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Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Others:

Cash, first-class plane tickets, jewelry, watches, cigars, alcohol, women.

It was a trick question: They’re all commodities.

It’s no secret at this point that the reconstruction of Iraq is rife with corruption. So let’s criticize that, but let’s also look at how the corruption plays out and gets reported: women are used as goods to consume and offered as tokens and bribes.

The court papers depict a sordid exercise in greed and corruption that was spread much more widely that previously known. Including the four people already arrested, the papers indicate that a minimum of three other still unnamed co-conspirators also played a role in the scheme. In order to give more than $8 million in contracts and millions more in stolen cash to Mr. Bloom, the papers say, the conspirators accepted bribes, valuable goods and other favors.

“Other favors,” by the way, means stocking a villa full of women and offering them up for sex.

The goods included first-class plane tickets, watches and other jewelry, alcohol and cigars, the court papers say. They add that Mr. Bloom kept a villa in Baghdad where women dispensed “sexual favors” in exchange for official actions in his favor or for refraining from exposing the scheme.

Women “dispensed” these “favors.” Kind of like vending machines, I suppose.

Relatedly, the godbag woman-hating right says, “fuck and die.” Literally. And if you’re one of those who would like to think that misogyny is dead and consensual hetero sex is always equal and nonviolent, check out this comment. Good luck holding down your lunch.


31 thoughts on Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Others:

  1. …because if ad come-ons like this repulsed most men instead of attracting them the ads would have been discontinued instead of being spammed to me daily…

    Fuckin’ A Right, Bubba. Imma buy me one o’ them dick enlargements soons I get my Million Dollars from that Nigerian Princess that’s been emailing me!

    YEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. Those ad lines are simultaneously the most disgusting and hilarious things I have ever read. I mean … “brimming sized knob?” Now that is some turgid prose.

  3. Godbags believe that pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease are the divinely-mandated punishment for sexual pleasure. (If one buys “theology of the body,” all bodily pleasure is sin if it’s not in the context of the church-approved relationship. ) Most of them seem to know how not to put it quite this way, but their insistence that anything that separates sexuality from these consequences will increase sexual activity among teens, even if the face of empirical evidence to the contrary, does tend to evidence their real agenda.

  4. It still amazes me that the godbags are applying a moral hazard theory to vaccinations. If you do the HPV vaccine correctly, you give it before the kid becomes sexually active, and you probably give it as part of an array of other vaccines, most of which your parents don’t bother to tell you what they’re for.

    I got the MMR vaccine as a kid, but it didn’t make me want to go seek out the people who were coming down with measles while I was in college, and really, the only reason I was even dimly conscious of it was that I got one of the last good batches and a whole bunch of other people in school had to be re-vaccinated. I’ve had tetnaus shots, but they didn’t make me want to go play with rusty nails.

    One of the commenters at Twisty’s pointed out that one reason the godbags would be up in arms about this is that HPV is one of the few STIs that can be transmitted even if you use a condom, so if you start removing HPV from the equation, you have fewer weapons in your arsenal of scare tactics to keep kids from fucking with condoms.


  5. Take Your Massive Size Cock and Rip Her Apart

    Break Walls Apart With Your Humungous Knob
    Shatter Her Vagina With Your Monster Prick
    Split Her Slit with your Huge Husky

    Make Her Bleed After You Smack Her Cock-pit

    WTF? Ads actually tell you that causing vaginal tearing is a good thing? Uh, guys? That hurts like shit. My best friend had problems with that recently (dangers of two virgins trying to have sex), and she could barely walk. Maybe these asshats would like some woman to shove a large phallus up their asses and “rip [them] apart.”

    And while it may have been an exaggeration to say “most men,” clearly there are enough motherfuckers who respond to the ad for the companies to keep spamming everyone.

  6. And if you’re one of those who would like to think that misogyny is dead and consensual hetero sex is always equal and nonviolent, check out this comment. Good luck holding down your lunch.

    These kinds of spam always make me laugh more than anything. The only guys who would shell out money for pills, ointments, etc to make their dicks bigger probably have small dicks to begin with. Aside from that, they are stupid to believe some pill is going to make them bigger. Their biggest dream in the world is to have a dick big enough that the woman they are with is going to feel it at all.

    Are the ads distasteful? of course. But when you figure the person responding is a small-dicked-fool buying sugar pills from some spammer over the Internet it is harder not to see the sillyness of it all.

    The spams that really bother me are short stories about women being attacked, r@ped and left bleeding and crying with a link to read more similar stories.

