media bollocks – Page 20 – Another angry woman

Nothing says “I love you” like reinforcing stereotypes for profit

Sometimes I wonder if the capitalist calendar is marked not by months, but by abstract concepts from which to draw profit. March is the month of maternity; October, horror; April, rebirth by the medium of chocolate. And so forth. February happens to be the month where romantic love is the money-spinner, by accident of having the feast of an early Christian martyr plonked squarely in the middle of it. This has been twisted into tawdry pink cards, oversized teddies, lavish dinners for two, knickers, flowers and chocolate. Nothing, we are told, says “I love you” like excessive consumption.

To sell this idea, the marketers and media-types operate in stereotypes. It’s easier for them, that way. In the first few weeks of February, therefore, we are bombarded with narratives of “getting him to propose” and “getting her in the mood”, because of course men only want to get laid and women only want to get married. The tropes of hegemonic monogamy are paraded around, playing on the niggling fears of the masses that they may end up alone if they do not capitulate and buy that heart-shaped box of champagne truffles.

It’s all grindingly awful for those of us who do not subscribe to the ideals of the default brand of monogamy. It is probably worse still for those who believe, but are single. It is the sort of thing that makes one want to leave the country and head far, far away, were it not for the fact that flights seem to cost more in the middle of February due to the glut of minibreaks for two. Instead, I learned to filter out the monotonous drone of “BUY BUY BUY”. It is only the truly terrible that makes it through. This year, I have noticed–rather fittingly for National Monogamy Day–two particularly horrid ad campaigns.

While walking through Waterloo, I encountered a set of billboards featuring a model in underwear covering herself with a bunch of flowers. LOVE STUCK? it proclaimed, before breathlessly telling me to hold my smartphone up to the poster and view it through an app to “see the model come to life” and get gift ideas. I didn’t bother. I guessed that what would happen would be that the flowers would fall away, leaving the nubile young model prancing about in her scanties. One quick Google later, and I was proved right.

This ad campaign features several of the oppressively tiresome Valentine’s Day ad tropes. It essentially says “Hello men! I know Valentine’s Day sucks, but if you buy her some nice undies, she’ll have to let you look at her in a state of near-undress. Then you’ll probably get to have a go on her tits.” It unabashedly, unashamedly advertises to the male gaze, taking the objectification of women to giddying heights. The only thing that differentiates this ad campaign from the dull static hum of the rest of it is the technological side of things. It is, at its heart, the digital age equivalent of pens that reveal a naked lady when you click the top.

The other campaign that came to my attention was one flogging gin, using the folk tradition of women being “allowed” to propose on the leap day by putting on murkily misogynistic events. Here, if you are a woman, you can learn “the knowledge and skills to trap your man” in a way which is presumably unrelated to how the words “gin” and “trap” traditionally fit into a sentence together. In order to provide equality in advertising, men may attend a “school for scoundrels” where they may learn how to “retain their liberty”. I would say that implicit in this campaign is the stereotype that women want commitment while men do not, but it is actually spelled out in the top of their publicity materials.

Far too many young women run the risk of a Horrendous Disappointment – and too many men may succumb to dread ‘Commitment’…

What is to be done about such egregiously awful ad campaigns? So much of what they are trying to do is to gain attention, and by being so overtly hideous, they are bound to draw the eye. I have purposely avoided naming the brands in the post for this reason, and I have a personal policy of not buying from brands whose advertising has really pissed me off.

The problem is not so much that these campaigns will cause controversy: neither campaign has provoked more than a tiny murmur of frustration. The issue here is that to most people they are eye-catching not because of their flaws, but because they’re a little bit different, a little bit exciting. There is a fine line to walk between discussing misogyny in advertising and accidentally publicising companies that blithely push stereotypes to make a little bit more money in the post-Christmas slump.

The fact is, it is simply not acceptable to turn humans into cartoonish parodies: the ogling, horny man and the woman who will do anything to marry him. It is patronising, dehumanising, and reinforces a power structure which reifies these archetypes, while wiping away any person who does not conform. This wearisome shit needs calling where its seen in the faint hope that one day we can chip away enough that February is just a short month and if you fancy giving a lover a present, then that’s absolutely fine, but nobody’s going to try and make you.

There is no ad-blocker for life, unfortunately. We need to work around that.

