I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
Onamission5says
I approve of this message. It’s delicious.
Callinectessays
Wagga wagga wagga ᗧ•••ᗣ•••
chigau (違う)says
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
MANY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY RETURNS!!!
many many
lots
rqsays
I maked you a cake.
More nutritious than eating those brains up there (I do approve the message).
jazzletsays
Happy Birthday
Brainses is nutritious. Risk of prion diseases, but nutritious all the same.
I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
Dude, are you volunteering?
Because whatever the issue is with that behaviour, failure to please your boner isn’t one of them.
Get over your collective selves and accept that women don’t walk around with the purpose of “being attractive”.
derek lactinsays
Gilliel: Would you ‘be attracted’ to someone (whatever your preference) who did that (regardless of their motivation for doing so)? (While I’m at it, would the cartoon be ‘funny’ if the eater was a male?)
Gilliel: Would you ‘be attracted’ to someone (whatever your preference) who did that
Definitely volunteering.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
Women do not go through life in order to be attractive to you. We just go through life.
I would find any person who does that to be in violation of the social contract. “Attraction” has zero to do with it.
(While I’m at it, would the cartoon be ‘funny’ if the eater was a male?)
No, because that wouldn’t make sense. men are not affected by being constantly judged and valued for their attractiveness to other men. They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.
derek lactinsays
I do not equate ‘attractive’ with ‘I want to fuck her’. Nor do I value women for their physical attractiveness. I’m saddened if your experiences with men make you think that we all think that way.
rqsays
Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
Women do not go through life in order to be attractive to you. We just go through life.
Yep.
Incidentally, the cartoon ‘singles’ out women doing unattractive things (in someone’s opinion). The example @2 conflates this with people in general being “unattractive” (by which I mean ‘in violation of the social contract’, as per Giliell), as if being told that men find women wearing pants or wearing skirts too long or hair tied up or hair cut short or not shaving their armpits or driving a car or opening their own door or wearing sneakers or using a lot of make-up or not using make-up at all or … glasses unattractive is the same as someone intentionally (and rudely!!) spewing their biological matter in a public space and not cleaning up after themselves.
I do not equate ‘attractive’ with ‘I want to fuck her’. Nor do I value women for their physical attractiveness. I’m saddened if your experiences with men make you think that we all think that way.
Holy cupcake
1. You seem to have a definition of “attractiveness” that seems to be really different from the common understanding.
2. You keep not getting why “attractiveness” is irrelevant when it comes to the actions described. Rq tried to explain it again.
How would you call that behaviour in a man? Is that ok because men are not among the people you could possible feel attracted to?
derek lactinsays
Gilliel:
I quote you twice:
“1. . You seem to have a definition of “attractiveness” that seems to be really different from the common understanding.”
but my response was to your statement:
“…They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.”
I do not add emphasis to the final four words, but it is clear that you moved the discussion into this realm.
However, I am not sure why this discussion got so hostile. My initial statement was just:
“everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex.”
Is this statement even a matter of debate?
rqsays
Is this statement even a matter of debate?
No, because it is not the point of the illustration. If you don’t get the point of the illustration, we are not having a debate. And you clearly don’t. So.
I do not equate ‘attractive’ with ‘I want to fuck her’.
Wait, wait: we’ve got someone in here explaining to women what attractiveness is and is not?
ZOH.
MYE.
GOD.
Knabbsays
I’m going to roll this back a little – the very starting comment was:
I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
At that point, it’s an opinion – which doesn’t fit the comic at all. Those are definite speech bubbles, not thought bubbles, and considering something unattractive is an entirely different beast than actually going out of your way to say that to someone when they’re not specifically trying to be attractive to you personally. The elision between these ideas is, at best, disingenuous. More likely it’s a deliberate defense of an obnoxious process by defending something else entirely and pretending that it somehow applies.
derek lactinsays
Ms Cryp: You misunderstand completely. I stated what attractiveness does NOT equate to (to me). You should read the opinion to which I responded, in which Gilliel said “They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.” (Also, You response is ironic considering that you call yourself a ‘fuck toy’.)
