Bitter Wench is my all time fave, I just love the expression on her face.
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Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Bitter Wench is my all time fave, I just love the expression on her face.
After this post, there was interest in the lavender pulp covers, so I’ll do three at a time until done. They aren’t very large, and I’m not going to enlarge them because they look awful if you do.
Mariano Di Vaio, zimbio.com. So…men can’t be sexy in work clothes? Really?
Carl Gallups, christian pastor and Trumphole had a little chat session with Mike Shoesmith, who wrote a blog post about the sexual assault cases coming to light in Hollywood recently. It seems Mr. Shoesmith is yet another christian mouthpiece. There’s no end of them. Well, this might take a while, so let’s get started:
If a woman wears sexually suggestive clothing around a man is that not also sexual assault? Men are visually stimulated and unwanted stimulation should meet the basic definition of assault. I am not condoning bad behavior by men but women need to understand that by walking around in their little sister’s skirt they are guilty of indecent visual assault on a man’s imagination which does cause mental anguish and torment especially on men who really are trying to live in harmony and respect toward women; something made more difficult when every ripple and curve are exposed to the men around you. Something to think about.
I have some very bad news for you, Mr. Shoesmith – women are also visually stimulated. Most people are, you know. How women dress varies greatly, from one individual to the next, and of course, the context matters. If you suffer terribly from being overstimulated, then pursuing a job as a Hollywood event planner or photographer might not be the job for you. For the most part, people tend to dress appropriately for their particular job. As for women simply going about their business, perhaps you should nudge your tongue back in your mouth, and point your eyeballs somewhere else. Look at the men for a change. Look at cars in the street. Look in storefront windows. Lots of options. Become a major shoe fan, and look at everyone’s feet. This idea that men simply have little to no control is an incredibly toxic lie, which causes a great deal of damage. It should not be enabled in any way. You’re the type of person who would condemn the wearing of burkas, but the way you want women to dress isn’t all that far off. Personally, I think men’s suits are a fantastic look on women, so let’s have a look at women being completely non-sexy, given that they are completely covered up:
Ms. Marlene Dietrich. Looks right sexy to me!
Popsugar.com. Verrrry sexy.
Ralph Lauren. Oooh, hot! I want all three. Quick, someone throw a mass amount of money at me!
The point being, Mr. Shoesmith, it doesn’t fucking matter what women wear, men will find a way to get all unglued about it. What you really want is for women to be dressed as baggy, ugly, and frumpy as possible; just short of the full burka. As for mental torment and anguish, you should have learned a very long time ago that your boner, or lack of one, is your problem alone. You sound like an adolescent trying to convince someone blue balls is real thing, and they’ll just drop off if you don’t let them…
If all women wore suits like the above, you’d complain about all the time you spent being chemically assaulted and mentally stripping them of those clothes.
“When a man sees a naked or partially dressed woman, a chemical reaction happens in his brain,” he continued. “Neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin are released, giving him an involuntary surge of pleasure. Notice the word ‘involuntary’ … Men are in a state of constant sexual assault by women who either don’t understand the severity of what they are doing, because it’s cute and they like the attention, or worse, they do know the feelings it stirs and like the control they have over men.”
So, this involuntary surge of pleasure, it doesn’t happen to people of other genders? Just you manly men. Right. Amazingly enough, millions of people manage to control themselves every single day, regardless of all the lovely surges of pleasure walking around. Most people just enjoy the surge of pleasure and get on with their day. Now, I have more bad news – most people dress to please themselves. It’s a little much to demand that everyone think about your tender sensitivities, especially when most people don’t have the slightest idea of who you are, or where you are located in the world. It’s a big place, so deal with it.
Gallups agreed, saying that if a man were to parade around the workplace “in a very sexually suggestive outfit,” women would immediately file sexual harassment claims. He demanded to know, therefore, “why wouldn’t it be sexual assault” when a woman does it.
Let’s define very sexually suggestive outfit first. When it comes to women, a short skirt qualifies as very sexually suggestive. Any hint of breasts, very sexually suggestive. Now, if a man shows up at the office in g-string, yeah, that’s not appropriate. However…
Nitrolicious.com
if I worked in an office, and a colleague dressed like that ^ I would get a serious surge of pleasure. And be impressed. There isn’t anything remotely inappropriate about that outfit, but it’s damn sexy. I would love to see men in kilts all over the place. See, that’s the thing – sexy isn’t defined solely by clothing. There are many factors, and even more factors when it comes to attractiveness. You’re acting as though eye candy is the worst thing ever in the world. It isn’t, and most of us grown ups are adult enough to easily cope with it.
