A followup to entitlement

I wrote the last post in a bit of a white heat, mostly driven by some rage, disgust and sadness at the state of the world. Last post was specifically about the Elliot Roger situation, but now I want to expand it a little bit.

When I said that this was the first time there was a direct link between MRA/PUA/RedPill and a woman killer, I didn't mean that it was the first time that someone with those philosophies ever harmed a woman. I meant that it was the first time that there was such an overwhelming link between the two, and a direct and obvious statement from the suspect as to his reasoning. His reasoning, if you spent even a tiny amount of time reading articles, was basically rage and revenge that he was a single virgin at 22, and that hot blonde women would ever dare to date mexicans (not only was he a raging misogynist, he was also a racist. Fun times).

Every day, women are hurt, raped, or murdered because of this kind of thought process. Every day. Just last week, one was stabbed because she said "no" to an offer to go to prom. A few years ago, a Muslim father murdered several female members of his family to keep their (read; the honour of his penis having and other penis havers in the family) intact. Any quick and dirty googling on news sites will find a bunch of stories like this. The average is 3 women per day killed by their partners in the US.

What this tells me is that there is a serious problem conserning women in the general culture of the west. Anyone who is a woman, or has spent time listening to them, can attest to this. Elliot Roger was not an outlier, or even rare, in any way except the scale of what he did. Someone I know described his actions as "terrorism aimed at women", and it is as good a description as any. But, he still isn't extraordinary in that.

The entire modern western society could be accused of commiting terrorism against women, after all. I truly did wish I was exagerating. But when an entire half of the population is afraid of crossing paths late at night with the other half, for fear of what might happen, there is a terrorism problem. When the females of the species have to find ways of waffling and letting down nicely, instead of outright saying no, because of the fear of what might happen to them, there is a terrorism problem. When there are multiple industries that make billions of dollars a year entirely on the fear that women may not look like the perfect contructs that these very same industries tell women they are obligated to look like, there is a terrorism problem.

Boys are practically brought up with the idea that they are owed something from girls. It is ingrained in our society and culture in movies, books, television, games and advertising. How many times has the woman been the prize for the man? Her own needs and wants are secondary, or just turn out to be "I guess I did love him I just needed to realise that I am worthless without his masculinity". And, while you may say "well that's just fiction it doesn't *mean* anything", you'd be dead fucking wrong. Because the industries that create this material don't just act like this towards the fictional women they sell, but towards the very *real* women that work in them.

Then you have the fanbases of these industries. When they aren't attempting (especially in the video-games and sci-fi/fantasy genres) to police the presence of women, they're acting like the perfect sexists towards the ones who are working on their favourite things. The amount of death and rape threats that abound when a woman even *hints* that some of these problems exist is mindblowing, only to be surpassed by the amount of rape and death threats when a woman *dares* to make a change to their holy grails (like, for example, changing the stats on a sniper rifle in an online shooter).

And so, these MRA/PUA/RP people and their obscene philosophy are not the cause. They are merely a simptom of a much larger, much more pervasive problem in our culture. That of women being secondary and objectified. But this is not the story the media will tell. They're just going to go off once more about a lone madman who did something crazy, there's nothing we can do about that oh well.

This man may have been mentally troubled, but that's not what caused him to murder a bunch of innocents. That's not what caused him to return to the sites of what he felt like was his brutal humiliation at being forced to watch happy couples so he could gun them down. He felt he was entitled to receiving sex from a hot woman. This didn't happen, so he decided to get revenge on them for not giving him what he was owed. And this attitude is pervasive and far reaching in all parts of our culture. But lets not talk about that. Instead, lets talk about how Selena Gomez is going to be a single mom, shocking, that whore.

And don't even get me started on the gun culture aspect. How many people would have died if Roger had not been able to get firearms as easily and readily as he did. Legally purchased firearms in his name, with dozens of fully loaded spare magazines to continue his murder spree. But that's not important either. Because freedom.