An actual product that actually exists

Hegemonic monogamy of the “default option” variety is usually rooted in the set of ideas that give rise to the erotic capitalist dystopia. It is a mutually-beneficial arrangement wherein both parties get the sex that they want and there’s two people to raise any kids, should the need arise. The hegemonically monogamous relationship generally means that neither partner strays: if one does, they will usually make an effort to cover their tracks, as breaking the rules means the partnership will end, or the cheater will be punished. Of course, monogamous relationships are often far more than this coldly clinical arrangement of mutually-assured destruction, and it’s an arrangement that works well for many.

Not for all, it seems, as this is an actual product that actually exists in the world: the Handzoff wristband. These colourful little bands bear the words “HANDZ OFF MY BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND”. Once applied, they cannot be removed, a point the site is so eager to push that they wrote it in BIG RED CAPITAL LETTERS. Also in BIG RED CAPITAL LETTERS is a list of potential uses for these wristbands: perhaps the discerning customer may wish to mark their partner when they go on holiday or a business trip?

These lurid colour-coded bands–reflecting the traditional pink-for-a-girl blue-for-a-boy–have two important characteristics distinguishing them from the wedding ring, that more traditional “stylish… perfect symbol that you are in a committed relationship”. Firstly, they are far, far cheaper at only £2.5o a pop. Secondly, the only way of getting it off is by cutting or otherwise tampering. A boring old wedding ring can merely be slipped off; how will the suspicious wife know that her husband is cheating if he can hide his marital status so easily?

The product seems to be based on a fundamental mishearing of the phrase “keeping tabs on each other”: Handzoff bands are designed to “keep tags on each other”. This original phrase is loaded enough: it evokes ideas of spying, of checking those text messages and fitting a GPS locator to a partner’s phone. To tag one’s partner is simply taking this to its logical conclusion.

It is not polyer-than-thou to suggest that a relationship ought to be based on trust: all of my mono friends I know would agree with this. And yet there is this thread running through hegemonic monogamy which suggests that the person you are with just cannot be trusted. It manifests everywhere: the frequent magazine articles promising to tell you “HOW TO TELL IF YOUR MAN IS CHEATING”; the media fascination with non-wifely places footballers are putting their penises; the vast incomes raked in by private detectives for adultery cases. Mistrust seems to be the foundation on which we are told to conduct our relationships, sold to us part and parcel with the default optioning of monogamy. The only surprise with the Handzoff wristbands is that they didn’t appear earlier.

And of course this isn’t the way we should live our lives, fretting every time a partner pops out to the shops, just in case she’s going to get a quick fingerfuck from the postman. We need to rethink the way we view relationships and see that if there is no trust there, it is not a relationship worth keeping in the first place. A cheap rubber wristband is not going to help that.

Das erotische Kapital, volume IV: Unfortunate implications

Before I begin to take Hakim’s flimsy arguments to their logical conclusion, I feel like it is only right to provide some balance and say something positive about Honey Money. The book is printed on nice, thick paper which would probably make ideal roach-material or kindling for a small fire. It has a good weight to it, meaning it would also serve as a handy doorstop or a easily-carried weapon for braining enemies while looking suitably innocuous in a police search.

Niceties aside, upon reading Honey Money it becomes apparent that Dr Catherine Hakim has unwittingly created the most horrifying dystopia imaginable. Margaret Atwood should step aside, as Hakim has thoroughly trumped her.

Ultimately, it is a good thing that the central thesis of Honey Money is not rooted in the reality experienced by the vast majority of humankind. Hakim reduces sex to a scarce resource, a thing to be bought, sold and bartered; whether financially or socially. It takes all the sticky, sweaty naked fun out of sex, making it a cold, clinical transaction. An individual’s appreciation of another’s beauty becomes a power relation: the beholder beholden to the beheld. It leaves men as desperate consumers, utilising the assets they have to maybe, just maybe, have a go on someone’s tits; they are no longer agents, but end users.

As for women, what path is there? For the young and the beautiful, there is the quest for ultimate power: through prostitution and flirting, they may become rich, and then marry so they need never work again, provided they pump out a few kids, because their fertility is also a very important asset. In Hakim’s universe, erotic capital equates to empowerment, to true women’s liberation. This power is hinged on something fleeting: erotic capital is highest in youth, and as a woman’s looks fade, so, too, must any power she has accrued. This transient moment of glory is hardly a hook on which to hang one’s life.

