My Psychic Powers

Apparently I have a plethora of psychic powers that I've just been too lazy to develop my whole life.  Funny world, isn't it? 

I apparently have the power to molest children with my thoughts through a photograph.  It's strange, but apparently all pedophiles have this power.  It's why the government thinks it's so important that pictures of children should never be in the hands of pedophiles.   At first, I thought this was only supposed to work if the kid was being molested in the photo, but apparently it works just fine whether the kid has ever been molested or not, and the effect isn't blocked by clothing.  Pity it only works on pictures of children, but at least it works long after those children have grown up. 

I've also apparently got laser vision.  If I look at someone long enough, I'll bore a hole right in their bodies like Superman.  Only good explanation I have for the fact that folks work so hard to control which direction I point my eyes.  Weirdly, this one apparently has nothing to do with the powers I get from being a pedophile.  Apparently all men have this ability. 


I hear women get mind reading powers.  I think I'd have more use for that in my everyday life than the heat vision. 

I do at least get the power to unconsciously and undetectably mind control women and children.  It's apparently impossible for either group to refuse to do anything I ask of them.  In fact, apparently I don't need to say a word for it to be me controlling their actions. 

So, any suggestions on a costume for my new career as a Superhero? 

Affirmative Consent

Since this concept has been making its rounds on the various boards and blogs I read, it feels appropriate to weigh in, in detail, on this subject.

Affirmative consent is the idea that avoiding a "no" in a sexual encounter is insufficient for true consent. That only a verbalized "yes" to each and every act performed is sufficient.

I'm actually quite fond of the idea.

The biggest stumbling block I run into when quietly contemplating a better legal situation than the current age of consent, or arguing for its abolishment in open forum, is the fundamental fact that our current system of consent for adults is fundamentally broken. We let adults abuse and manipulate one another in ways that should rightly horrify any human being of good conscience. Thus the idea of exposing children to those culturally and legally sanctioned abuses rightly causes us all to recoil from the idea.

I don't like recoiling from ideas. When I get that impulse, I choose to dig deeper. To find out WHY that reaction strikes me. Because if I recoil, I can't learn specifically what about the situation is so inimical to me, and I can't examine if those distasteful parts can be excised.

The way I figure it, if it isn't acceptable to do inflict something on a five year old child, it isn't acceptable to inflict it on an adult either. If you think we need an age of consent to protect children from predatory adults who would lie their way into bed with them, there is no valid justification for treating those same predators as harmless or even admirable just because they're doing the exact same thing to other adults.

Now, that isn't to say there aren't serious flaws with the concept of affirmative consent. Firstly, like all aspects of sexual consent in this culture, it's gendered, in that males need to get consent, and females need to give it, never the other way around. Not a problem specific to the concept itself, but a problem inherent in our culture and one that rightly needs to be called out whenever the subject of changing the standards of consent come up.

Second is that how far it needs to be taken is never sufficiently defined, nor will its proponents ever submit to limiting cases, always shreaking about their "better safe than sorry" nonsense. Under reasonable standards, this practice could force better communication between sexual partners, make everyone take accountability for their own agency in deciding to participate, and reducing the tragedies that currently result from our current standards of "implied consent". If stretched beyond reasonable boundaries, however, it becomes a standard no one can ever live up to, and thus redefines every sexual interaction as rape, with all the gendered and ageist asymetries that go along with rape accusations in our culture.

Some claim that this standard infantalizes women, because it denies their ability to speak up when something is bothering them about a sexual encounter, and instead relies on the man to ask for confirmation. Aside from the obvious sexism in the idea that only a man would need to be held to this standard (not that it isn't an objective fact of our culture that this would be the case), I actually agree that it's infantalizing. That's why I like it so much.

Maybe if we can get the level of discourse and behavior of the general population to a place where a child would have no difficulty navigating it, why would we need the age of consent or anything to replace it?

The Horrors of Pornography

For those who haven't been following along, I'm pro-porn. I believe in allowing people to engage with their sexualities in any way they please that doesn't harm others without the fully informed consent of those others.

Alarmist hand-wringing is nothing new. The internet didn't invent it. You need only look at the satanic ritual abuse cases of the 1980s to see how far alarmist hand-wringing can take people.

The one I'm addressing today is, as you've no doubt figured out, about pornography. Specifically the most recent alarm being sounded that because of all their exposure to pornography on the internet, men (always just men, isn't it?) are losing interest in partnered sex. The reasons cited for this are various, and not really the focus of this blog post. No, the focus of this blog post is to make lemonade.