I am stunned by the degree of hostility that my initial (I thought innocent) opinion has evoked. I have never said that I think women (or anybody) should behave to attract me.
All of you are correct that your behavior is not meant to be attractive to me, nor do I want you to behave that way. I just said that I have a right to decide (for myself) what (of these behaviors that are not directed to me) are in fact attractive.
Perhaps I should have stated initially that I have right to be attracted (but not to say it out loud). I did not anticipate this rage.
I have one last question. Why do you assume that the speaker in the cartoon is male?
I have one last question. Why do you assume that the speaker in the cartoon is male?
I actually didn’t. I have reached the provisional conclusion that the cartoonist intended that character to be perceived as a man or boy, but I made no assumptions about gender. I reached that provisional conclusion after study of the cartoon and what I know about social tropes that could be the subject of commentary in such a cartoon.
Moreover, whatever provisional conclusion I reached about the genders of the characters involved, I reached no conclusions at all whatsoever about the sex of either character.
The chromosomes and genital shapes and reproductive fertility of the characters involved are completely irrelevant to the cartoon and are not subject to divination from the limited information that we have. I leave biology – male or female or something else – entirely alone in my analysis. I reach no conclusions about it and have no need to reach any conclusions about it.
Since you were the only one to bring up sex, I think the more relevant question is why do you think that I or anyone is making a statement about chromosomes or genital shapes or fertility that could in any reasonable way be described as “male”?
I see people writing about “men” and “women” – not “males” and “females”. It seems you’re making assumptions here that are not warranted. Perhaps you’re confused about the difference between being male and being a man? Between sex and gender? If that’s the level of information you’re operating with, it wouldn’t be surprising to see you struggle with the meaning and importance of the cartoon.
But since you’re asking so nicely about the cartoon, let’s point out that the character whose head is bitten off isn’t beheaded by a gleeful murderer because that person has particular tastes in partners.
The person beheaded begins the cartoon by offering up, apropos of nothing, opinions about women’s attractiveness. The fuller opinion is not allowed to be expressed because it’s unimportant. The opinion might be about the unattractiveness of women but be a characteristic that is somehow equally unattractive in men. And yet the statement that’s being made here is that women have to listen to shit about how attractive we are and are not all the Freuding time. We listen to it from our parents growing up. We listen to it from out teachers and principals at school. We listen to it from our peers. We listen to it from our lovers. We listen to it from random dudes who would like to be our lovers. We listen to it from random dudes who feel inexplicable urges to suddenly speak up about how they don’t want to be our lovers. We listen and listen and listen and listen and listen and we’re expected to do absolutely nothing about this.
Random men on sidewalks tell us as we’re walking past them that we should smile more because we’re pretty. Or they tell us we should smile more because if we smiled we would become pretty. Or they tell us that our skirts are too short or our pants are too mannish. We go to job interviews with potential bosses who conclude the interview by telling us what we should have worn that would make us look less like a lesbian (they say this to lesbians and they say this to women – or people they think are women – who aren’t lesbians).
And time after time after time when men are involved…we do nothing. When it’s parents…we do nothing for years, although we probably start ignoring them at some point. When it’s our teachers … we do nothing. When it’s a woman or trans* peer, some times we give them hell back because we’re fucking tired of it.
And yet men seem completely ignorant of the fact that we’re tired of hearing your opinions about our attractiveness. If you don’t think we’re attractive, don’t ask us out. It’s really quite easy. there’s no reason to make it more complicated than that. The only reason why you would suddenly and without context volunteer your opinions on what makes other persons (women or anyone) attractive is if you thought your opinions were actually relevant to the people hearing them.
But for the most part, they’re not.
So the cartoon portrays a dynamic which every woman here knows thoroughly and well, but instead of doing nothing, the person subjected to an opinion which was volunteered with no preceding context decides to up and decapitate the speaker with her sharp teeth and swallow the head whole.
