The other day I got bombarded by people asking for a response to this video. First, I need to make a few points clear:
1. If a girl deliberately sleeps with another girl’s boyfriend, her problem isn’t being a slut. Her problem is having a sociopathic lack of integrity.
2. If a girl gets accidentally pregnant and wants to keep the baby for all the wrong reasons, her problem isn’t being a slut. Her problem is one of contraception and general immaturity.
3. If a girl chooses anal or oral sex instead of vaginal sex as a means of rationalization, her problem isn’t being a slut. Her problem is the ignorance that stems from antiquated notions of virginity.
4. If a girl gets so sloppy drunk at the club that she makes poor sexual decisions, her problem isn’t being a slut. Her problem is alcohol abuse, and the larger problem is men who think it’s okay to take advantage of a woman when she’s drunk.
The first major failing of Jenna’s video is that she confuses these various problems of ignorance, immaturity, lack of integrity, and alcohol abuse with being a slut. Why does she do this? Well, because sex is involved, and Jenna’s personal hang-ups about sex cloud her ability to empathize with other women.
Jenna is like most girls in this regard. She faults other women who rationalize their sexual behavior, but fails to recognize that her silly argument for the evolutionary superiority of monogamy is just a rationalization of her own sexual choices.
She is blind to her internalized misogyny and totally unaware that she has been culturally programmed to judge a woman, as she puts it, “by the contents of her mouth, butthole, and vagina.”
Jenna openly admits to judging by “how many dicks do you put in your body on a regular basis.” This is slut shaming at its most insidious, and of course, it is also the second major failing of Jenna’s video.
The third major failing of Jenna’s video is that it’s just not funny. It doesn’t matter if she announces that it’s not going to be funny. If she comes out doing her schtick, she’s gotta be funny. That’s why we watch her instead of the million other ranting lunatics on YouTube.
So yeah, Jenna fucked this one up big time. It’s all just a bunch of confused, unfunny slut-shaming, and at this point, I hope she knows it. Of course, none of this is unforgivable, especially if she’s willing to admit that she’s wrong.
I’m looking forward to the apology, and I hope it’s funny.
Get Used To The Sound - Earlimart
Music for staying in bed on a rainy Saturday night.
The people turning on coketalk like wildfire amuse me.
>Follow a person for their rude yet accurate snark
>Get mad at them for their rude yet accurate snarkIn one of his many rants that compared mankind to stupid cattle, Nietzsche said that the traits that we admire in people during times of crisis are traits that we fear in peace time. Ruthlessness, maybe some conniving, that kind of stuff. Hell even just intelligence. Anything that sets somebody ahead of the herd.
It’s why I always liked one line in particular that the Joker says to Batman in the Dark Knight; “They need you right now, but when they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble”. That’s like an indirect Nietzsche quote right there.
And I find it happens so often on the Internet, where people are coincidentally most like a herd of stupid cattle. A few months ago some security guard at an American college sprayed pepper spray in the faces of some students at point blank range. Miss Talk posted a picture of him attacking his character ruthlessly and describing him as the physical embodiment of the banality of evil. It was during a time when we felt like we were threatened, so we liked it a lot. It made us feel better.
But now she’s made a post attacking the character of a cow-judging hick that’s introduced a radical anti-abortion bill. She made some excellent points about the fact that a builder is in no position to make decisions regarding women’s rights. But the herd doesn’t feel threatened by this man. Not yet. Instead what they notice is superiority in her tone. All together now, like some hideous chorus line of the mentally damned, the herd asks “Hey, waidaminute… You think you’re better than me?” - because the herd is from a small town too! The herd isn’t educated! The herd likes cattle! Who’s this big city b**ch judging us? We don’t need her! Cast her aside! Witch! Witch!
And so it goes. As for me, I’m going to keep following her and enjoying her posts. I suggest you try being a radical like me and do the same.
Ho Hey - The Lumineers
It’s impossible not to love this fucking band.
I’m glad they’re about to blow up, because I couldn’t contain my excitement the first time I heard this song.
On kicking him to the curb.