  7. Eric, do you honestly not see the connection between the rape fantasies of leaving a woman bleeding and the spam promising vagina-ripping erections?

  8. …what the hell did you do to get on those spam lists, Eric?

    I’ve never gotten anything like that.

    of course, I’ve also never been emailed from Nigeria, nor recieved adverts for “herbal viagra.” and other such nonsense. maybe I’ve just got a good address spamwise.

  9. what the hell did you do to get on those spam lists, Eric?

    Not a clue. I’ve been using the same email address since 1996 and back in the day we didn’t feel the need to hide email addresses to cut down on spam (which used to mean 1-2 per day). I’m probably on so many lists that I couldn’t even count them. I do a lot of work online so changing addresses is not an option but every morning I delete maybe 100-200 emails and end up with 5-10 non-spam ones.

  10. Eric, do you honestly not see the connection between the rape fantasies of leaving a woman bleeding and the spam promising vagina-ripping erections?

    I knew a guy that had a dick so big that women would would feel intimidated by it (I’m talking huge just from non-erect locker room viewing). I’m not taking his word for it, I know two female friends who laughed at the rumors and then actually slept with him. Both mentioned how they made sure that he took his time, and that they were really ready before they let him start. His dick was big enough that it could have been a weapon but neither woman was “damaged”. He knew what was going on and took his time. I’ll admit that I was somewhat envious. What guy wouldn’t want a dick that caused that kind of reaction? at least in his fantasies (in the real world it could be a pain in the ass).

    There is a difference between a guy wanting a dick that could do damage and actually being such an asshole that he would. The guys buying these pills and creams will never really be in that position. The advertisements use hyperbole to create a fantasy of what they could do. It will never happen.

    Compared to advertisements for sites featuring graphic rape fantasies, I see a huge difference. Men who get off on that, might actually follow through in the real world. Sure men in the first group could as well but if I was a woman I would be a LOT more worried about guys reading rape stories than a guy who dreams of having a dick big enough to “rip” a woman.

  11. I’ve spent 5 years doing information security, and some of that time meant I paid a lot of attention to spam.Sam’s claims are laughable.But don’t believe me. set up your own accoutn with a fake male name and do your own analysis

    E.g, Did she miss all the spam that says “stay hard for her all night long?” “Grow your cock so you can reach the g spot?” “make her cum over and over”

    There’s is sexism in those lines, too, yes indeedy. But it’s a lot more complicated isn’t it.

  12. “Compared to advertisements for sites featuring graphic rape fantasies,…”

    Take Your Massive Size Cock and Rip Her Apart
    Shatter Her Vagina
    Split Her Slit
    Make Her Bleed

    Those. Are. Graphic. Rape. Fantasies.

  13. what the hell did you do to get on those spam lists, Eric?

    Actually I was getting quite a lot of those, too, for no apparent reason, til I switched to Thunderbird and my junk mail gloriously disappeared.

  14. …do you honestly not see the connection between the rape fantasies of leaving a woman bleeding and the spam promising vagina-ripping erections?

    I do, and I did not personally intend to make light of that, my problem was with the idea that the ad doesn’t repulse most men. Paid media ads need to appeal to a large market to be profitable, so some social relevance may be read into them. Spam is free, so the opposite is true, you can bombard the entire internet with the most repulsive shit imaginable, and if even a tiny fraction bite it is sucessful. This ad appeals to a tiny (snicker) percentage of morons, and it is not at all fair to use it to label “most men”.

    IAnd what the hell is a godbag, anyway?^^

  15. There is a difference between a guy wanting a dick that could do damage and actually being such an asshole that he would.

    No, there really isn’t. A guy who is merely envious and wants a large penis, but isn’t a sexist thug, would be wowed by ads that said “Make her come nonstop!” or “Awe her with your mighty tool!”* or other phrases that convey giving a woman pleasure by virtue of your new enorma-penis.

    Ads that promise your dick will actually harm and injure women are not merely appealing to size fantasies. They appeal to men who are angry and hateful toward women, and get off on the idea of rape. Especially rape as punishment: that’ll teach you not to beg for my ordinary-sized dong, you bitch! I don’t see why you feel the need to soft-pedal this.

    *Obviously, I don’t have much of a future as a spam writer.

  16. Three points, Robert:

    1st, the important word in Lauren’s definition is “fundies”, which, as I’m sure you are aware, is short for fundamentalist. She’s not smearing all religious people and I’m pretty sure you know that.