NOTE: I am fully aware that men are also hurt and affected by the gender-binary sexist culture we live in. But that's not what this post is about. Don't come in here and whine about teh menz. My patience for that is growing thin from all of the similar comments I've seen about this tragedy. Get over yourself, men, and get some idea of what it is you're actually talking about first.

the entitlement to women and the sex they give

There's been another mass shooting in the United States today. That, in of itself, isn't so shocking anymore. Which, really, is kind of a disturbing and disgusting state of affairs to be in. "Oh, another seven human beings had their lives snuffed out by an angry person using legally purchased firearms that were obtained easier than if he was trying to get sex toys".

But this one is special, because it directly links the purported shooter with a certain heinous philosophy which is gaining a fair bit of ground online in recent years. They have many congregations on the internet, including several subreddits on Reddit. They've been termed Love Shy, MRA's, Red Pillers, and various other terms. Their uniform generally comes with a fedora (and no accompanying suit. my biggest pet peeve about these fuckers is that they've ruined classy fashion for everyone, for ever) and an armour of woman-loathing self aggrandizement.

Seven people are dead today because one man did not receive the sexual gratification he felt was his due. Seven people have died because there is an entire movement dedicated to dehumanizing woman as merely pleasure-bags for men, and demonising them if they attempt to be more than that. Seven people are dead because a man decided that the reason he wasn't in a relationship was because all women are whores who won't sleep with him.

This is not a conversation we can shy away from. There is a dedicated core of people who will view the acts of this man not as something heinous, but merely the tragic downfall of a poor Nice Guy driven to the brink by the evil whores and their douchebags. I seriously don't even want to try and go see their congregation sites to confirm or deny, since the MRA/RedPill stuff makes me physically ill. But there have already been Mansplanations about how "NOT ALL MEN" on articles about this, so it bodes ill.

there needs to be a conversation about the still prevalent and overarching sexism in todays society. About the rape culture that exists. And about this toxic philosophy that refuses to treat women as human beings with agency, but as accessories for Nice Guys to parade around in as trophies to their niceness, and as proof that they have had sex.

This may be the first mass-killing with a link to this thought process, but I doubt it will be the last.

addendum to previous post

I brainfarted and entirely forgot about something.

There is a dream sequence in the novel, where Lyssa is remembering a party her uncle had when she was leaving home. It turns into a nightmare that ties into the events happening in the plot, but is otherwise not that important except to explore a bit more of Lyssa's mental state at the time.

Her uncle has two people working for him, one a man the other a woman. I described them wearing their fineries for this party, and the guy was wearing a fancy baldrick and a sword while the woman had her finest jewels out of the occasion. It seemed fitting, after all. Women were jewels all the time!

But then, thinking about it, I realised that it wasn't what I was going for. The man had a sword, which implied he was a warrior and a strong person, able to defend himself and fight, and the woman was on display with shinies, which implied she couldn't. As I was writing it, I didn't think twice. It was just... a thing. Only in retrospect did I see what I was unconciously doing in the subtext (and actual text).

An hour or so later, after re-reading and digesting, I went back and re-wrote it, adding jewels to the mans baldrick and sword, and changing the womans jewels for a fine set of daggers. A small change, some may say, but I think it was important. Even just a few years ago, I wouldn't even have considered that what I did was problematic. This, if nothing else, shows me how I've changed in my views of how women are represented and how the world treats them, and I took a concious choice to change that and give her the same kind of place and unspoken agency of strength and ability as I did the male character. It is, verily, little things like this which are important, I feel.

If I wanted to be a smart-ass, I'dve have shifted the sword to the woman and the jewels to the man but that's not really what I wanted to do. I wanted to show that, even in minor roles of little to no importance, a womans abilities are the same as a mans. It may be clumsy and silly, but I thought it important enough to include.

Women in fantasy

I am, on occasion, plunking away at a fantasy novel. The main character (who was originally one of three, but I've since edited my notes) is a woman. I didn't really go "I WILL MAKE A FEMALE CHARACTER THE FOCUS BECAUSE FEMINISM", but just organically decided "I'd like to try writing a female character in a fantasy setting". A lot of it is because I've explored a lot of fantasy, in roleplay and novel form, but never really saw many women at all.