The humor is in the fact that we typically under respond to the implicitly denigrating opinions about our attractiveness, but in the cartoon the person portraying the feminine doesn’t merely respond appropriately as we might wish to do. No, she over-responds through beheading and cannibalism.
It is, therefore, a joke – but one which is premised on knowing something about women’s experiences in the cultures common to readers of FreethoughtBlogs.
And yet here you come, defending the beheaded person –
I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
How is the existence of unspoken opinion relevant at all to this cartoon? Spoiler: it is not.
What is being critiqued here is not the existence of opinions. It is not even merely or only the insulting tendency of people to spout their judgements of women’s attractiveness whether the listeners are interested or not. It’s actually also criticizing the heroine of the cartoon and by extension the women who are expected to be sympathetic to that heroine. We imagine that one too many times she’s listened to pontifications on women’s attractiveness without being able to respond. We imagine that she’s engaging in her praying-mantis behavior not because it’s proportionate or appropriate to the relatively mild sin of one conversation partner ignoring what discomfits another. We imagine that she’s engaging in it as an overreaction that sums all those failed responses to sexist pontificating in the past and finds that the sum total of all those responses would be approximately equal to one cannibalistic beheading.
But we can’t do that in real life. Even if it feels like that would be cumulatively appropriate, that’s not how justice works. The implicit message of the cartoon, then, is advocating for making the small responses along the way, the proportionate responses, the every day responses. The cartoon advocates that we do this every time because if we do not we either allow many small injustices to persist OR we make ourselves more likely to respond disproportionately.
And so into this fray, instead of addressing the socialization dynamics that result in women hearing sexist pontificating on attractiveness far too often, or instead of addressing the more advanced and thoughtful feminist point that when we do not respond appropriately in the moment we only create new problems in addition to the problems already present from the mere existence of the sexist pontificating, you arrive and bless us with:
I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
And so now in this thread we’re not only subjected to someone announcing the particulars of what they do and do not find attractive – the original behavior in the cartoon – but we’re also dealing with someone minimizing the sexist pontificating as merely having an opinion which completely ignores the fact that the beheading victim actually spoke up, with no preceding context.
And what is the advanced message of the cartoon, for people who actually understand feminism? It’s that we shouldn’t minimize this behavior, we should openly address it.
So you repeated the behavior AND you minimized the behavior which we, who were laughing at the cartoon, have been recognizing as something which we ourselves have done but which for the good of everyone must be stopped.
And so you’re getting called out not only for volunteering an opinion about exactly what is unattractive to you – which statement was wholly unnecessary to discuss the virtues and meanings of the cartoon, as I think you should be aware from the fact that others have been discussing the cartoon without once saying what we find attractive or unattractive in anyone else – but you’re also getting called out for opposing the fundamental message of the cartoon by minimizing the behavior which the cartoon implies must be not minimized but appropriately addressed.
You failed spectacularly to get any important aspect of the cartoon. And so we who enjoyed the cartoon, we who both laughed at the hyperbole and appreciated its feminist message, could not simply ignore your behavior in a thread devoted to a cartoon which argues strongly (though implicitly) for not ignoring behavior.
PenPenultimately, I would add that you did yourself no favors by conflating sex and gender. We generally consider that counterproductive and the sign of someone who has very little understanding of either.
Penultimately, you will tend to lose good will when you frame your statements around a presumption that you know more about us than is on the page, for instance when you assume you know why we wrote what we wrote or what we do or don’t assume that isn’t in any way implied in what we actually placed in our posts and comments.
Why do you assume
was an example of this. We didn’t assume. You did, then attributed that assumption to everyone else. That’s the kind of thing that careful reading can prevent, but that when not prevented tends to be very disrespectful of the people with whom you’re conversing. You’re not so smart that you can actually divine what passed through my head on the way to creating my comments. I’m not so dumb that I have no thoughts more complicated than what is contained in the words I typed.