    2nd, it’s very unlikely that either of the people you linked to were fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is a relatively recent phenomenon, arising in the late 19th and early 20th century. Both of the men you point to were 18th and early 19th century. Which brings me to:

    3rd, if all you can come up with in defense of fundamentalism is two men who, while undoubtedly devoutly religious, were almost certainly not fundamentalists, and who died over 160 years ago, that’s pretty weak.

  17. Sharp and Clarkson would consider most modern fundamentalists to be shockingly backslid residents of the pit of iniquity. Fundamentalism as a political category is relatively recent; as a matter of religious fervor, it’s as old as the first statues of the fat lady with the big titties.

  18. That comment gets worse every time I read it:

    His dick was big enough that it could have been a weapon …

    What guy wouldn’t want a dick that caused that kind of reaction?
    [i.e. physical intimidation and fear of injury]

    So, it’s not that hypothetical-guy wants to hurt women when he fucks them. It’s that he wants the power to hurt them, so that not hurting them is a kindness, an act of restraint.

    That’s actually more sickening.

  19. We have no clue what Sharp and Clarkson would consider modern fundamentalists, because they don’t live in modern times.

  20. If only we had the ability to read people’s lives and works, get an idea of their personality and perspectives, and make reasoned conclusions based on our common humanity!

  21. What the hell are you doing up this late? I’m supposed to have these Internets for myself at 4:00 AM CST.

    My actual point there is that we don’t know what they would believe if they lived today. The modern fundamentalist movement was a reaction against modernism/progressivism in the church, which came after the deaths of Sharp and Clarkson.

    So yeah, the Sharp and Clarkson of the 18th and 19th centuries might consider today’s fundamentalists to be backsliders, but if they were alive today and had lived in today’s world, I don’t think there’s much telling what they would think of fundamentalism. Although if I had to guess I would say that they wouldn’t very much care for the modern fundamentalist church’s lack of commitment to social justice. But that’s just me.

  22. Sharp and Clarkson would consider most modern fundamentalists to be shockingly backslid residents of the pit of iniquity. Fundamentalism as a political category is relatively recent; as a matter of religious fervor, it’s as old as the first statues of the fat lady with the big titties.

    The example you’ve come up with is a reductio ad absurdum illustration of randomliberal/OtherRobert’s problem with your use of Sharp and Clarkson as examples of fundies. By your logic, I could trace Falwell and Robertson back to the Baal Shem Tov–heck, I could bring up Muhammad and make all kinds of interesting arguments. Fundamentalism in broad terms is characterized mainly by devotion or reactionary devotion; fundamentalism in its modern manifestation is more specific in its history and its beliefs.

  23. *Obviously, I don’t have much of a future as a spam writer.

    I dunno, I thought it was pretty good.

    His dick was big enough that it could have been a weapon …

    “Shoot down low-flying airplanes with your Mighty Man-Meat!”

  24. The spam lines Sam is pointing to are the result of a rash of spam that people thought was remarkable enough to post on in at their blogs and forums.

    There are enormous methodological problems with making conclusions about people on the basis of spam mail subject lines, which I explain, Spam me harder, baby.

    Spammers use outrageous subject lines to get your attention. Why? Because if you use HTML email, just opening the email is valuable to them. They learn the address is “live”. That makes your address more valuable. Some of them cull from their initial “dictionary attack” of spam those addresses that are live and resell them for more money to someone who wants a list of “live” emal addresses (The sucker list as I used to call it in my training seminars.)

  25. The example you’ve come up with is a reductio ad absurdum illustration of randomliberal/OtherRobert’s problem…

    Comments like that remind me that I really need to take a class in logic before I graduate…

  26. Which Of These Things Is Not Like The Others:

    Cash, first-class plane tickets, jewelry, watches, cigars, alcohol, women. >

    That’s easy! Men don’t really like women.
    [/cheap feminist joke]

  27. B/L, those headlines are disturbing. I hear what you’re saying about the difficulty in concluding anything from the headlines, which are obviously designed to shock. But even if we don’t conclude anything about anyone but the senders from these quotes, they are a part of the sexual culture; and they’re a woman-hating, patriarchal part. Having this kind of stuff floating over the transom, it seems to me, normalizes rape and brutality.

  28. Thomas if you will read my post on the topic, you’ll see why we can hardly conclude _anything_ at all about even the spammers. You have to understand how spammers work.

    There’s lots of ways to show sexism and misogyny. Cherry picking through spam and using stuff that was circulated in 2003 and claiming you just got it yesterday just seems silly.

    I also think it’s important to be accurate about just how big a portion of this kind of spam is out there. But maybe I just like living in a reality-based community.

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