A part of me did go "shit am I going to be put on the rack for trying to push this as if it was an agenda" (which, considering that male fantasy fans seem to get spontaneous orgasms whenever they engage in sexist behaviour against female authors and characters, is not really what you'd call a slim chance), then decided "fuck it, it doesn't matter. This character is forming in my mind, her adventures are growing, and I want to write this. Not because she's a woman, but because she is the main character in the story I want to write. And if anyone decides to bitch me out about it, I will devour their faces".

As a (self identified and generally cis) male, I don't have that big of an idea of what a woman goes through in life, or how their thoughts go. Thankfully, as a generally smart person who is a strong feminist, I tend to imagine that women are basically the same as men in most ways (some physiological differences aside). And, since it's a fantasy world I've made up, I can neatly avoid a lot of the social constructs that generally plague women in our world (and in many fantasy universes that are based off of reality, like G.R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire, which keeps a lot of the European christian based sexism while in a polytheistic world).

There is still a lot of things I have to struggle with when trying to write her (Lyssa is her name, so I'll just use that whenever I need to refer to her). I distinctly remember one specific point, near the beginning of the story, where Lyssa was faced with escapping from a group of thugs sent after her for nefarious purposes. My original concept was to have the underlying threat of rape happening at one point, where she was cornered and near caught. At the time, it felt appropriate, cause after all these are thugs right? and that's what they do with women they're cornering, right?

Then I paused and considered the thought process that brought me to this idea. In a society where there isn't a clear Patriarchal world order following a regressive and mysogynistic form of religion and order, *would* rape be used like this? I honestly don't know. Our culture has been run from that point of view for so long, and any other social structure has been destroyed, dismantled, erased and stricken from history so that there isn't much at all to go on.

In a world with actual, functioning and intersceding Gods, of which half are female or ambiguous gender, would our understanding of sexual violence exist? In a world that was, originally, based off of a D&D campaign I wanted to run where either (and all, though I've rarely seen, run or played in a game with somebody playing a *trans or other gender) can be exactly as capable and society aknowledges it, would the male domination of power still be the same, and engender the same sort of perils for women?

The short answer is "probably not". The long answer is... Complicated. At the end of the day, I just took that entire idea out of the story because I didn't think it was relevant, it would add in a horrible little bit of possibly triggering text for people just wanting to read a silly little escapist fantasy story, and honestly the scope of the story (and my skills as a storyteller) just aren't up to addressing those kinds of questions. And, instead of trying to address it and doing it poorly and just making a mess, and fucking up the *actual* themes I want to address, I'm just going to not go into it. It's easier for me, easier for anyone who would want to read it, and just honestly better off in general.

There was another aspect that I changed heavily, as well. Originally, Lyssa had a love interest. He was a poor, simple son of an apothecary. Simple, kind, caring, etc etc etc and just about every generic "nice guy" attribute my fifteen year old (at the time I was drafting) self could put into a character. She was to fall in love with him, and have him dramatically taken away and break her heart and fuel her anger and magic to almost kill her while she took revenge for his death.

I have since grown up and calmly decided that this idea was stupid. It was fueled by basically every regressive and fairly sexist stereotype I had growing up, and was a bit of a gender-swap wish fulfillment fantasy. I got rid of the idea so entirely that Lyssa, in fact, has no love interest at *all* in the book!

As of right now, the only actual people *with* a love interest are those with whom that love interest is a part of the setting and plot of the work. Outside of them, everyone else is too fucking busy being big damn fantasy adventurers to bother with finding twue wuv. And, I honestly think it'll work out better this way.





I'm still a bit worried at times, though. Then I pause and consider the state of women in the world, and in fiction, and I tell myself "fuck it". It may be seen as me pushing an agenda, it may be seen as me being some sort of gelded-feminist-lapdog, but I'm going to do it anyway. Because, in the end, the fact that this kind of thing is so rare, and gives me such pause, is fucking attrocious. And if my one silly little book can help to make the world of fantasy fiction (or fiction in general) characters slightly less male-dominated, then it's a win.

On Crossdressing and Feminization (part 2 of ?)

I read a recent blog post on male submission, and it made me think about some of my kinks again. Specifically, this one talks about the repeated tropes in FemDom/MaleSub that you find online. You can find Part 1 of my own personal series here.