“We are just discussing what should be obvious,” Gallups insisted. “The science supports us in it.”
No, the “science” does not fucking support you! Not in any way. You’re both fucking idiots who don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re attempting to talk about.
“Men are responsible for fighting off this chemical sexual assault in their brains,” Shoesmith agreed. “Men are responsible for fighting that off every day.”
Oooh, chemical assault! I have more news for you – we all share the same damn chemicals, gender doesn’t have anything to do with it. We all have to deal with visual and olfactory stimulation every day. This would be in the water is wet category.
“Yes they are, absolutely,” Gallups responded. “And women need to help the men.”
No, we do not need to help you. Not in any fashion. You need to help yourselves. This is yet more moronic moaning brought to you by christian idiocy. Everyone needs to be so terribly helpless, especially men, even though you’re styled as the leaders and all, because you just can’t manage to think straight if you realize that women have actual bodies. Fuck that noise. With bells on.
Buffalo State Hospital, New York. Image courtesy of Christopher Payne via NPR.
Once again, we visit Jim Bakker, who just doesn’t understand. He’s not alone in that one. First though, all of us on the anti-regime side of life are…insane. Yep.
“Unsaved people are going insane,” he said. “They can’t take it. They can’t believe that a person was elected to the presidency that honored God, that wants to keep the cross on top of your church and Jesus in your heart.”
Oh ffs. The Tiny Tyrant doesn’t give a shit about that psychogod of yours, and you all know it, too. You turned a blind eye to what an amazingly immoral, shitty person he is, because he promised you all the shiny things you want so much, if only you’d elect his arse. If you want some serious reading on this subject, see George Barna. It won’t drive you insane, but it will most likely make you headdesk more than a few times. And scare you.
Bakker said that while Trump “wants to stop killing the babies,” his opponents are fighting to keep abortion legal despite the fact that “this is one of the main reasons … judgment finally came to America.”
Uh huh. That god of yours certainly is slow. D’ya suppose things might have gone faster if it did something, oh, godlike, and took care of the problem itself? Interesting how that never happens. The only people bringing judgment to America are you fanatical assholes, and your thirst for power has led us to fascism. Congrats and all that.
“Everybody is for abortion that is still alive,” Bakker said, before quietly admitting, “I don’t know what that means.”
Welcome to the club, Jim. I don’t know what the fuck that means, either. Perhaps you should be quiet a spell. Give all us Bakker mockers a break for a bit, yeah?
I had no idea my elbows were explicitly girly! Apparently they are, according to I Don’t Have To Choose, a child’s book by Ellie Klipp, and funded by MassResistance, an LGBTQ hate machine. It’s a pity the book goes all goddidit, because in other respects, it’s quite enlightened:
The picture book features two cheerful characters, a boy named Alex (short for Alexander) and a girl named Alex (short for Alexis). Much of the book delivers positive messages about the fact that boys and girls can love doing the same things, like stomping in mud and climbing trees. Alex and Alex are both good at math. They both knit.
Where Alex and Alex split is playing dress up, which they do in strictly binary fashion, then the book goes off the rails with ‘god’ and genetics. Well, sort of genetics. You can read all about this at RWW.
MassResistance also had their hate face forward at the Values Voter Summit, handing out their 600 page tome of hate, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality: What the Medical and Psychological Research Reveals in swag bags. It’s stuffed full of photos and illustrations of queer folk, and queer sex. Now, after looking at some of the excerpts from the book, they openly state they had to trawl all kinds of filthy, deviant websites to find out just what it is that queer people do behind closed doors, and I have to wonder if they simply stole all the images populating their book. I rather doubt they were ethical enough to ask permission. I sure as hell wouldn’t want any of my work to end up in such a nasty piece of work. I’ll give this one a month or two before I expect to see copies popping up in thrift stores.
You can read all about this ‘medical book’ here.
Dana Loesch, spokesmouth for the NRA, was at the Values Voter Summit, declaring the death of feminism. Just in case people didn’t quite get that, she reiterated.
“We are in a post-feminist era,” she said. “Feminism is dead. It is dead as a doornail*, it is dead. Feminism is dead.”
Saying that “third-wave feminism has betrayed” women, men, children and “our culture,” Loesch claimed, “Third-wave feminism exists to subjugate men, period. They have replaced the patriarchy with the matriarchy, and they are not a good master.”