The queer, the non-binary identified, the disabled, the old, all are swept away in Hakim’s world. There is nothing for them, for they are ugly. This is a world of heterosexual power struggle, and there is no place for them. Furthermore, there can be no place for them: almost all of the evidence Hakim presents focuses on those who are naturally beautiful, rather than those with the economic capital to buy erotic capital (which still leaves swathes of the population unable to “enter the market”). Without meaning to Godwin, Hakim is not the first to conceptualise a world where the tall, genetically-blessed people are encouraged to breed, while leaving everyone else out in the cold. It has never ended well.

It is a horrible vision of a horrible world, and that one person believes this could be a desirable state of affairs is a terrifying notion. Fortunately, many are unconvinced: the book has been largely poorly received, even by customer reviewers on Amazon. Not everyone is so critical, though: almost immediately after publishing Volume I, this comment appeared. Perhaps they are attempting to disingenuously capitalise on a poorly-argued thesis, or perhaps they are genuinely convinced. Either way, I hope in writing this series, I have killed the book once and for all.

Honey Money presents a nasty idea, poorly argued. It must not gain traction.

Das erotische Kapital:

Das erotische Kapital, volume II: Fucking numbers, how do they work?

Dr Catherine Hakim is a doctor of Sociology, with years of experience in data handling and a senior position at London School of Economics. It is thoroughly baffling, then, that she manages to consistently completely fuck up interpretation of data to the point that any person with a modicum of ability for critical thought can identify the glaring gaps in her claims of an evidential basis for her arguments.

Neither theoretical concept is adequately evidenced: erotic capital is a clusterfuck, and the notion of the male sex deficit is shaky at best.

The lion’s share of the “evidence” presented is in fact nothing of the kind: it is either unreferenced sweeping assertions from Hakim or anecdotes. These anecdotes take the form of “this is a thing that happened somewhere, and it definitely shows that it’s a good idea to get your tits out”, or sometimes might be excerpts from memoirs: the reference list is rife with citations of the works of Casanova, Belle du Jour and Hugh Hefner, to name but a few. Those untrained at looking at where the footnotes go might be fooled by the language Hakim uses to imply that somehow these stories represent empirical data.

While a personal history can sometimes constitute rich qualitative data, those presented by Hakim do nothing of the sort: they are popular memoirs precisely because they are sensational: they do not represent the bedroom habits of the ordinary person, but, rather, the sweaty aberrations providing titillation to the masses. To try to hang a theory on this is disingenuous.

Other evidence takes more of a scientific format, though again is thoroughly insufficient for proving any kind of point. The notion of the male sex deficit is–according to Hakim–backed up by “recent sex surveys”. Again, if one follows the footnotes, one discovers that these surveys are anything but recent: most are over ten years old, with some dating as far back as the nineties. If we pretend, for a minute, that a well-conducted survey from yesterday showed Hakim’s hypothesis–that men have more sex than women and want more sex than women–then it would still be fairly poor evidence.

The thing is, Hakim completely ignores the possibility of something which survey developers worry a lot about: response bias. This is something which often happens when people are aware they are being measured: they tend to give responses they think the experimenter wants to hear, sometimes falling victim to providing the “morally” right answers. Let us remember that sex is still A Big Deal in our society, and that men and women are expected to hold different values regarding sex: namely, men are supposed to want it more; women are supposed to want it less. Is it any surprise, then, that in a questionnaire, women respond with wanting less sex than men? The smart researcher will always interpret results in this light. Dr Catherine Hakim does not: the possibility that these self-reported statistics may not accurately represent the true feelings of respondents never enters her analysis at all: results are taken at face value.

And so she concludes that there must be some sort of sex deficit and that men aren’t getting laid as much as they want because women are a bit frigid.

To back up the concept of erotic capital, Hakim claims that it is measurable. It sort of is, in a way which is fraught with problems which are again wildly underplayed by Hakim. Although erotic capital is supposedly comprised of a variety of facets above and beyond attractiveness, almost all of the measures proposed are of attractiveness, which is acknowledged by most researchers in the field to be notoriously difficult to measure objectively. The most objective ways of measuring attractiveness involve using a computer to analyse facial symmetry or waist-to-hip ratio, and often more subjective measures–rating panels or self-report is used. Hakim also, amusingly, includes winning beauty contests as a useful measure of erotic capital.

Largely, the evidence presented for how erotic capital functions in everyday life is based on cross-sectional studies and correlational studies, neither of which are able to give a plausible causal link between erotic capital and outcome. I decided, therefore, using Hakim’s own ideas for measurement of erotic capital to conduct a slightly stronger empirical study of the effect. I got people who I found of varying levels of attractiveness to read me excerpts from Honey Money. My dependent variable was how convinced I was by what they were saying.