You see, if we accept the current alarmists at their word. If we accept that they are doing real science, and that the issues they are bringing up are real. Then we come to one inescapable conclusion. All the efforts to limit access to child porn have been contributing to the molestation of children.

If all the porn that men (again with the not so subtle sexism from these alarmists) have access to in virtually limitless quantities on the internet really is "rewiring their brains" such that they're no longer interested in sex with real women, then the only morally correct thing to do is to immediately halt any and all efforts to stop or slow the distribution of child porn on the internet, and indeed start subsidizing that industry.

I realize some may object to taxpayer dollars going to support the child porn industry, but to quote an entirely different group of alarmists, "if it saves just one child."

Now, of course, I don't believe that pornography has these horrific effects on the (male) libido. I don't believe the alarmists who attach the term "addiction" as though it can damn a perfectly safe, healthy activity by pointing out that there exists some small group of people who develop addictions and compulsions associated with it. I don't believe access to porn hurts the viewer in any way.

But I figure this argument will either shut up this particular batch of pro-censorship alarmists and provide some measure of protection for free speech by using my own boogie-man status against them, or they'll stick to their guns and start lobbying for government subsidized child porn. Either way, I consider it a win.

News Commentary: Kaitlyn Hunt

I don't do a lot of news commentary here on this blog, because I feel that the issues I'm talking about are fundamentally timeless. That said, I'm pissed enough about the case of Kaitlyn Hunt to break from that just this once.

For those unaware, Kaitlyn is a young woman who turned 18 recently, and is being prosecuted for her sexual relationship with an underage girl from her high school. The media is painting this as anti-gay discrimination, and the conversations that have started because of it need to be addressed.

Let's start with the idea that this prosecution is because the girls are in a homosexual relationship. Yes, the parents of the younger girl are alleged to be prosecuting because the older girl "turned their daughter gay". That doesn't make the prosecution a case of anti-gay discrimination. Every high school boy who has ever been prosecuted and had his life destroyed because of the overprotective parents of his lover can attest to the fact that this is a shining example of equality, at least in the fact that the law is prosecuting.

There is some discrimination here, though. And it's the media who's doing it. No one gives a shit about the excesses of age of consent laws until it's a photogenic young woman who's suffering because of it. And once the media uproar inevitably subverts the legal system and ensures that this woman will escape punishment, everyone will go back to not giving a shit about the awful age of consent laws that will still be in place.

As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I do not support the age of consent. Kaitlyn should not be prosecuted or punished for a consensual relationship. I take Kaitlyn's lover at her word that the relationship was consensual, since she is the one who ought to get to decide that.

The conversation has also spawned much hand wringing about why this isn't covered under the "obvious" Romeo and Juliet clauses many states have in place for just this set of circumstances. First off, not every state's age of consent has an exception for minors who are close in age to one another. Secondly, no state should have such an exemption.

By setting an age of consent, the state is declaring that everyone under the line is incapable of consent, and it is under that justification that individuals who have sex with them are prosecuted. As such, whether Kaitlyn is an 18 year old from her same school or a 70 year old, what matters is that her lover is legally declared incapable of making her own choices about sex.

The very idea that you can be competent to consent to sex with teenagers but not to consent to sex with adults would be laughable if it were not the explicit law of the land, punishable by sentences harsher than some murderers get.

What these laws do is say "this group is particularly vulnerable, so let's create an entire class of people who are only legally allowed to fuck people in that particularly vulnerable class."

Either Kaitlyn's lover is competent to make her own decisions about her own body and who she shares it with, or she isn't. I think she very much is competent to make that decision, whether the person she decides to have sex with is a photogenic young woman or not.



Update:

Kaitlyn has accepted a plea bargain that nets her less than a year in jail and no need to register as a sex offender. We can all stop panicking now. The photogenic white woman won't suffer the insane consequences we always intended only for those evil, creepy men. Words cannot adequately express my disgust at the national dialogue. Though one emotion I can put into words is "unsurprised".

Virgin Shaming

For those of you who missed the introduction, I'm a pedophile.  I try to be clear about that fact in my online dealings.  I want that fact to be doubly clear in this post, because that context should help make clear the absurdity of what I'm about to discuss.

Women and girls get judged for having sex.  The word slut being used as a tool of social pressure is something we're all aware of, but it goes deeper than that.  In a thousand different ways, women and girls are told that they become something lesser based on the number of sex partners they've had.  This is the classical model of slut shaming and anyone who claims not to have heard of it is lying.

Men and boys get the opposite message.  While females are shamed for having sex, males are shamed for not having sex.  Every time an implication is made about a male's meager sex life as a way of insulting him, that's reinforcing in him, and in all the males in earshot, the idea that a male only has value proportional to how much sex he's able to have. 

