Archive | October, 2009

The World Hates People With Vaginas, Part 2: The Mutilated Vagina House

31 Oct

(UPDATE: See the bottom of the post for the haunted house’s website and contact info).

Davetavius has a job. (I know, right? What a fuckin’ loser.) I call his boss Ultradave, because he’s the distilled essence of what it means to be a guy named Dave. Meaning that I can’t believe he doesn’t manage a guitar shop in Colorado. Ultradave, in addition to owning the world’s largest collection of Converse All-stars, is also the world’s premier Rob Zombie fan, though I suspect (hope) there’s at least a teaspoon or two of irony in the mix. Being that Ultradave is so into Rob Zombie, it comes as no surprise that he’s also a fan of haunted houses. Hence, it is also no surprise that the employee Halloween party he hosted last night involved a trip to a haunted house located behind the Masquerade, an Atlanta concert venue/club that appears to dominate the stupid metal band scene here in town since there’s always some hilarious band name on the marquee. (Angel Raper, Corpse Fucker, Putrid Afterbirth, Defile the Innocent. OK, Natethaniel and I made all of those up.) I’d sooner spend an entire day watching Geico commercials than spend one second in a haunted house, but I went to the party anyway since I heard there’d be beer. The bar situation was really pretty amazing. They had set a bar up outside in a dirt lot in order to provide drinks to customers waiting to check out the haunted house, and there was some DJ there playing Eazy-E and Motley Crue on giant speakers for a crowd of maybe eight people. I felt like an attendee at a high school party held by the kid that no one likes.

I and Davetavius (not Davetavius and I — I’m a feminist, dude) were standing there wondering where the fuck everyone was and what we were doing there when our friend Jack came running up wearing a Fred Flintstone dress (even though he looks like a giant Barney Rubble) and asked whether we’d been in the haunted house. We both snorted in response, and Jack said to me, “I don’t know what to say about it, but I thought of you while I was in there.” I was puzzled. What could possibly be going on in a haunted house that would make someone think of me?

We wandered around some more and came across Jack’s girlfriend Kerry and Natethaniel, who was dressed either as an Amish guy or a Quaker (or maybe simply a suspenders enthusiast). They asked us if we’d been in the haunted house, and we again snorted. They both looked at me with a noticeable measure of anxiety, so I again began to wonder what the hell was going on in this god-damned haunted house that had to do with me.

I suppose all of you readers are saying to your computers, “Duh, Nine Deuce, it’s a haunted house. What did you think was going on?” But you must remember that I haven’t been in a haunted house since maybe 1989. At that time, the average haunted house was just a series of dark halls in which drama club dorks with masks and plastic axes would jump out at you and say things like, “You’d better run for your life!” in their best attempt at a spooky muahahaha voice. Even when I was eleven that shit was basically whatever the opposite of scary is. But now it’s 2009, and we live in a world in which movies like Hostel, Saw 1-76, and the Halloween remakes (which are Rob Zombie joints, in case you didn’t know) make millions of dollars. I should have known that would affect the goings-on at the nation’s haunted houses. Stupid me.

Apparently, in the modern haunted house scene, rape is where it’s at. Kerry and Natethaniel told me that the haunted house’s “attractions” included a woman being brutally gang raped, women being tortured, women being murdered, a woman’s torso with the genital area completely mutilated, an exploding ass (I forgot to ask what sex the exploding ass was), and so on and so forth. All of the above came with plenty of blood. My friend Steve said that a better name for the haunted house might be “The Mutilated Vagina House,” and I asked him, rhetorically, why there weren’t more mutilated penises in the mix. He replied that no one would come, and he was right.

Is there really anyone out there who still denies the fact that pretty much everyone hates women? Would it be likely, in a non-misogynistic society, that a large part of the popular entertainment industry would be made up of depictions of women being raped, tortured, and murdered? Would people be walking out of haunted houses in which women were being gang raped and tortured to death with boners gasping about how “awesuuuhhhmm” it was? OK, I didn’t see any actual boners, but I’m sure there were at least a few, judging by the looks of the cretins walking around outside the place. Steve was right, no one would go to a haunted house in which men were being sexually tortured and murdered, because men are human beings, and that’s just over the line. And it’s nowhere near as hot as watching the same happen to women’s bodies.

I mean it, dude. I’m moving to Antarctica.