On the topic of sissy/sissyfication; there was a time when my online handle involved the word "Sissy" in front of the Tashi. It felt like the "proper" thing to have there, considering who and what Tashi represented for me. As time went on, and I started to think it through for myself and grow in my personal exploration and grasping of my kinked nature, the label became less and less appealing to me. For one thing, appending the label to myself made it so that's *all* that people saw and reacted to, which ended a few opportunities before they could even begin. For another, the term itself was just... Distastful to me after a while. I can't pin exactly what it is about it that I found drew me off, but it just didn't feel like it captured what I wanted to feel, and express, with myself and my sexuality.

A lot of that probably has to do with how sissy/feminization is presented in general. It is difficult to find examples in story, or pictures, or video, where it is found to be something sexy. It's generally something treated with disdain, or disgust, or outright pity from the Domme. When those are the emotions being triggered, it doesn't feel sexy at all. It feels like what I enjoy, and what makes me feel sexy and desirable, is wrong and shameful.

There is also the intensely sexist attitudes prevelent in all of the media involved in it. I honestly cannot count how many times I've seen or read the retread of the following;
"I am the woman, I make all the rules because I'm better than you. So, as the powerful woman, I find you pathetic and sad therefore you will be a woman because you can't be a man. And now, I will go feel like a real woman by submitting and being fucked by a powerful man with a big cock. And you will also do it, but it's wrong and shameful for you."

The fact that the big strong powerful man often tends to be black (with a stereotypical "black name") adds an extra layer of racism on top of the problem. Tasteful!

So I'm left looking for something that is never (or, rather, *very* rarely) represented in the sexy media I consume to get off (yes I jack off get over it), which makes it hard for me to get in a good mindspace for it a lot of the time. Further, it gets hard to find someone to explore and do this kind of thing with outside of porn, since their expectations and reactions often seem to be modeled after the same kinds of media and "helpful" sites. It is frustrating on every level.

On being creepy

Miss Pearl (a very good friend of mine) just posted something about an online dating horror story she had.
Granted, "Horror story" is a bit of a strong word here, but it's what she used and I am nothing if not open to being told what to call things.

This is of interest to me for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being I personally know everyone who was involved in the whole thing. Eyeballs, as she calls the gent, is someone I consider to be generally unpleasant to be around as a guy who is into the same things he's into, and I've seen evidence of him being... Well, lets generously call it "socially awkward" (and not generously call it fuckin' creephatish) around the female of my geek (and non-geek) species.

To quote;

"Eyeballs has an actual name, but was made most distinct by the fact that he was trying to bore a hole through me with the aforementioned gaze capacity all night. I did not particularly find him attractive, through no fault of his other than the staring and lack of talking. Wistful leering is not my thing."

This, in general, is how he did things. He doesn't talk much, he just stares and leers. Now, I can understand why he did this. Pearl is a rather attrative woman, and has a pretty striking personality even when she's not flailing around on a dance floor. Heck, she is a person who has packaged her boobs up to be more visible and attractive as a plot for the Vampire LARP she plays in (and I run). While she does have limits for things, she is often comfortable enough in her own skin to, at the very least, not mind being eye-candy.

So what did Eyeballs do wrong? Well, for one thing, the *only* thing he did was leer. He never did walk up to Pearl and actually try to open up a conversation. Considering who it was, it may very well not have changed anything, but it certainly would not have hurt. It would have demonstrated, at the least, that he considered Pearl a person to be talked with, and not just an object to lust after from a distance.

Speaking from experience, I can understand being shy and uncertain, and having low self-esteme. I've myself longingly looked at attractive women and not quite had the courage to step up and talk to them. Luckily, I got better at it. However, I also never just... Laser-leered at them constantly.

How can you avoid being like Eyeballs?

It's pretty simple. I'm not even asking you to stop staring at sexy women! (though there is obviously a line you shouldn't cross when you do). It all comes down to attitudes. If you stare at a woman like an object, it comes through in how you do it. Women are, as a rule, fairly keyed to this kind of thing. They unfortunately have to be, considering SCHRÖDINGER’S RAPIST (you should all read that if you never have), and giving that kind of leering stare tends to be an alarm bell.