Ultimately, no matter how sexy the people were, Hakim’s thesis still sounded like utter nonsense.

As I touched upon in the first post, I am doubtful as to whether what I read is actually a theory at all. A theory requires novelty and distinction from other theories: erotic capital is impossible to unpick from the three other social assets–one requires economic capital to dress well and social capital for the social skills. A theory is also measurable–and many of the facets of erotic capital do not appear to be in any way measurable. Furthermore, a theory must be parsimonious, and much of what is presented in Honey Money is anything but a simple explanation: rather, it is a tortured exercise in reading correlations the wrong way.

The strongest empirical data presented is the “halo effect“, a manifestation of which is that attractive people are judged to be nicer, better and more intelligent. As a result, such people tend to lead charmed lives. This theory is adequate to explain much of the evidence presented in Honey Money, yet Hakim insists on adding extra variables based on little to no evidence, and repackaging it in a pseudo-economic analysis of sex as a scarce resource.

The more data Hakim presents, the less credible her argument becomes as she tortures her theory around a reality which fails to conform to the world inside her brain. The male sex deficit concept is brought in largely to account for the fact that men tend to benefit more from having “high erotic capital” than women, which is contrary to her prediction that women have the higher erotic capital. Due to the sex deficit, for reasons never coherently explained, apparently men “devalue women’s erotic capital”.

Once again, there are plenty of theories to explain why men often tend to do better than women, and these largely come from feminist schools of thought, which would be a useful theoretical lens through which to view many of Hakim’s findings. As we shall see, though, Hakim has some rather idiosyncratic reasons for dismissing feminism out of hand…

Das erotische Kapital:

Das erotische Kapital, volume III: Hakim’s got issues

They say that when an author writes, we are afforded a unique glimpse into their psyche. If that is the case, Catherine Hakim and I definitely wouldn’t get on. Hakim, you see, does not seem to be a very nice person, attempting feebly to justify her dislike of various groups of society with flimsy non-evidence and her own risible theorising.

Hakim doesn’t like feminists very much. That is hardly surprising, considering feminists don’t like Hakim very much; if feminism were a picket line, Hakim would be a big black-legged scab. Hakim’s issues with feminism, though, are based on rather poor information: she read Sheila Jeffreys once, and didn’t like it. According to Hakim, the work of one feminist–whom many feminists hold in low regard due to her transphobia–indicates the whole of feminist thought. This somehow translates into feminists being exactly the same as patriarchy, a point which Hakim never manages to argue convincingly, or indeed coherently.

According to Hakim, feminism has “no realistic alternative to heterosexuality or marriage, except celibacy or lesbianism”. My notes in the margin on this sentence include a drawing of a frowny face and the words “NO NO NO NO NO READ FEMINISM YOU IDIOT”. Kindly, one could say Hakim’s view of feminism is based on the fact that she is only familiar with one particular flavour of feminism from decades ago. Unfortunately, one or two of her references are recent, and misrepresent the views of the authors, which suggests she is simply tilting at straw feminists.

While her hatred of feminists and feminism is ostensibly academic, a more visceral bile is reserved for fat people. I threw my copy of Honey Money across the room when she pointed out that people boo the Ugly Sisters in panto because they are fat, and this isn’t really discrimination at all. I am not exaggerating. She actually says this:

Cinderella’s competitors at the ball are her two Ugly Sisters. In English Christmas pantomime, the Ugly Sisters are usually played by men who display absolutely no femininity or elegance in their style or manners. They are badly dressed in gaudy clothes, have grotesque hairstyles and are generally figures of fun, sometimes displaying beards or bellies. There is usually one tall thin Sister and one fat Sister. In the shows, the children will often collectively boo the Ugly Sisters. In real life, the social exclusion of fat and ugly people can be labelled as discrimination

[three pages of concern trolling about “health” and droning on about how absolutely hideous fat people are and how they can’t fit in aeroplane seats and why would anyone want to fuck a fatty bullshit cut because it’s thoroughly offensive and relies almost entirely on anecdote]

The concept of “discrimination” is too readily applied in situations where there is differential treatment or outcomes. In many cases, there is a simple explanation for such outcomes that do not involve unfair favouritism or intentional bias in favour of or against particular groups. In other cases, there can be solidly documented justifications for differential treatment, as in the case of the obese and overweight.

Honey Money, pp129-132 (Hardback edition)

Hakim pretends to show evidence for her hatred of a group of people, when in fact it is entirely her usual quality of evidence: a few anecdotes from others as unpleasant as her.