UPDATE: If you’re in need of something to be pissed off about, you can see the show’s site here. And if, after having seen it, you’d like to tell the operators what you think, here‘s the contact page.

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Huffing dong not only won’t win you the war, but it won’t even win you the battle.

23 Oct

Since I’ve been thinking about porn titling and copy conventions lately, I found myself ruminating this afternoon on a very strange phenomenon that I have often come across in my perusals of the porn section of the Internet: the practice of advertising which porn “actors” star in a particular video by listing the man’s name vs. the woman’s name, as in “Bruce Bigdick vs. Tanya Titanictits.” What the fuck? That alone tells me that the “sex” in porn is more about power and degradation than lust (not that I needed more evidence of such), but it’s a pretty striking practice, is it not?

Think about it for a second. If it weren’t so terrifying it’d almost be funny. I keep hearing the voice of an MMA announcer saying, “Tonight, in the octagon, Will Whalewang and Brenda Brobdingnagianboobs are going to fuck to the death! Rage in the cage!” Seriously, when was the last time you heard about someone taking on a foe via dick sucking? I’ve only heard of it once in my entire life, in an autobiographical essay I will excerpt for your reading pleasure (warning — offensive shit ahead):

I [once] lived in a house with five guys all trying to become famous for drinking, smoking pot, and playing video games.  A lot of socially abnormal behavior occurred in this house during this period of my life.  One such instance was that my friend Mr. X (a very naturally gorgeous man) began to be naked constantly.  He walked around the house naked, he played video games naked, he did crosswords naked, he even partied naked.  What at first was quite shocking became mildly amusing, then somewhat passe, then quite irritating.

One day after some  moderate beer drinking, I started playing Crash Bandicoot Warped (an underrated platform classic) on the Playstation.  Mr. X emerged from his room naked with a Penguin Classic selection I can’t specifically recall and took his place next to me naked on the floor, prepared to engage non-chalantly in some naked, drunk, casual Wordsworth or something.  After a few minutes I became seriously annoyed and asked Mr. X, “Dude, what the fuck are you doing, trying to out-gay everyone?  It’s fucking retarded, put your clothes back on!”  Mr. X sprawled out and instructed, “Dude, don’t be afraid of my beauty.”  In a split second, I became vigilantly determined to out-gay Mr. X. I would show him that his air of passe/faux-free sexuality was nothing against my will to maintain a non-retarded living environment.  “I’ll fucking suck your dick and show you who’s afraid!” I threatened while perking up as if I were about to attack his dick.  “Bring it on,” said Mr. X, laying down as if he were ready to receive all the oral sex I could give him in a thousand lifetimes.

At this point I suppose we were engaging in a gay game of chicken.  I approached the floor where Mr. X way lying, expecting him to recoil instinctively.  Mr. X did not recoil.  “When I touch him he’ll recoil,” I thought to myself as I touched Mr. X’s inner thigh in an attempt to get him to recoil without touching his penis. Mr. X did not recoil.  “When I touch his penis he’ll be so shocked, he’ll recoil and I’ll be the all-time Gay Chicken Champion of the Universe,” I thought right before I touched Mr. X’s penis with my hand without him recoiling.  There was only one thing left to do.  I would not lose.   As I lowered my head to begin sucking I rationalized that it would be just like accidentally licking his arm,  that his body was essentially the same as mine,  and that I would engage in a social taboo for perhaps a millisecond in the name of Gay Chicken pride.  I locked myself into an almost Zen state of mind as I wrapped my mouth around Mr. X’s penis and began sucking, attempting to empty my mind of all things accept what was necessary for this most important of personal victories.  After about five seconds I began to wonder what the fuck was going on.  After about eight seconds I began to incredulously feel Mr. X’s penis enlarge in my mouth.  After about twelve seconds I began to feel the rock hard dick in my mouth that I recognized from my own experiences as “I’m not too far from ejaculating.” Overcome with the terror of Mr. X coming in my mouth, I  jumped up, terrified, and asked, “Dude… what the fuck?!” Mr. X, with an air of complete relaxation, replied, ” Dude, why’d you stop? I was about to come.”    I looked at Mr. X, amazed, and said, “Well, fuck me.  You’re definitely the gayest.”