And finally, there’s this:
I did not anticipate this rage.
Oh, cupcake. If you think this is rage, you not only misunderstand the cartoon, but you don’t understand any of us either. Trust me, when I’m raging, you’ll know.
😀
I think everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex. For example, who likes it when somebody lays a finger on one side of the nose and blasts a loogie onto the sidewalk? (and yes, I have seen a woman do this).
I approve of this message. It’s delicious.
Wagga wagga wagga ᗧ•••ᗣ•••
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
MANY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY RETURNS!!!
many many
lots
I maked you a cake.
More nutritious than eating those brains up there (I do approve the message).
Happy Birthday
Brainses is nutritious. Risk of prion diseases, but nutritious all the same.
Praying Mansplaining.
Dude, are you volunteering?
Because whatever the issue is with that behaviour, failure to please your boner isn’t one of them.
Get over your collective selves and accept that women don’t walk around with the purpose of “being attractive”.
Gilliel: Would you ‘be attracted’ to someone (whatever your preference) who did that (regardless of their motivation for doing so)? (While I’m at it, would the cartoon be ‘funny’ if the eater was a male?)
Definitely volunteering.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
Women do not go through life in order to be attractive to you. We just go through life.
I would find any person who does that to be in violation of the social contract. “Attraction” has zero to do with it.
No, because that wouldn’t make sense. men are not affected by being constantly judged and valued for their attractiveness to other men. They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.
I do not equate ‘attractive’ with ‘I want to fuck her’. Nor do I value women for their physical attractiveness. I’m saddened if your experiences with men make you think that we all think that way.
Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
Yep.
Incidentally, the cartoon ‘singles’ out women doing unattractive things (in someone’s opinion). The example @2 conflates this with people in general being “unattractive” (by which I mean ‘in violation of the social contract’, as per Giliell), as if being told that men find women wearing pants or wearing skirts too long or hair tied up or hair cut short or not shaving their armpits or driving a car or opening their own door or wearing sneakers or using a lot of make-up or not using make-up at all or … glasses unattractive is the same as someone intentionally (and rudely!!) spewing their biological matter in a public space and not cleaning up after themselves.
Holy cupcake
1. You seem to have a definition of “attractiveness” that seems to be really different from the common understanding.
2. You keep not getting why “attractiveness” is irrelevant when it comes to the actions described. Rq tried to explain it again.
How would you call that behaviour in a man? Is that ok because men are not among the people you could possible feel attracted to?
Gilliel:
I quote you twice:
“1. . You seem to have a definition of “attractiveness” that seems to be really different from the common understanding.”
but my response was to your statement:
“…They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.”
I do not add emphasis to the final four words, but it is clear that you moved the discussion into this realm.
However, I am not sure why this discussion got so hostile. My initial statement was just:
“everybody is entitled to an opinion about what is or is not attractive in a member of the preferred sex.”
Is this statement even a matter of debate?
No, because it is not the point of the illustration. If you don’t get the point of the illustration, we are not having a debate. And you clearly don’t. So.
Wait, wait: we’ve got someone in here explaining to women what attractiveness is and is not?
ZOH.
MYE.
GOD.
I’m going to roll this back a little – the very starting comment was:
At that point, it’s an opinion – which doesn’t fit the comic at all. Those are definite speech bubbles, not thought bubbles, and considering something unattractive is an entirely different beast than actually going out of your way to say that to someone when they’re not specifically trying to be attractive to you personally. The elision between these ideas is, at best, disingenuous. More likely it’s a deliberate defense of an obnoxious process by defending something else entirely and pretending that it somehow applies.
Ms Cryp: You misunderstand completely. I stated what attractiveness does NOT equate to (to me). You should read the opinion to which I responded, in which Gilliel said “They are not assumed to exist in the world for the sole purpose of pleasing other men’s boners.” (Also, You response is ironic considering that you call yourself a ‘fuck toy’.)