:Looks around: Nope, this is not the republic of New Amazonia.
“Third-wave feminism says it empowers women—empowers them by convincing women to commit genocide against the female sex in utero,” she said.
Umm, no. You have that ever so backwards, Ms. Loesch. The power is the ability to make our own medical decisions and having full autonomy. Y’know, like men get to do already.
She added that “men are wonderful and they are unappreciated, and you know, you can mansplain all you want to because we womansplain enough.”
Well, if being mansplained is your thing, Ms. Loesch, have at it, but don’t be making that a blanket to cover all. As you think women talk too much, perhaps you shouldn’t be taking up space where a proper person could be talking, y’know, a man.
*This made me curious about the origins of said phrase, and the answer is interesting, having to do with clinching.
Also at the Values Voter Summit was Todd Starnes, who opined over the ‘war on masculinity’:
Starnes said that Mark Hancock, who runs the Christianity based scouting organization Trail Life USA, told him that the Boy Scouts’ decision was “nothing less than a war on boys.” Starnes elaborated on Hancock’s remarks to him, claiming that “the mainstream media” spread the notion of “toxic masculinity.”
“It’s not just a war on boys. It’s a war on men. And there are those in this country that want to feminize men. They want to criminalize masculinity,” Starnes said.
I guess Mr. Starnes didn’t get the message that feminism is dead.
courtesy of Netflix.
With all due respect to Andrew (John Mulaney), Nick (Nick Kroll), and Jessi (Jessi Klein) the Hormone Monsters are the main characters of “Big Mouth.” Think about it: This is their story. The new Netflix comedy explores how Maurice (Kroll) and Connie (Maya Rudolph) manipulate the minds and torture the bodies of pubescent junior high children. It’s a horror show — a funny horror show, but a horror show nonetheless — and they’re the big scary monsters freaking everybody out. Sure, they’re figments of Andrew and Jessi’s imaginations, but what’s a story of puberty without monstrous hormones?
Oh puberty, a time of nightmares, and they all come to life in the Netflix series Big Mouth. In a time when kids are hard pressed to obtain a good sex education, this might end up sex ed 101.
You can read all about it at IndieWire, but beware, spoilers all over the place, and NSFW stuff, too. The trailer is below the fold, because this probably qualifies as NSFW.
A pregnancy, at six weeks and two days. No perfect little mini-infant anywhere.
Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas appeared on Breitbart to discuss recent efforts to restrict abortion rights and to advocate for the anti-choice “heartbeat bill,” which according to its creator, Janet Porter, is designed to eventually outlaw abortions “before the mother even knows she’s pregnant.”
[…]
After updating Marlow on the House’s passage of the bill, Gohmert advocated for Porter’s “heartbeat bill,” which would criminalize abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.
“Even though it doesn’t have an exception for rape or incest, the thing is you’ve got about six weeks and you know when you’re pregnant within six weeks,” Gohmert said, “so even for them, there’s a way out.”
No, no there isn’t. What with the constant erosion of medical rights, there’s no window there. Once travel time is calculated, then the mandatory wait times, then the mandatory test times, and so on, no. Then there’s always the issue of whether or not a pregnant person has the money to secure a timely termination. A lot of women don’t know they are pregnant at six weeks. When I was pregnant, I certainly had reason to suspect that condition, and was tested. My test came up negative, twice. By the time I had a test come up positive, I was smack on eight weeks, and had a termination scheduled inside of two days later. That was as quick as possible, and with the new draconian age, it wouldn’t be fast enough.
Life is seldom simple, and there are so many bars to obtaining a termination now that a pregnant person can count themselves lucky if they make a termination by eight weeks or earlier.
Later in the interview, Gohmert compared abortion to child sacrifice.
“I remember reading in the Bible, early on, about sacrificing kids for idols,” Gohmert recalled. “And I thought, ‘Gosh, thank goodness we live in a day where that never happens,’ that people would never be that callous.”
Right. You christian assholes are more than callous enough to see women stripped of rights, with no bodily autonomy whatsoever. You don’t want them to be able to access birth control. You don’t care about pregnant people at all, you concern yourself solely with the power to force birth. You don’t care about their mental and emotional health. You’re callous enough to not give one teensy shit about actual children. You don’t care if they are neglected. You don’t care if they starve. You don’t care if they are beaten. You don’t care if they are raped. You don’t care if they end up on the street. You don’t care if they are killed. You certainly don’t care about pregnant people dying, that’s just fine with you, after all, sluts should be punished, shouldn’t they? :spits:
“And then you realize, ‘Wait, that’s what we’re doing with abortions.’ We’re sacrificing kids for the idol of self-centeredness,” Gohmert said.