He’s the worst person I’ve ever known and simultaneously the most amazing. He does the worst things you can imagine. Lying, cheating, lying about cheating. Here I am, a smart woman with no illusions about who this guy she loves really is, sticking around and letting him flay her again and again. I could explain why and what I think about it but it’s inconsequential.
Whether or not I have no illusions about him, I must be delusional or hate myself to continue to allow him access to me, right? I guess my question to you is this: Can you love someone who lies to you, hurts you deeply, cheats on you and find some way to make peace with that/be bigger than that, or am I just being another stupid smart person trying to rationalize an emotional dependency?
Of course you can love someone who repeatedly lies to you, hurts you deeply and cheats on you. You can even find a way to make peace with it, but so what? None of that is an excuse to allow the bastard to remain a part of your life.You know damn well what you have to do. You have to kick him to the curb, but you’re weak. It’s not that you hate yourself. You just don’t respect yourself, and he sure as hell doesn’t respect you either.
That’s what you need to realize and accept: He’s never going to respect you. When he gets caught, he might beg for your forgiveness. He might make romantic overtures. He might even miss you for a hot minute when you break up with him, but you should never confuse any of that kind of behavior with actual respect.
If he respected you, he wouldn’t betray you in the first place, and if you had some self-respect, you wouldn’t tolerate being betrayed. It’s time for you to gather up all your inner strength and stop allowing him access to you. Move on, fall out of love, and learn what lessons you can. Pick better on the next go-round.
You’re in too deep right now to see it, but I promise you’ll eventually realize that he wasn’t simultaneously the worst and most amazing person you’ve ever known. He was just some cheating douchebag who got under your skin.
There’s no shame in that, kiddo. It happens to the best of us.
(via dearcoquette)
On men’s rights activists.
I just did some reading about men’s rights activists and I’m a little freaked out. What are your thoughts?
I don’t want to paint all men’s rights activists with the same brush, but most of what gets labeled as men’s rights activism tends to be a very crude form of reactionary gender politics fueled by flagrant misogyny, (metaphorical) impotence and narcissistic rage.Gender dynamics in Western societies have been slowly and steadily shifting towards legitimate equality over the last century or so. After four waves of feminism, there was bound to be some blowback. That’s all this is, really.
It’s toxic stuff, but there’s no need to let it freak you out. In the grand scheme, the dark side of men’s rights activism is little more than a temporary subcultural side effect of broader social progress.
I’m not saying it’s harmless. It’s potentially quite dangerous, but as long as no men in your life have made it a part of their identity, it’s not something you have to fear.
That’s kind of the point, really. These men are pathetic. They aren’t worthy of your fear, and deep down, a lot of them resent the hell out of the fact that they aren’t feared (or loved) by women. It’s not that women don’t want them. It’s that women don’t need them. Women are indifferent to them, and that indifference is worse than rejection or betrayal.
Pay close attention to the rhetoric coming out of the movement and you’ll notice that it’s fundamentally a reaction to indifference. To the ego, there’s nothing worse, and to the male ego, female indifference transmutes into emasculation. That in turn develops into a sort of chronic narcissistic injury where all women are to blame for the loss of their manhood.
It’s twisted, but that’s really what’s at the emotional core of these guys. Their involvement in men’s rights activism is based on a very personal and individual reaction to their own wounded male egos. The politics is just window dressing.
That’s an important distinction to make. Despite what the most vocal men’s rights activists would have you believe, this isn’t a collective movement based on a set of unifying ideals. Not really. Any unifying ideals are an afterthought, mere packaging to wrap around a lot of repressed anger and misogyny.
In that regard, the movement as a whole is not greater than the sum of its individual members. It’s just a bunch of dudes who happen to be resentful of approximately the same thing. They aren’t really victims of some greater societal injustice, so ultimately it’s all bound to fizzle.
That being said, it’s not fair for me to summarily dismiss all men’s rights issues because of the questionable character of certain men’s rights activists. A number of the issues themselves have some merit, especially those in regard to gender neutrality in the practice of divorce, paternity, and child custody law.