The next step is obviously just going to talk to them. Even if you're awkward and nerdy and bumbling. Just say something like "Hi, I think you're pretty and I was wondering if you would like to talk a bit". Or, in Eyeballs case, "Hey, I think you're pretty, how'd you meet [mutual friends A and B]".

i lost where i was going with this goddamnit


but, in short; staring, leering and not approaching for even a polite "hello" is generally a good bet for being labeled as a creeper. So, like, don't do it.

okay I'm calm now

No I'm fucking not.

DC, you should be fucking ashamed of your fucking selves. Where in the wide world of fucking sports was this every considered a good fucking idea. This is disgusting bullshit that once more plays into your pandering and overt sexualisation of every fucking thing having to do with a fucking female goddamn shitcocking character.

And the comments? The fucking *comments* on that page, where a bunch of male nerds circlejerk themselves about how "well it's just a bunch of gag strips god you feminists are uppidy" and "i don't see the problem with this" and "why is this a problem it's not like it's an actual story containing these things" well fuck you guys.

Fuck you guys hard.

1) suicide jokes are as touchy as rape jokes. tasteful is not the norm.
2) DC has a long storied fucking history of marginalising, sexually exploiting and fridging their female characters ("fridging" refers to the trope called "Women in a refridgerator", which was coined *from* a DC comic where the Green Lantern comes home and finds his girlfriend dead and stuffed in his fridge. So, yeah)
3) Defending it makes you look like brainless jackoff morons without the mental or emotional capacity to understand social interactions
4) this is coming straight on the fucking heels of DC going "Well we have a major lesbian character and she totally proposed to her girlfriend in the comic but WE FORBID YOU TO GET THEM MARRIED OR SHOW THE MARRIAGE WE DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYONE EXCEPT GUYS MARRYING CHICKS"

fuck this whole shit.

Draw Harley naked about to commit suicide for a contest!

What the gibberfuck is wrong with you DC?!

I don't even
what is this
who thought this was
why would anyone

fuck everything

On another note

Stop going to PAX and giving these assholes money.


I was a fan of Penny-Arcade back in the day, and I thought they were awesome and did "Gamers Right" for various reasons. Then... Then Dickwolves happened, and more and more sexist bullshit came out of the owners and runners of it.

Don't support it.
Don't give them money.
Just... Stop enabling and encouraging it, even indirectly. It hurts people, it hurts gamers, and sends horrible messages that this kind of behaviour is acceptable and encouraged.

Feminism and Submission

In my online dealings with the kink community (mostly through Fetlife), I have discovered a recurring question asked by women; "Can I still be a feminist and a submissive?" You may have encountered this question yourself, or the non-kink equivallent of "I guess I can't be a feminist because I want to be a homemaker."

For the vast majority of people, this seems to be an obvious and clear contradiction. Feminism, after all, is about getting women out of the kitchen, house, or submissive status in relationships. Wanting to go back into the chains Feminism has been fighting to break seems like it would be regressive and undo all of that hard work that's been in play since the Suffragettes, right?

Well, no. Not at all.

Feminism is there to break the chains, and social framework, which obliges women to remain in the house, or be submissive. The operative word being oblige. The movement is there to open up the options, and to show women (and, indirectly (though this isn't the right topic to go into details for it) men) that they can go, and be, and do what it is they wish. That includes, by definition, being a submissive.

The idea that Feminism would frown on that kind of choice is not a reflection of the movement itself, but of how it is perceived by society at large. For decades now, there has been a cultural meme of straw feminists and how they just want to turn the tables on men; become the ones in power and put all of men down into the gutter. This idea is not new; it was around during the Civil Rights movement, where the fear was that the end goal was to put all white people into the chains of slavery as revenge. It is no more true now than it was then.

What Feminism wishes is to demonstrate women's agency in how to live their life in the way they chose. If that choice is to be a submissive, the most it will ask is to examine why you wish to be a submissive and to be sure that it is your choice, and not one imposed on you by society. If it is, then the message is to go hogwild, embrace it, and live your chosen life to the fullest. There is always the option of changing your mind after you've lived the choice, after all.

It is your body, your life, and your choice.