So lately I’ve been seeing a few posts that go like this:
[W]hile everyone, including sex workers, can decline to fuck whomever they do not wish to fuck for any reason whatsoever, that does not magically render those reasons unexaminable or uncritizeable. If you don’t want to fuck people because they’re not white, you’re a gross bigot and you’re not welcome here.
The fact that your no is sacrosanct doesn’t mean it’s not racist. And disgusting.
Or this:
If you have never seen a black woman that you find attractive
You are either racist
Or blind there is no other option
commanderfraya wrote an excellent, comprehensive post about the ways in which abusers couch their manipulation in social justice rhetoric, and I think I’ve found another permutation: “if you really cared about my liberation, you’d fuck me.”
You know, I understand that impulse. I really do. Desexualization sucks. I’ve written about it before, particularly about the ways in which it affects the disabled and the socially awkward. (And those are far from the only groups affected: see also fat people, trans people, certain ethnicities, etc.) It’s awful when an entire media system portrays attraction to you and people like you as something inherently absurd. It’s doubly awful when those around you ape those perspectives in ways they might not even realize are hurtful. I get it. I do.
But the proper battleground for that is society writ large, not individual bedrooms. Support media with sexually empowered trans and poc and disabled characters. Call people out when they deride a whole group of people as unequivocally unattractive. Don’t stand for dehumanization. But shaming and yelling at individuals, telling them they’re all sorts of -ist if their personal attractions don’t line up with your recipe for an idea society, isn’t activism. It isn’t speaking truth to power. It’s inserting yourself, a stranger on the internet, into another person’s desires and demanding they justify them to you.
Attaching passive-aggressive, guilt-tripping conditions to someone’s “no” seems like the opposite of holding it sacrosanct. It might feel more righteous, but “you can say no - just know that you’re a racist” isn’t any better than “you can say no - just know that you’re a frigid bitch”. This holds especially true in social justice circles, where being seen as any variation of -ist or -phobic is something to be avoided scrupulously. If your social standing is contingent on not being racist or transphobic, and not being racist or transphobic is contingent on your sexual availability, how is that anything but coercive?
I can support someone and advocate for their rights without having to find them sexually attractive. Attraction is so weird, squidgy, personal. It shouldn’t be taken as evidence of your beliefs in other contexts. Wanting to be tied up in the bedroom doesn’t mean I think women ought to be subservient, and not finding certain skin colors or features attractive does NOT mean I deny the humanity and equality of people with those attributes.
This isn’t even about me. I personally find men of all races attractive, but that isn’t the point. The point is that demanding sexual availability in the guise of activism is intrusive and - dare I say? - abusive. I have seen a woman reduced to tears, piledriven and harassed, because she admitted to being triggered by men of a certain ethnic group after being assaulted by one such man. If you are so caught up in some abstract notion of equality that you cannot see the wrong in demanding that a rape victim be more sexually available, then I’m not sure I can help you.
I will fight tooth and nail for anyone’s rights and access to public institutions. But my body is not a public institution.
Reblogging again because relevant. I think I explained my point of view on this subject better here than I’m doing now.
I agree with the idea that “the proper battleground for [addressing the problem of desexualization] is society writ large, not individual bedrooms.” And there are people who are super shitty about calling out individual people’s preferences, including the quoted OP.
But, like, the flip side of that is that you have to let people who are trying to address the problem in the context of society writ large actually do that, and not treat that as trying to force themselves into individual people’s bedrooms. And you did seem to be complaining about the concept of the “cotton ceiling” in the other thread, which IS addressing the issue in the context of society (or at least a subculture, not individual bedrooms) writ large.
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#what is the difference between parody and satire?
Parody is a general word for any work that imitates another work or genre with irony or ridicule.
Satire ridicules an idea specifically with the intent of being an argument about the subject.
The original post is both parody and satire, because it’s mocking a certain genre of tumblr post as well as the ideas expressed in that genre of post. Many things are both parody and satire, but not all parodies are satires.
A thing can be a parody but not a satire if it’s treating its subject ironically purely for entertainment value, not making an argument about it. You have the concept of an “affectionate parody”, where the parody is specifically not saying there’s anything wrong with the underlying subject. But you don’t have the concept of an “affectionate satire” because satire is by definition expressing an opposition to its subject.
That toothpaste ad was way more highly-recognizable advertising animations of washing away gray stuff on teeth and way less smiling Spanish woman (though there was, of course, still plenty of excited talking that I could not understand).
When you don’t understand the language, the experience of a toothpaste commercial is just a pretty woman smiling at you and talking about something that she’s deeply interested in but you don’t understand at all.
Is it just me, or has the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Less Wrong Wars been unusually unpleasant?
Where was that?
In truest tumblr fashion, almost entirely conducted in the notes of a single post despite having nothing to do with that post’s original subject matter.
I like everyone I argued with there. Well, I don’t know drethelin. And I don’t like Big Yud. Everyone I actually spoke to, though. Which I guess is just argumate.
I mean, I’m not ruling out the possibility that it actually is just me.
Is it just me, or has the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Less Wrong Wars been unusually unpleasant?
Where was that?
In truest tumblr fashion, almost entirely conducted in the notes of a single post despite having nothing to do with that post’s original subject matter.
Is it just me, or has the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Less Wrong Wars been unusually unpleasant?
so it’s not clear to me whether creating a slave race whose members feel intrinsically motivated to serve humans is immoral. for example, house elves. (note: such a race basically exists IRL and is called “dogs”)
opinions?
It’s icky & unvirtuous of course, but I’ve never seen an actual consequentialist argument against it. I say, go for it.
I’ll take “reductios of consequentialism” for $69,420, Alex!
In addition to being intrinsically motivated to serve humans, house elves (and I suspect also the example from the Draka series and, for that matter, dogs) have poor ability to self-advocate when their interests conflict with those of humans (or at least their specific humans). I don’t think this is a necessary trait for all possible agents that are intrinsically motivated to serve humans (”Yes, I enjoy working for you, but I also provide value to you, and if you’re not going to appreciate me, I can and will find someone else to serve”)*. You can find utilitarian reasons to avoid the second trait without too much difficulty.
*Although I suppose it might not be fair to call a race without the latter trait a “slave race”.
You want good style, you gonna have to do something about those clothes.
You want good clothes, you gonna have to do something about those shoes.
You want good shoes, you gonna have to do something about those feet.
Fuck.
The most obvious unattractive and nice-shoe-wearing-impairing feature of my feet will probably be gone in a few weeks.
Unfortunately, this is because that feature is blisters. Of increasing size.
[Also, if you(general-you, not argumate-specific-you) have warts on your feet, been there done that. A standard treatment includes using q-tip-applied liquid nitrogen to the wart to kill the thing causing it. Non-specialist doctors can do this, although probably people with low risk aversion and access to liquid nitrogen and some kind of guide probably can as well. My physicist parent offered to do this the last time my feet got warts. And then you want to apply salicylic-acid-based stuff, which observant readers will know is the active ingredient of aspirin (not relevant here afaik) and OTC acne washes. This is because it is good at getting rid of skin. If you put the ointment on the wrong part of your skin and leave it there, you will notice.]
The active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, which is similar to salicylic acid chemically (and salicylic acid works similarly as pain reliever). But salicylic acid has the property you mentioned of being “good at getting rid of skin” and can have other unpleasant side effects, so acetylsalicylic acid is generally preferred for internal use.