Of course, the legitimacy of any particular issue doesn’t legitimize men’s rights activism in general, and it sure as hell doesn’t excuse the movement’s undeniable undercurrent of hatred towards women.
I’m begging you, Coketalk. Please write a book. I’d buy at least five copies.
(via dearcoquette)
THIS IS WHAT GOOD ADVICE LOOKS LIKE
I wish all advice could be coketalk’s advice.
On donating to kony 2012.
Reading your thoughts on Kony 2012 is interesting, so do you think it would be a good idea to donate?
No, I don’t. I took the time to read the organization’s audited financial statement, and I didn’t like what I saw. These guys aren’t hardened in-the-shit organizers. They’re essentially a well-funded production company that makes slick documentaries. Noble intentions aside, they aren’t doing charity so much as they’re playing charity.Then of course, there’s the project founder, Jason Russell. Read this interview that he gave. Yeah, those are his own words. His middle name is Radical. His kid’s middle name is Danger. Yikes. The guy just doesn’t sit right with me. I’d say he was a narcissist with a savior complex, but it’s hard to tell through the fog of trust fund entitlement.
To be clear, I’m not saying that Russell is a bad guy, or that Invisible Children is corrupt in any way. He’s righteous, and it’s definitely a worthy cause. Still, you should know that if you donate your money to Kony 2012, you’re donating to little more than a marketing campaign.
That’s fine. Kony really is one of the most evil fucks on the planet, and he deserves all the attention he gets. If it makes you feel good, spend thirty bucks and wear a bracelet. Whatever.
On the other hand, If you want to donate to charities that actually get shit done, then send your money to Africare or Doctors Without Borders.
On breitbart.
Andrew Breitbart is dead. What’s the most appropriate way to feel when someone you’ve loathed is gone?
It’s okay to loathe his legacy. It’s okay to feel good about his new-media empire suddenly losing most of its symbolic capital, but whatever you do, don’t relish that the man is dead.He was a magnificent asshole, but he was still a human being. The dude was only forty-three. He had a wife and four kids. That situation is incredibly sad.
This may be a campaign about HIV/AIDS awareness, but that’s no excuse. This is blatant misogyny, really sinister stuff that conveys a much more profound message about the female body.
Take another look at it. She’s got a killer smile, but still, you can’t see her eyes. The model is cropped so that she’s essentially headless. What makes her human is gone. What makes her a woman is on display. That’s a very deliberate creative choice.
She is an object to be fucked without a brain or an identity. Worse still, her vagina is a fully indexed destination on a Google map. The visual metaphor is so potent (and porn is so ubiquitous) that this image is more jarring than one in which she shows us her actual pussy.
It’s not about the fact that she’s had sex with Bill Johnson and 19 others. Who gives a fuck? What’s toxic is the idea that they checked into her vagina on Foursquare. It’s saying is that a her private parts aren’t private at all. They’re public. That’s the implicit message in this image, and it’s degrading as hell.
It’s not slut-shaming so much as it’s female-shaming, and it reinforces the age-old cultural narrative that women’s bodies aren’t their own.
(via coketalk)
North By North - Dynamo
Los Angeles slept in its make-up last night, woke up with a Monday morning hangover, and totally forgot that winter was almost over.
This is a great revisit to the winter of 2009, except it’s by Faded Paper Figures. “Dynamo” is the name of the album.
On’n’On - Justice
This sounds like a bored Led Zeppelin cover band trapped inside an 80’s arcade game, and yet it still manages to sound cool. That’s how good Justice is.
Maybe it’s my kink showing, but I’ve got a thing for those ziptie handcuffs that the police have been using throughout the occupation protests.
I’m fascinated by them, not just as objects, but as their potential to be a symbol. They are ‘single use only’ instruments of oppression — cheap, wasteful, and violent — and of course, they come in pink.
In a disposable plastic society, a pair of ziptie handcuffs couldn’t be a more fitting representation of the banality of evil, and if it were up to me, the wide-eyed shape of those loops of nylon would become an appropriated logo for everyone who’s fed up with living in a police state.