The next day I  gleefully told everyone I knew about the experience because I thought it was fucking hilarious.  This,  surprisingly, did not make Mr. X or my girlfriend very happy.  It also created even more doubt in my community as to the nature of my sexuality.  Oh well, as experiences go it was one of my more memorable.

Clearly, it is not possible to best one’s opponent by fellating that opponent. But enough joking.

What is up with this so-and-so vs. so-and-so business in the porn industry? Isn’t it kinda… wack to turn sex into combat, into a struggle for dominance? Should we be getting aroused by the thought of two people using and abusing each other sexually until one becomes so degraded that the other (or others) appears to have vanquished her? Such a practice belies the disingenuous claims often made by porn producers and porn fans that porn is all about celebrating sexuality, that anti-porn feminists are just anti-sex, that the real harm to women lies in the purported desire of fifteen radical feminists or so to “limit women’s sexual expression” by objecting to men wanking to images of women being treated like subhumans.

It’s bullshit. Porn is not about sex, it’s about sexualized power. Porn, a few outliers notwithstanding, is about men fucking women into submission, often violently. If it weren’t, there’d be no choking, no puking, no bukkake, no gang bangs, no double (or quadruple) penetration, no ATM, no slapping, no name-calling, no images of multiple men high-fiving each other while they use and abuse one woman’s body, no porn copy containing phrases like “until she cries” or “watch this little whore get ____” or “Interchangeable Female Body vs. Fearsome Violent Penis.”  The porn industry, if it were just all about sex rather than about sexualized hate, wouldn’t be in a race to the bottom with itself to create ever more absurd configurations of bodies, the sole aim of which seems to be to subject women to the most heinous abuse possible.

Don’t bother telling me that the porn you watch isn’t quite that gnarly. Check out the behavior of the men in comparison to that of the women, look at the positions of the bodies, think about the camera angle, listen to what is being said, think about whose pleasure seems paramount, then come back and tell me the porn you watch isn’t just as much (if not more) about dominance and submission as it is about sex.

The “versus” phenomenon illuminates exactly what porn is. It’s a battle that women can’t win, because it’s designed for men who get off on seeing us subjugated, trampled, and powerless.

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Mainstream porn fans, I’ve got some bad news for you.

23 Oct

Reader isme has often made the observation in comments that porn copy that advertises that the men in a particular video will be doing something to the woman in the video “until she cries” or “until she chokes” or any other similarly disturbing and revolting “until she ____s” is very, very unsettling. I wholeheartedly agree, and I’ve been thinking about that phenomenon quite a bit lately. I know a lot of porn fans love to tell me that the women in porn like what’s going on, that they choose to be there, that it’s nothing but a big, awesome, hoser party that I have no place criticizing, but there’s something seriously amiss with that idea when it comes to this “until she ____s” shit. People aren’t enjoying themselves when they’re choking, crying, vomiting, gagging, etc. And, as such, the porndog who enjoys porn in which such things are occurring is not, in fact, getting off on watching two consenting adults get busy. I know I’m not telling feminists anything new here, but it needs saying. If you like that kind of porn, you are turned on by rape. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

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Too drunk to drive? Then you’re too drunk to deserve pity for having been raped, you dumb whore.

22 Oct

Thanks to reader Kelly, I’ve recently become aware of yet ANOTHER rape case in which the judge spends more time blaming the victim for drinking than the perpetrators for raping.

Here’s the short version: A 15-year-old girl went to a party, she drank, she ended up too intoxicated to know what was going on. Three boys took her into a bathroom and raped her, taking advantage of the fact that she was too intoxicated to know what was going on. The boys admitted to committing the crime. At the hearing at which they copped to raping the girl, the judge, Steven G. Salant, decided that the most important issue he needed to address was the girl’s behavior. That’s right. Here’s a quote from the article:

Salant, who described the rape as “horrific,” only discussed the girl’s behavior the night of the party, not the boys’, at the hearing. The girl and two friends decided to have a party with no adult supervision and were “chugging alcohol,” he said, and some in attendance were engaging in sexual activities. The victim was drunk and “engaged in risky and provocative behavior” like sitting on people’s laps and talking about “hooking up,” he said.