It’s the opposite of self-centeredness, you vile doucheweasel. People who obtain a termination have their reasons, which are none of your business, but you can consider such decisions to be for the best, in all regards.
Disclaimer: I have not watched Star Trek Discovery, and unless it’s out on disc one of these days, most likely won’t see it. In spite of the various opinions I have read about it, I am glad there’s serious attention to diversity, we need more of that.
Okay, on to Pete LaBarbera, who is all upsetty about Discovery having a gay couple, portrayed by gay actors. Mr. LaBarbera is opining that this simply isn’t balanced or fair.
LaBarbera discussed the Star Trek news with VCY America’s Jim Schneider on the September 26 episode of the “Crosstalk” program, saying that the show’s decision to include gay characters is another sign that “the homosexual activists are never satisfied, they always want more, more, more.”
Wanting representation is hardly “more, more, more”, Mr. LaBarbera. Quickly, run through your not overused brain, the representation of white straight people. All of history. I’ll wait. This is one show, that is not going to be beamed directly into peoples’ heads or anything. It’s hardly the Queer Revolution, dear.
At the same time, he said, “We have yet to see an ex-gay, a former homosexual prominently portrayed in Hollywood.”
Um, well, first, catch your ex-gay star. I don’t watch bad christian films, but I’m sure this has been covered by one of them. Perhaps you could talk Kevin Sorbo into portraying a ‘former’ homosexual? I’m sure he’d do it, playing the role with all the wooden enthusiasm he brings to his caricatures of atheists. I imagine that the Hollywood number crunchers are fully aware of the fact that trying to make money on a prominent portrayal of a ‘former’ homosexual simply won’t bring an audience. Or money.
“I guess all we can do is not watch Star Trek,” he said, adding that “this sort of propaganda” and “political correctness” is “why Trump won in the first place.”
Yes, that’s fine, don’t watch Discovery. No one will cry about it. As for the rest of your tripe, no, that’s not why the Tiny Tyrant “won”. Corruption is the answer you’re looking for.
When Schneider asked LaBarbera what listeners could do to confront this kind of thing, LaBarbera said, “Remember, the other side never stops fighting. There is a battle between good and evil in this country.” He urged listeners to call their elected officials about enforcing Trump’s announced ban on military service for transgender people and opposing the “very, very dangerous” Equality Act, which “would make it easier for homosexual activists and liberal attorneys to persecute people of faith for opposing this juggernaut which calls itself ‘gay.’”
:near-fatal eyeroll: Oh cupcake…when our mere existence is enough to give you hives, it’s rather difficult to avoid the whole “persecution” shtick. Perhaps you should work on not being so incredibly sensitive, your hysterical tendencies do get all over peoples’ nerves. Go on, go sit in your closet, stick your fingers in your ears, squinch your eyes shut, and whatever you do, avoid Discovery. You’ll be fine.
Via RWW.
It’s seems that whole clumps of bitter techbros are fleeing to the MGTOW life (that’s Men Going Their Own Way, if you didn’t know), and advocating a life of male separatism. Just a thought, but if you avoid women at all costs, it might not be a surprise that your viewpoints are more suited to a cave than a nice high tech office somewhere. Naturally, this is an evil witch hunt, with the intent to subjugate men (and make them do what? Scrub out the toilet?) and other nefarious things. As always, the irony of men screeching “witch hunt!” escapes them entirely.
One of those who said there had been a change is James Altizer, an engineer at the chip maker Nvidia. Mr. Altizer, 52, said he had realized a few years ago that feminists in Silicon Valley had formed a cabal whose goal was to subjugate men. At the time, he said, he was one of the few with that view.
Continue reading the main storyNow Mr. Altizer said he was less alone. “There’s quite a few people going through that in Silicon Valley right now,” he said. “It’s exploding. It’s mostly young men, younger than me.”
Mr. Altizer said that a gathering he hosts in person and online to discuss men’s issues had grown by a few dozen members this year to more than 200, that the private Facebook pages he frequents on men’s rights were gaining new members and that a radical subculture calling for total male separatism was emerging.
“It’s a witch hunt,” he said in a phone interview, contending men are being fired by “dangerous” human resources departments. “I’m sitting in a soundproof booth right now because I’m afraid someone will hear me. When you’re discussing gender issues, it’s almost religious, the response. It’s almost zealotry.”