It is not just fat people who bother Hakim–she also has issues with others who fail to conform to the narrow conventional beauty standards. Lesbians appear to bother Hakim somewhat, because they do not make enough of an effort with their appearance for her liking. Indeed, Hakim’s relationship with homosexuality on the whole is dismissive (at best), as queer sexuality cannot be explained by her theory, which is framed entirely in the light of heterosexuality. This is justified by using the results of a single study which found that the proportion of the population identifying as gay or bisexual was far smaller than that which is usually found. With her skill for twisting data to suit her theory, Hakim conveniently forgets to mention that this study was conducted by asking people on their doorsteps if they were gay, which is bound to bring up all sorts of response bias. Magicking away queer culture by mentioning the “disproportionate influence” and focusing instead on “the 95% majority of ordinary heterosexual men and women” means that Hakim can ignore huge swathes of society who do not conform to her standards.

To round off this section on groups Hakim hates, here is a small quiz. To whom is she referring in the following little outbursts of ire?

1. Some cultures actively repress sexuality, flirting and the display of sex appeal. ____ is one.

2. The public culture of “gender equality” in _____ has produced one of the most sexually restrictive cultures in Europe.

3. _____ do not flirt. In ________ there is a total lack of everyday eroticism.

The answer to all of the above is either “Sweden” or “the Swedish”. I’m not entirely sure why she thinks the Swedes are so stuck-up; the survey results provided by Hakim herself point to the contrary.

So who does Dr Catherine Hakim like? Surely she cannot merely be a miserable old bag entirely fuelled by hate?

There are indeed sectors of society who Hakim is enamoured by. She consumes vast quantities of popular literature about these people and writes about their lives in an aspirational fashion. Her lionization of this group of people is so apparent that it is difficult not to believe that Hakim sees them as the very zenith of human evolution.

These people are sex workers. She writes reverently of the experiences of Belle du Jour and authors of other sensationalist memoirs, presenting the sex industry as a fantastic place to work for women. While for some this is indeed the case, Hakim is very dismissive of problematic areas within sex work: were Hakim to be believed, it is the best job in the whole wide world, where you get laid a lot in exchange for zillions of pounds.

Sex work is not a risk-free enterprise, and Hakim mentions this very briefly, in the context of “everyone encounters unpleasant people and unpleasant experiences whether in the sex trade or ordinary jobs”. The actual risks are not mentioned at all–for example, that sex workers are the most likely group of people to experience rape. Likewise, the relationship between a streetwalker and her pimp is presented as “a nice example of barter”. This uncritical, rose-tinted analysis of sex work is highly problematic: while she is right that sex work ought not to be stigmatised, she is thoroughly wrong to completely dismiss legitimate risks faced by these workers. If Hakim is attempting to lay groundwork for the legalisation of sex work, she is going about it the wrong way.

It would seem that sex work, in Hakim’s world, is the ultimate career goal for women. This is but one of the horrifying implications of Honey Money which will be explored in the final section…

Das erotische Kapital:

Das erotische Kapital: a comprehensive review of everything wrong with Catherine Hakim’s Honey Money

Last week, with a conspiratorial grin, a friend handed me a book. “Destroy it,” she whispered.

I held in my hands Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital by a certain Dr Catherine Hakim, who is best known for her ludicrous theory which suggests that feminists have already won and any oppression experienced by women is because they’re not trying hard enough. Honey Money is rooted in this theory, but adds more.

Its central thesis is the existence of a type of social asset called “erotic capital”, fitting alongside economic capital, social capital and cultural capital. Erotic capital is made up of beauty, sexiness, charm, liveliness, social presentation (i.e. how one dresses) and sexuality, including sexual competence. One might notice that erotic capital is all about sex and sex appeal, as its title suggests, yet Hakim spends a good portion of the book arguing that it is definitely not all about sex. If it isn’t, then she hasn’t found anything new, as all of these facets of erotic capital would fit in with the other three social assets. The only way for this theory to be distinct and new is if it is all about sex. Which Hakim reckons it isn’t.

The second major concept explored in Honey Money is the “male sex deficit”. Just say those words out loud to yourself a few times. Male sex deficit. Male sex deficit.

Couched in its economic-sounding language is a concept as old as the hills: men want more sex than women. This notion is unquestioningly asserted repeatedly, and used to explain pretty much everything in the book. Men are randy old goats, while the women just aren’t that into sex. But it’s OK, girls! We can just tease and we’ll get what we want, because our erotic capital’s a scarcer resource.