“I’m telling you this not to excuse behavior, but this was a disaster waiting to happen,” Salant said. “…There was a dynamic at work here. There were things going on here. It doesn’t make the respondents any less worthy of blame but what it does mean is I have to determine whether what we have here is sexual predators or respondents who acted horribly. …They did not get that when a girl is intoxicated and presents herself in that manner you do not take advantage.” …

The victim’s father said he filed a complaint against the judge with the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities last week because of what he described as inappropriate comments he made about his daughter, such as saying that she had been “provocative and exhibited sexual behavior towards the male attendees” and that “she may have underlying issues of her own.”[sic]

The victim, who has had to move to Nevada because the rape and the harassment she suffered afterward (that’s right, motherfuckers at school harassed the victim, not that that’s a huge surprise) have basically destroyed her life, reported that she had to sleep with her mother or sister every night as she was afraid to sleep by herself, but Salant seems more worried about the suffering the poor rapists will have to undergo, being sentenced to probation and all (no, I am not kidding, they were only sentenced to probation, and two of them are BACK at the school they previously attended with the victim). Salant had only a few moments to make a statement of opinion regarding the case. He had just one opportunity to display his dazzling and distinguished judicial skill and to project a smidgen of his legal genius out into the world. Just one shot to get a zinger onto the trial record, and he chose to use it to express his distaste for the fact that these boys would be punished for raping someone who was clearly asking for it.

I mean, that’s what the quote says, isn’t it? Why make mention of the fact that she was drunk? Why bother bringing up the fact that she sat on someone’s lap? Why would it matter if she’d spent the whole god-damned night talking about “hooking up”? Why is a drunk girl a “disaster waiting to happen” unless we’re discussing a slip-and-fall accident? Why is it necessary to go on record as saying you think there’s a difference between sexual predators and three dudes who plan out and commit a gang rape? What, exactly, is that difference? Does this guy really expect us to believe that dudes who are about to graduate from high school don’t know that it’s not cool to lock an incapacitated girl in a bathroom and rape her? Where are the condemnations, the admonitions, the outrage over the boys’ CALCULATED DECISION to gang rape a young woman?

Really, now, is underage drinking and flirting the pressing issue at hand here? Is the victim the one who warrants public reproval? On a scale of “come on, dude, that shit happens every day, everywhere” to “holy shit, that’s so fucked up I can’t handle it,” where does the girl getting drunk fall? Pretty sure it’s on the left end, right? And what about three dudes gang raping a vulnerable young woman? Somewhere right about the exact other end of that continuum, I’d say. But that’s because I’m a person who recognizes the fact that a young woman is a human being and deserves to live free of the threat of gang rape even if she gets drunk.

Not only do we have to tolerate a legal system that punishes just shy of 6% of rapists, but we also — on the off chance our attackers do get some kind of punishment (though it’s arguable whether probation counts) — have to suffer being called stupid, immoral sluts in open court by phallocratic, rape apologist judges? I call bullshit on that.

If I were Martin O’Malley, the distinguished governor of Maryland, I’d be pretty ashamed of myself right now for appointing Steven G. Salant to the Montgomery County Circuit Court. If you agree, feel free to head over to his page and contact him to tell him so.

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Is anyone else not surprised?

12 Oct

I’m not going to write a big post analyzing the Roman Polanski case because it couldn’t be more obvious that he deserves to be in prison, and nothing else needs saying. But, I will say that when I heard there was a petition signed by 100 Hollywood assholes who think the poor guy deserves a break (tiny violin, tiny violin), I wondered if old Steve Soderbergh might have signed. I checked it out and, sure enough, the director who lambasted us closed-minded troglodytes who weren’t too keen on his efforts to mainstream Sasha Grey — one of the most aggressively exploited young women in the porn industry — for our reactionary refusal to accept her natural sexuality (right, I’m sure she was born hoping to be physically, verbally, and sexually abused on tape) is just outraged that we’d attempt to prosecute a child rapist. Soderbergh, you see, is an artiste, someone who knows art when he sees it, and he has decided, like 99 other artistes living in the 310 area code, that art trumps rape. And who wouldn’t listen to the legal and artistic opinions of the man behind the film Erin Brockovich?

Expect a more elaborate post about this clown in the near future.

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Halloween approaches. Time to dress your dog up like a bee in a porno.