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Altizer, when you decide to pontificate about how women should not be in a workplace, and they should be quiet about slaps on the ass, if they don’t want to deal, they should stay home and do what they were ‘made’ for and all that, it will elicit a response. Women have been responding to misogynistic attitudes for thousands of years now. If we, from time to time, snap or yell, well, I’m sure you’ll understand the frustration of having one generation after another having to repeat themselves.
I do love the touch of the soundproof booth, though. For unknown reasons, the NYT has decided to give these sad separatists a full work up, because life is so gosh darn hard for men, especially those of the white variety. I’ll wish them fun in their cones of silence, and continue to pay attention to those men who have happily figured out that yes, women are human beings too.
Right Wing Watch has a comprehensive rundown of all those backing Roy Moore. In case you don’t remember Moore, here are two posts from last year, when Moore made a mess of his career at the time: one, two. Now that Moore is running for a senate seat, the religious reich is fervently backing him.
…Some better-known Religious Right groups, including the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council, have recently gone all-in for Moore. He has also been getting serious financial support in the form of outside spending from groups like Ken Cuccinelli’s Senate Conservatives Fund and from Alabama activist Stan Pate, who has been funding ads attacking Strange.
And Moore has also quietly been getting support from some of his most extreme allies, who see him as a chance to give their Christian nationalists views the biggest megaphone yet:
Michael Peroutka is a local Republican politician in Maryland who has used wealth from a set of debt-collection businesses to bankroll Christian nationalist causes across the country, most notably by funding the career of Moore. Peroutka has funded Moore’s Christian nationalist ventures and political campaigns for decades; he gave Moore’s Senate campaign $2,500 in June and his wife Natalie gave the same amount in early August, each nearly maxing out on their individual contribution limit for the initial Republican primary.
Peroutka is a former member of the neo-Confederate League of the South—he quit when the association started to cause him trouble in his campaign for office. As recently as 2012, he was on video leading a League of the South gathering in a round of “Dixie,” which he calls the “national anthem”; in a 2004 speech to the group, he said he was “still angry” that Maryland didn’t join the Confederacy and said that his daughter had the nickname “Beth Booth,” as in “John Wilkes Booth.”
Peroutka, who runs a group called the Institute on the Constitution, advocates an extreme form of Christian nationalism, saying for instance that the Maryland legislature had ceased to be a legitimate governing body when it violated “God’s law” by passing a marriage equality bill. Last year, he presented on his theocratic view of the law to Operation Save America, an extreme anti-choice group that is trying to get government officials to defy laws on abortion rights and ultimately charge women who have abortions with homicide. (OSA has its own relationship with Moore, which we discuss below.) Along with his longtime support for Moore, Peroutka has helped to fund the campaigns of Tom Parker, Moore’s protégé on the Alabama Supreme Court, who has been trying to establish a legal framework for extreme anti-choice “personhood” laws.
Rusty Thomas, the head of the extreme anti-choice group Operation Save America, contributedjust over $200 to Moore’s campaign in three separate contributions in July and August. Although Thomas’ financial contribution is relatively small, he has been a stalwart ally to Moore throughout his tribulations on the Alabama Supreme Court.
In the summer of 2015, as Moore attempted to fight the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality decision, he accepted an award from OSA at the group’s gathering in Montgomery, telling them that “America is under attack” as it moves away from God and adding, “I’m sorry but this country was not founded on Muhammad. It was not founded on Buddha. It was not founded on secular humanism. It was founded on God.”
Moore responded to criticism of his association with OSA by saying: “You know, some told me ‘you know they’re a radical group.’ I said yeah. They are radical for God.”
Like Peroutka, Thomas and OSA promote the theocratic worldview that laws that they perceive to be ungodly are null and void. OSA’s main text for this belief is a book called “The Doctrine of Lesser Magistrates” by OSA activist Matt Trewhella, one of the anti-choice radicals who signed a statement in the 1990s declaring the murder of abortion providers to be justifiable homicide; in presenting the award to Moore in 2015, Thomas prayed that God would use him to “set an example for lesser magistrates throughout the United States of America that it’s time to say no to the federal beast!”
That’s just a little bit. There’s video, many links, and background on these supporters, including Anita and Mat Staver, Steve Hotze, Ken Eldred, and Eugene Delgaudio at RWW. I think a bit of fear is setting into the religious reich at this point, about how long they may have their stooge in office. Their efforts are seriously ramping up when it comes to getting as many religious reich fanatics as possible into government positions.