I am stunned by the degree of hostility that my initial (I thought innocent) opinion has evoked. I have never said that I think women (or anybody) should behave to attract me.
All of you are correct that your behavior is not meant to be attractive to me, nor do I want you to behave that way. I just said that I have a right to decide (for myself) what (of these behaviors that are not directed to me) are in fact attractive.
Perhaps I should have stated initially that I have right to be attracted (but not to say it out loud). I did not anticipate this rage.
I have one last question. Why do you assume that the speaker in the cartoon is male?
I actually didn’t. I have reached the provisional conclusion that the cartoonist intended that character to be perceived as a man or boy, but I made no assumptions about gender. I reached that provisional conclusion after study of the cartoon and what I know about social tropes that could be the subject of commentary in such a cartoon.
Moreover, whatever provisional conclusion I reached about the genders of the characters involved, I reached no conclusions at all whatsoever about the sex of either character.
The chromosomes and genital shapes and reproductive fertility of the characters involved are completely irrelevant to the cartoon and are not subject to divination from the limited information that we have. I leave biology – male or female or something else – entirely alone in my analysis. I reach no conclusions about it and have no need to reach any conclusions about it.
Since you were the only one to bring up sex, I think the more relevant question is why do you think that I or anyone is making a statement about chromosomes or genital shapes or fertility that could in any reasonable way be described as “male”?
I see people writing about “men” and “women” – not “males” and “females”. It seems you’re making assumptions here that are not warranted. Perhaps you’re confused about the difference between being male and being a man? Between sex and gender? If that’s the level of information you’re operating with, it wouldn’t be surprising to see you struggle with the meaning and importance of the cartoon.
But since you’re asking so nicely about the cartoon, let’s point out that the character whose head is bitten off isn’t beheaded by a gleeful murderer because that person has particular tastes in partners.
The person beheaded begins the cartoon by offering up, apropos of nothing, opinions about women’s attractiveness. The fuller opinion is not allowed to be expressed because it’s unimportant. The opinion might be about the unattractiveness of women but be a characteristic that is somehow equally unattractive in men. And yet the statement that’s being made here is that women have to listen to shit about how attractive we are and are not all the Freuding time. We listen to it from our parents growing up. We listen to it from out teachers and principals at school. We listen to it from our peers. We listen to it from our lovers. We listen to it from random dudes who would like to be our lovers. We listen to it from random dudes who feel inexplicable urges to suddenly speak up about how they don’t want to be our lovers. We listen and listen and listen and listen and listen and we’re expected to do absolutely nothing about this.
Random men on sidewalks tell us as we’re walking past them that we should smile more because we’re pretty. Or they tell us we should smile more because if we smiled we would become pretty. Or they tell us that our skirts are too short or our pants are too mannish. We go to job interviews with potential bosses who conclude the interview by telling us what we should have worn that would make us look less like a lesbian (they say this to lesbians and they say this to women – or people they think are women – who aren’t lesbians).
And time after time after time when men are involved…we do nothing. When it’s parents…we do nothing for years, although we probably start ignoring them at some point. When it’s our teachers … we do nothing. When it’s a woman or trans* peer, some times we give them hell back because we’re fucking tired of it.
And yet men seem completely ignorant of the fact that we’re tired of hearing your opinions about our attractiveness. If you don’t think we’re attractive, don’t ask us out. It’s really quite easy. there’s no reason to make it more complicated than that. The only reason why you would suddenly and without context volunteer your opinions on what makes other persons (women or anyone) attractive is if you thought your opinions were actually relevant to the people hearing them.
But for the most part, they’re not.
So the cartoon portrays a dynamic which every woman here knows thoroughly and well, but instead of doing nothing, the person subjected to an opinion which was volunteered with no preceding context decides to up and decapitate the speaker with her sharp teeth and swallow the head whole.