Seriously.

As I read the book, I became more and more furious that someone wrote this, then someone published this, then people read this and some of them might agree with the thesis put forward. I scrawled angry notes over it with a biro. NO! carved out in blue in the margins. [citation needed] dotted all over unreferenced assertions.

It became my nemesis.

There is a lot wrong with the book, and much of the criticism has already been covered in other reviews. I found even more.

This week, therefore, I present a treat for you. I read Honey Money so you don’t have to. For the next few days, I will utterly demolish everything which is wrong with Hakim’s thesis, from the unfortunate insights into Hakim’s tortured psyche, to her fraught relationship with interpretation of data, to the horrifying implications of what she believes she has found.

In the meantime, I leave you with this screencap from Disney’s Aladdin, which I think sums up the work rather well.

Das erotische Kapital:

Dear Unilad: An open letter to @Uniladmag (because their enquiries email mysteriously stopped working)

Dear Unilad,

What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, I wanted to start of this open letter eloquently, but all I can do is wonder what is so wrong with you that you repeatedly promote rape.

You appeared on my radar last week when you posted an article advocating rape. I suspect the author of the piece thought he was being ever so funny by suggesting that the number of unreported rapes could play to a man’s advantage. Obviously you probably experienced quite a degree of backlash to this, because you quietly took it down. It’s still screencapped though, Unilad. People know what you did.

Then there’s this T-shirt, which manages to simultaneously advocate rape while implying that the wearer of the T-shirt suffers from premature ejaculation. Again, you quietly took it down, but forgot to remove it from your Facebook page. So we know what you did.

Your attitude to being called out on your behaviour is appalling. Tweeter @sazza_jay pointed out that what you were doing is wrong, and received misogynistic and homophobic abuse. Following your characteristic pattern, you then quietly took down the tweet, but we all saw it. It’s screencapped, Unilad. These days, nothing just disappears.

Your reaction to the controversy suggests that deep down you have some semblance of a clue that what you are doing is wrong, and here’s why: what you are doing is reinforcing a culture which facilitates rape. Your professed “banter” is dangerous: you are repeating rape myths which are often subscribed to by rapists. On university campuses, the area your laughable attempt at a “magazine” attempts to cater to, as many as one in four women will be raped.

Do you find this funny? Is it somehow amusing that up to a quarter of the women you might encounter (admittedly, most women will run a mile from any dickhead wearing your T-shirts) could be victims of a horrific crime?

If you don’t, it’s time to own up to your mistakes and apologise. Not some mealy-mouthed “sorry you got offended”, but a proper owning of your mistakes. You owe your followers an explanation, and help in participating in building a world without rape.

You are at a crossroads right now. Will you continue to be part of the problem, part of the culture which allows women to be raped while dribbling fools belch stale lager laughter over violations? Or will you apologise?

Here’s hoping you choose the right path.

Update: Unilad have issued an apology, but it fails on several fronts: (1) It has a “sorry you were offended” tone. (2) It’s only posted on Twitpic, not their main site. (3) It fails to show any understanding of why their behaviour is wrong. As I said, Unilad need to explain what is so wrong about rape jokes and work to challenging rape culture, not reinforcing it.

Update 2: A second semi-apology from Unilad, over on their Facebook page. They still haven’t explained why what they did was wrong. There are also an awful lot of vile, triggering comments making light of rape and threatening violence against those who got offended. While Unilad have apologised for those comments from their “fans”, such comments will continue to happen. This is exactly why rape culture needs challenging and why a site like Unilad needs to explain to its readers exactly why it will no longer be participating in a climate of violence: Unilad is trying to absolve itself of responsibility, when it is in fact responsible for these views. I screencapped the apology (and the first four ghastly comments) because I’m now wise to Unilad’s habit of taking things down…

Update 3: Unilad’s website is now down, with the same semi-apology as on the Facebook group. Honestly. Wouldn’t it have just been easier to own their mistakes? A cynic might think they’re trying to cover their tracks and remove all traces of what they have done. When they relaunch, I’ll be watching…

In which I bite: Brendan O’Neill can’t read (and is a weeping syphilitic chode)

It took me a while to bite, but eventually curiosity got the better of me. I had been sent something which appeared so thoroughly awful, I’d thought I might duck it. @TheNatFantastic had alerted me to the existence of a piece by weeping syphilitic chode Brendan O’Neill entitled “A Marxist defence of Page 3 girls“.