I get shamed for not having sex.  Read the first sentence of this post again then think about what it means when people who know that I'm a pedophile still use shaming language to insult me for not having sex.  That's how extreme this trend is.

And it's not just in the expected "you're only going after little girls because you can't find a woman who'll touch you" idiocy.  People have literally called me less of a man for choosing celibacy instead of molesting a child.

More frequently, however, are those who have been informed of my orientation, then forget in the heat of the moment and just reach for their go-to insult.  Those types will tend to act appropriately ashamed of themselves when the implications are pointed out to them, but it's telling that this type of insult is such a default that people can make that mistake in the first place.

People who judge others based on how much sex they are having are assholes.  Christian conservatives who lambast people who are having too much sex in their opinion are assholes.  The "liberated" types who judge people for having too little sex are not only also assholes, but they are the exact same kind of assholes. 

I find I'm particularly annoyed when the discussion turns to marriage, since it brings out both kinds of assholes.  The conservative asshole who declares everyone who's having premarital sex to be lesser is one I expect in such discussions.  But I foolishly expected more from the liberated types.

Instead, they'll always be there responding to the conservative's shaming with shaming of their own.  When the conservative issues judgement about matrimonial sex being less special because you haven't been saving yourself, the liberal issues judgement about the sex being awful because you haven't been trying each other out sexually before the commitment. 

I think the conservative sex police are getting plenty of blowback for their hateful behavior.  I don't think the liberal sex police are getting enough blowback for their hateful behavior.  The real mark of maturity in dealing with these issues is not whether you favor more sex or less sex.  The mark of maturity is that you're willing to let people make the decisions that are right for them, without judging them when those decisions are different from yours. 

Feminazis

I am a feminist.

I believe that men and women deserve full legal equality.  I believe that the overwhelming majority of differences that can be observed between the genders in this culture are social constructs, and that forcing people into those boxes is harmful to them and to society as a whole. 

Unfortunately, when I self-identify as a feminist, I have to defend that identification.  I'm called upon to answer for every sexist, bigoted, or ill thought out statement ever made by anyone who's described themselves using that label.  I have to clarify, "I'm not like those feminists." 

The thing is, I don't like referring to those feminists as feminists at all.  People who espouse sexist and gender essentialist views not only fail to fit my definition of feminists, but they are at the polar opposite of what it means to be a feminist. 

I've seen feminism defined in any number of ways.  Some of them would preclude sexists from the word go, while others would be welcoming.  To take one example I see frequently, "the radical notion that women are people," has nothing present to bar sexists from operating under that flag.  So long as you hold that view, you're qualified to be a feminist, regardless of how narrowly you define the word "women" and regardless of whether you think anyone other than women are people. 

So, how does one address the presence of sexists who claim membership in a movement for social justice and equality?  What do you call someone who uses the label of feminist, but doesn't care one whit for equal rights?  Do those of us who care about equal rights just stand back and let misandrists sully the name of a legitimately positive social movement?

Which brings me to the title.  I've seen individuals flying a false flag of feminism in an attempt to legitimize or deflect criticism of their sexist positions.  And I've seen those selfsame misandrists called "feminazis".

The word feminazi was coined by Rush Limbaugh, and he has used it as a pejorative in reference to all major feminist organizations.  But I would contend that the meaning has shifted.  In every instance I've encountered the word "feminazi" in the wild, it was never being used to refer to the movement as a whole.  It has always, in my experience, been a term used to identify individuals who claim to be feminists, but who display sexist attitudes. 

And every time I see the term used in response to sexism displayed by the self-identified feminist, the discourse changes.  Other feminists act as though their honor has been insulted, and immediately move to set the record straight on what feminism is all about.  These feminists clearly and unambiguously state that feminism is about equal rights and treating women as people.  And they are right to be offended.  The problem is that they're offended by the person who used the word "feminazi" to attack the sexist instead of being offended that the sexist asshole was misrepresenting the movement in the first place.

Even if you believe the word feminazi is as unsalvageable as the word nigger, that doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of sexists of both genders out there.  That's sort of why we need feminism in the first place.  And when sexists use false claims to be feminists in order to shield themselves from criticism, that is a problem.  When those false claims aren't called out, or worse when the people making them are defended, it makes it seem as though we reasonable feminists agree with the toxic views put forward by those individuals.

Now personally, I don't use the term feminazi anymore.  I find "misandrist asshole" is usually more than sufficient for the majority of cases.  And it keeps the well intentioned feminists in the audience from feeling the need to defend the honor of feminism from me instead of from the sexist jackass misappropriating the label.