing I expect that whatever the mass of humanity decides, some labs somewhere will do it, if only on the black market and rarely.
Alternatively, perhaps our near future, of the next fifty years, or even more, will be that of a global surveillance state, in which no one can get away with anything that requires lab equipment and a clinic/hospital-like environment for what would most likely be approximately nine months.
I can’t say what will happen, of course. I do figure that the odds are that there will be at least a little human cloning within current human lifetimes. I could, of course, be wrong.
But besides that, the point here is simply an abstract one about what could theoretically be possible in however distant a future, or simply as a possibility (depending on how you feel about the likelihood of an actual metaverse).
I have no idea why that wound up in quotes: it should have been italics. Oops.
“I know there was a film out recently, the name of which I can’t recall, although I really wanted to see it, dealing with a cessation of human births. I don’t believe it had anything to do with the demise of sexual desire among humans.”
Children of Men. I haven’t seen it yet, though it’s coming up on my Netflix queue eventually. It was nominated for the Hugo, for whatever that’s worth, along with The Prestige, A Scanner Darkly, and V For Vendetta, losing to Pan’s Labyrinth (which I also still haven’t seen).
It was generally quite well reviewed. (92% on the Tomatometer, which is pretty damn high.)
Also for whatever it’s worth, one of the more popular sf series, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series has the more technologically advanced Beta Colony society largely reproduces by gestating embryos in artificial wombs. It’s not at all the same as eliminating sexual desire, but I thought I’d mention it.
I’d say “Ethan of Athos” would be even more on topic.
At any rate, you should definitely see Pan’s Labyrinth, it’s an excellent film.
So my question to you, Amos, is what do you think you would do about having children in a world in which you were sexually attracted to no one and no one was sexually attracted to you? (I assume that is not now the case. “Amos Newcombe” is a pretty studly sounding name.)
I was going to dismiss this as a meaningless counterfactual, but then I remembered that this situation is actually the ideal in one or more religious traditions: sex is for procreation only; sex for fun is a sin.
Finding a mate is the first step toward having children, of course, and in the absence of sexual attraction I guess I would go to craigslist to look for a like-minded woman. Or I could be traditional and hire a marriage broker, or simply accept whatever deal my father made.
As far as actual conception, well — stop me if this is too much information — I can get an erection when doing math or programming. I don’t think it’s the math, I think it’s the habit my left hand has of going downstairs while my consciousness is directed someplace else. But I expect physical stimulation would get the job done even in the absence of arousal. Not that I’ve ever gone all the way in such absence. But think of the many centuries when sex for procreation was a duty, and sex for fun was a sin. And think of the many arranged marriages during those times. Somebody must have reproduced without sexual attraction.
In my own life I had daydreams as a teenager of fatherhood, where I would imagine myself with my kids, and their mother was a shadowy presence. And as I look back, it worked out pretty much that way. I have two of the finest children a man could ever hope for, and both of my wives are ex, despite the name. And I count myself luckier than a friend of mine who has a solid and rewarding marriage, with a rebellious and risk-loving kid.
I’m tempted to stay we should stick a fork in this one, but after Amos’ comment, I’m not sure… 🙂
hairshirt: The more I think about this, the more I think it would make a great premise for a sci-fi treatment of some sort.
Definitely. Both the idea of “if sexual desire disappeared, what happens?” and “if people only ever conceived when they both wanted to, what happens?”
Brett: I’d say “Ethan of Athos” would be even more on topic.
Yes, because sexual desire hasn’t vanished from Athos: it’s merely been completely separated from having children.
I’m tempted to stay we should stick a fork in this one….
I’ve said something along those lines twice, but each time I weakened and, as they did to Michael Croleone, they pulled me back in.
I should just stop this nonsense of mine, but I was thinking about people like Amos (who sounds like a wonderful father, BTW). Even those (relatively few) people who are inclined to have children outside of a coupling are so inclined in a world in which most (the vast majority) children are conceived as the result of sexual attraction. The (well, my) question is whether the example set by the vast majority of people who have kids by way of sex plays a major role in the desire to have children among those for whom the desire to have children is separate from the desire to couple or have sex. Are those who do not adhere to the norms of “the system” influenced significantly by the system and to the point that their behavior would be different were the system to change? Maybe a more straightforward way of putting it would be, do people who want to have kids without a partner of some sort want to have them because of all the people they see having kids with partners?
I’m now promising myself and anyone else reading this that I will no longer comment on this thread. Thanks for participating.
hairshirtdonist: The (well, my) question is whether the example set by the vast majority of people who have kids by way of sex plays a major role in the desire to have children among those for whom the desire to have children is separate from the desire to couple or have sex.
Er:
1. Most people’s first example of “people who have kids by way of sex” is their own parents.
2. Most people – certainly most kids at the age at which you hear kids discussing how many children they want to have – do not want to even think about their parents having sex.
(Teachers of sex ed who try to discuss this with their students have quoted – actual examples! – of children aged 12 or more saying “Well, my youngest brother is 10, so my parents haven’t done anything like that in years, obviously” – or “Well, there’s three of us so I suppose they did that a few times, but they wouldn’t do it now.)
Also: Doubtless few people these days grow up as ignorant of “how babies are made” as Victorian brides were traditionally supposed to be. But it was and has been a tradition, in many parts of the world, that a woman might marry, wanting to have children, with no notion of how children are engendered…
My mother was one of those, I think. After six births in a span of six years and a couple of months, she finally decided that having a lot more kids was just crazy, and might actually drive her insane before it killed her. Probably that was the beginning of her shedding Catholicism, although she continued to attend Catholic church for another decade and a half.
Amazing woman, my mother. Grew up Irish Catholic, had a half-dozen kids in near-record time, worked alternately as a suicide/drug/rape counselor for many years without it driving her over the edge, shed her religion, and miscellaneous other things far to specific to recount here.
If I were a better son, I’d do a better job acknowledging what a remarkable person she is.
I find this whole discussion fascinating, especially as it raises some hypothetical issues that are anything but hypothetical to me.
1 in 60 people are Intersexed, but only technically. Unless they have a thorough medical exam, they usually aren’t aware of it.
1 in 1000 or so have symptoms of Intersex so blatant that they’re obvious, and cause problems.
1 in 3000 are “transsexual”, that is, brain one sex (as proven by autopsies, MRI scans etc), body the other. It’s an intensely uncomfortable condition, but those who try to get it fixed (by modifying the body so it matches the brain) face social sanction.
1 in 10,000 people are born with ambiguous genitalia, where it’s not clear which sex the baby is.
1 in 100,000 actually change apparent sex sometime after birth without medical intervention, usually at puberty, but rarely much later. Only 1 in 30 go M to F rather than the reverse though, that’s even rarer than having both sex’s functional reproductive systems. The legal and social problems such people face are immense.
My point is that there’s a lot more in Heaven and Earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Zoe, you might want to check out a recent thread: Oh, and one more thing.