And it was so thoroughly stupid, and worse than expected I ended up biting.

I had imagined that perhaps O’Neill’s “Marxist” defence of Page 3 would pertain to liberating the proletarian Page 3 models by providing them with a platform to articulate their views

O’Neill lacks even the basic intellect to pursue this reasoning, and instead falls back on the truly wearisome weeping syphilitic chode line: crying about imaginary Victorian women and vehemently defending his perceived right to look at tits. Marx barely gets a look-in, save for a bit of selective quoting:

“You cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences,” he said. He went on: “You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns!” – meaning that even when you pick a beautiful flower you’ll frequently end up with a little prick. It’s the same with the press – there’s some good stuff out there, well worth reading, and there are a lot of pricks, too. That is in the nature of having a free, open press.

Ultimately, the analysis is as Marxist as O’Neill’s online rag “Spiked” and its predecessor “Living Marxism”, that is, about as Marxist as the distended anus of the bourgeoisie unrelentingly shitting into the screaming mouths of the proletariat. Marx’s name is used, and that is about all. In fact, what Marx said was:

For the time being, leaving aside the moral consequences, bear in mind that you cannot enjoy the advantages of a free press without putting up with its inconveniences. You cannot pluck the rose without its thorns!

While Marx’s argument is indeed in favour of the free press, it is hardly surprising that O’Neill left out the mention of moral consequences while quoting Marx, given that O’Neill’s entire article is about how Unutterably Evil those who point out the possibility of the moral consequences of Page 3.

It is also questionable as to whether the Sun and is Page 3 genuinely represent the idea of a free press, particularly the free press to which Marx was referring in the article. Marx himself said:

The primary freedom of the press lies in not being a trade. The writer who degrades the press into being a material means deserves as punishment for this internal unfreedom the external unfreedom of censorship, or rather his very existence is his punishment.

The Sun, the Murdoch press and mainstream commercial media on the whole are a capitalist endeavour. They exist for two reasons: to make money, and to push a political agenda which will allow those who control the means of production to make even more money. The tiny opinion pieces on Page 3 strictly adhere to the editorial line, its contributors unable to write freely: this is congruous with Marx’s views on a censored press:

Inseparable from it is the most powerful vice, hypocrisy, and from this, its basic vice, come all its other defects, which lack even the rudiments of virtue, and its vice of passivity, loathsome even from the aesthetic point of view. The government hears only its own voice, it knows that it hears only its own voice, yet it harbours the illusion that it hears the voice of the people, and it demands that the people, too, should itself harbour this illusion. For its part, therefore, the people sinks partly into political superstition, partly into political disbelief, or, completely turning away from political life, becomes a rabble of private individuals.

Marx’s arguments about a free press may have been pertinent to a specific dispute in 1840s Prussia, but the climate has changed substantially since then. For O’Neill to argue otherwise is sheer intellectual laziness. I will be charitable and suggest that Brendan O’Neill did not read the whole Marx article, which is forgivable as Marx writes in an unremittingly dense fashion and it must be difficult for poor Brendan to read out of his one pus-crusted urethral eye.

Either way, it seems relevant to end on a quote falsely attributed to Marx, yet actually pronounced by Sweary Wollstonecraft:

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode.

People I won’t have sex with, ever.

The stereotype of the sex-hating feminist fails to hold up to a cursory glance, let alone any degree of scrutiny. There are, however, some people I will never have sex with, ever…

Askmen.com

The festering frothing anuses at askmen have been at it again. Last spotted providing pick-up lines to demonstrate dickhead status, this time they think they have happened upon some feminist demands women secretly want to be ignored.

Askmen rather like the feminist struggle, they claim, because it means that there is finally the prospect of the holy grail of relationships: “the non-clingy girlfriend”. I’m assuming these dripping bellends would be lucky to have any girlfriend, clingy or otherwise, given that their attitude towards spending time with women is a grating display of tedious benevolent sexism.

Apparently, women secretly want men to carry their bags for them, pay for meals out, make decisions for them and get married, no matter how feminist they proclaim to be. Also, Askmen reckon that we women love to be objectified. Thank you for speaking for we little fragile women, Askmen.

Now, Askmen seem to have a little bit of a hang-up about what they call “chivalry”, but is more accurately termed benevolent sexism, with a plethora of articles with tips for demonstrating “gentlemanliness” and defending chivalry against those big nasty feminists. They seem to believe it’s the way into a woman’s knickers. It isn’t.