The humor is in the fact that we typically under respond to the implicitly denigrating opinions about our attractiveness, but in the cartoon the person portraying the feminine doesn’t merely respond appropriately as we might wish to do. No, she over-responds through beheading and cannibalism.
It is, therefore, a joke – but one which is premised on knowing something about women’s experiences in the cultures common to readers of FreethoughtBlogs.
And yet here you come, defending the beheaded person –
How is the existence of unspoken opinion relevant at all to this cartoon? Spoiler: it is not.
What is being critiqued here is not the existence of opinions. It is not even merely or only the insulting tendency of people to spout their judgements of women’s attractiveness whether the listeners are interested or not. It’s actually also criticizing the heroine of the cartoon and by extension the women who are expected to be sympathetic to that heroine. We imagine that one too many times she’s listened to pontifications on women’s attractiveness without being able to respond. We imagine that she’s engaging in her praying-mantis behavior not because it’s proportionate or appropriate to the relatively mild sin of one conversation partner ignoring what discomfits another. We imagine that she’s engaging in it as an overreaction that sums all those failed responses to sexist pontificating in the past and finds that the sum total of all those responses would be approximately equal to one cannibalistic beheading.
But we can’t do that in real life. Even if it feels like that would be cumulatively appropriate, that’s not how justice works. The implicit message of the cartoon, then, is advocating for making the small responses along the way, the proportionate responses, the every day responses. The cartoon advocates that we do this every time because if we do not we either allow many small injustices to persist OR we make ourselves more likely to respond disproportionately.
And so into this fray, instead of addressing the socialization dynamics that result in women hearing sexist pontificating on attractiveness far too often, or instead of addressing the more advanced and thoughtful feminist point that when we do not respond appropriately in the moment we only create new problems in addition to the problems already present from the mere existence of the sexist pontificating, you arrive and bless us with:
And so now in this thread we’re not only subjected to someone announcing the particulars of what they do and do not find attractive – the original behavior in the cartoon – but we’re also dealing with someone minimizing the sexist pontificating as merely having an opinion which completely ignores the fact that the beheading victim actually spoke up, with no preceding context.
And what is the advanced message of the cartoon, for people who actually understand feminism? It’s that we shouldn’t minimize this behavior, we should openly address it.
So you repeated the behavior AND you minimized the behavior which we, who were laughing at the cartoon, have been recognizing as something which we ourselves have done but which for the good of everyone must be stopped.
And so you’re getting called out not only for volunteering an opinion about exactly what is unattractive to you – which statement was wholly unnecessary to discuss the virtues and meanings of the cartoon, as I think you should be aware from the fact that others have been discussing the cartoon without once saying what we find attractive or unattractive in anyone else – but you’re also getting called out for opposing the fundamental message of the cartoon by minimizing the behavior which the cartoon implies must be not minimized but appropriately addressed.
You failed spectacularly to get any important aspect of the cartoon. And so we who enjoyed the cartoon, we who both laughed at the hyperbole and appreciated its feminist message, could not simply ignore your behavior in a thread devoted to a cartoon which argues strongly (though implicitly) for not ignoring behavior.
PenPenultimately, I would add that you did yourself no favors by conflating sex and gender. We generally consider that counterproductive and the sign of someone who has very little understanding of either.
Penultimately, you will tend to lose good will when you frame your statements around a presumption that you know more about us than is on the page, for instance when you assume you know why we wrote what we wrote or what we do or don’t assume that isn’t in any way implied in what we actually placed in our posts and comments.
was an example of this. We didn’t assume. You did, then attributed that assumption to everyone else. That’s the kind of thing that careful reading can prevent, but that when not prevented tends to be very disrespectful of the people with whom you’re conversing. You’re not so smart that you can actually divine what passed through my head on the way to creating my comments. I’m not so dumb that I have no thoughts more complicated than what is contained in the words I typed.
And finally, there’s this:
Oh, cupcake. If you think this is rage, you not only misunderstand the cartoon, but you don’t understand any of us either. Trust me, when I’m raging, you’ll know.