10 Oct

Come the fuck on, dude. I just went over to check out my Twitter page, where I came across a tweet (holy shit, did I just use that word?) posted by Bitch PhD linking to a page that looks to be a joint effort by the Spoiled Rotten Doggies (retch) site and The Extreme Halloween Network. What kinds of activities The Extreme Halloween Network can be involved in I can only imagine. Armed trick-or-treating? Doorstep parkour? Dressing up as characters from 1997 Mountain Dew commercials? I’m sure it goes the fuck off, but I digress. This particular site, far from hyping anything particularly x-treme, is jumping on the hosey Halloween costume bandwagon and offering sssexxxaaay women’s Halloween getups that come with matching miniature versions for dogs.

lg83207Unbelievable. First of all, I’m really sick of the pirate craze. REALLY sick. It’s officially been stupid for a minimum of five years — more likely eight — and the fact that any adult is still into it after the advent of Jolly Roger underwear for toddlers really makes me wonder. And then there’s the pink. Why is it that any time one wants to make a “women’s version” of something, they just replace one of the colors with pink, tart it up, and act like they’re doing womankind a favor? Pirates, as boring a subject as they are at this point, certainly weren’t out wearing ruffly panties and pink, off-the-shoulder peasant tops while they hopped aboard seagoing junks and swiped all the booty on board. Nor were they likely to have been wearing thigh-high pink-ribbon-trimmed stockings on their peg legs. Apparently, in order to put together the “women’s version” of a particular Halloween costume, the creative team has to figure out a way to cross the sartorial stylings of some fantastical character with those of a female infant and those of a stripper. Imagine the visionary vibe at the meeting at which these dudes had to figure out how to bring a little asshole dog into the mix.

la83261

Alright, so the pirate costume isn’t the only thing on offer, but whatever. They’re all the same. The outfits without fail include thigh-highs, a skirt that barely covers the culo, some off-the-shoulder or sleeveless shirt, and a stupid hat, no matter what character is being portrayed. And the dog versions, which are naturally modeled by tiny Chihuahuas, are all just miniature facsimiles of mama’s costume, so your dog can be sexually objectified too!

la21055Isn’t that cute? The dog looks like it’s filming a (more) pornographic version of the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video!

Seriously, dude, have the porn and entertainment industries so thoroughly brainwashed the American female into believing that her life ought to revolve around eliciting boners that we’ve now moved on to dogs? I hated most dog people before I’d even seen this site, but my conversion is now complete. Not only do I have to suffer listening to people tell me how their relationship with their dog is exactly the same as that of other people’s with their children (or better); not only do I have to tolerate reading bumper stickers on the backs of SUVs telling me that some North Face-vest-wearing dork’s Weimaraner is smarter than “your” honor student; not only do I have to pretend I don’t think it’s flabbergastingly rude for people to bring their dogs to cafes where I’m attempting to eat and drink; not only do I have to suffer with equanimity the slobbering of strangers’ dogs all over my shoes while I sit in the various parks I sit in (and even pretend it’s cute); not only do I have to endure the general thoughtlessness, narcissism, and sense of entitlement of the average dog owner when it comes to the behavior of their pets; but now I have also been forced to confront the fact that this exists.

I don’t dislike dogs. Dogs are cute and often very entertaining  (though they stink a little more than I’d like them to), and I don’t mind seeing them around and even petting one occasionally. I won’t blame dogs for this abomination and affront to human decency and self-respect. I won’t blame the victim, as it were. Dogs don’t read blogs or dress themselves, so I’ll leave them out of it. Female pet owners and Halloween costume-wearers, on the other hand, I’d like to ask a question: Don’t you think it’s kind of insulting that when you have just one chance a year to be whatever you want, you’re still expected to be a sex object? Can’t we have one day of rest in 365? Men get to pretend to be any fanciful character their psyches can devise on Halloween. They don’t often come up with anything all that interesting, but still, they get to be whatever they want. And we’re supposed to also be whatever they want? That’s a pretty shitty deal.

The fuckability mandate sucks. Why foist it upon your poor dog? And besides, think about it for a minute. Is there a single thing on this planet that is more absurd than a sexually provocative dog costume? I’m going to try to think of something.

Hold on.

I’m trying.

Still trying…

OK, MRAs come to mind, but other than that I’m at a loss and will be taking suggestions in comments.

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Holy shit, does this rule.

7 Oct

I received this list in an e-mail and I’m pretty sure it’s incumbent upon me to share it with the world, seeing as it’s the greatest thing I’ve read in weeks. I especially like number eight.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime — no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

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