I have been on dates with “chivalrous” men, and it has rarely ended up in the bedroom, as it is irksome to be treated like a cross between a sickly pensioner and a small child. I have a cunt. That isn’t a disability. I am also, unsurprisingly, hugely turned off by people propping up oppressive systems. When called out on their behaviour, the chivalrous types invariably mansplain (they are always men) to me why it is all right, and mansplaining is about as sexy as mankinis.

I have, a few times, had sex with the bag-carrying, door-opening dinner buyers. Every time, the sex has been rubbish, as I’m not entirely sure they view women as people, but rather projects with a strict protocol.

So, for this outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of infuriating behaviour, Askmen, I am never going to have sex with you.

Unilad

Anyone clicking this next link requires a trigger warning. This little shitbag advocates rape. The writer seems to believe he has written a humourous piece on “sexual mathematics“. He “mathematically” suggests that it is worth trying it on with a woman after a date, as 75% of women are likely to put out on the first date. He concludes with what will inevitably be defended as a “joke”, pointing out that 85% of rapes go unreported, implying that these are worthwhile odds to take.

This is yet another tired example of rape culture, albeit even closer to an outright suggestion of rape than usual. As an aside, it is also terribly written and thoroughly unreferenced, which leads me to question how this seeping bellend managed to get to university in the first place.

Remember that rapists are more likely to subscribe to rape myths, and the contribution to rape culture is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Having sex with those who trivialise and laugh at rape is ultimately never a good idea: to such individuals, consent is optional. For Unilad and his ilk, the chances of sex should be no more than zero.

The Activists

Touched upon in yesterday’s post on consensual power, BDSM and anarchism, tedious fuckwits The Activists think that sex is a waste of time.

Fuck that shit.

Brendan O’Neill

I think I may have mentioned this before, but Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode, a misogynist and all-round awful human being. He is the tiny infected penile avatar of rape culture, reeking of stale beer and a longing for the 90s. He hasn’t even done anything to specifically piss me off today, but it bears repeating and reminding every day.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Brendan O’Neill is a weeping syphilitic chode.

Anarchy. You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The word “anarchy” is a much-maligned. In the popular media, anarchy is often used to describe rioting and other affairs outside of the judicial system. The conflation of anarchy with lawlessness is common, even though the crucial differences were patiently explained by Emma Goldman over a century ago.

The grating sexism of the Lynx marketing line of “women are unable to resist the stench of a 14 year old boy’s P.E. kit” is still present, and it adds in utter nonsense about anarchy. Firstly, anarchism is not all about robbing jewellery shops. Secondly, even if an anarchist did rob a jewellery shop, he sure as fuck wouldn’t be doing it alone wearing such a distinctive balaclava. Thirdly, the very presence of a police denotes that this is not anarchy, as having a police force tends to imply some sort of degree of having a fucking state. As an aside, the whole piece suggest a tragic misunderstanding of what is meant by the phrase “fuck the police”.

It transpires that this ad is part of Lynx’s latest marketing campaign, which involves a graphic novel about anarchy, which, from the previews, seems to imply that anarchy consists solely of scantily clad women running around in leather. In truth, very little of anarchism involves scantily clad women running around in leather.

Are we doomed, then, to a popular culture completely devoid of any decent anarchist content? Not quite. The first thing that springs to mind is, strangely, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is the only film I can think of that uses the phrase “anarcho-syndicalism” twice and manages to slip in a detailed explanation of how an autonomous collective could be organised. We also get to hold on to V for Vendetta, if we only accept the book and reject the watered-down film.

The Mad Max trilogy also presents, when viewed together, a surprisingly coherent view of anarchy. The first film shows the death throes of the current order; the second the Verwirrung phase; and the third, order emerging. Beyond the Thunderdome shows us two societies. In the one, there is an ongoing power struggle between Tina Turner and a midget riding a gimp. The phrase “TWO MEN ENTER ONE MAN LEAVES” is mic-checked, providing a chilling warning to the Occupy movement to make sure their collective decision-making is in order, as otherwise they will be left entirely up to the whims of Tina Turner and her punishment-wheel. The other society is a group of children with no leader. Unsurprisingly, the ones who end the film better off are the non-hierarchical lot.

For the most part, though, anarchy is widely misunderstood. As John Henry Mackay wrote,

“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,
“Art thou, & war & murder’s endless rage.”

0, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven
The ‘truth that lies behind a word to find,

To them the word’s right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.

One day, perhaps, the truth will become widely known. In the meantime, there’s always Mad Max.