"It’s not Jesus who told them to hunt down abortion-seeking Texas women like feral hogs." Nah, that was Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, who both want to take the lead in turning Texas into Gilead.
Here's what I don't understand. Women do have one tool that they can wield against men- SEX. Anyone's who's ever read Lysistrata understands that women refused to service their men until they stopped fighting their stupid wars. It worked, because as men became progressively hornier, they realized who was really calling the (money) shots.
So, ladies...if you really want things to change, you have a very simple weapon at your disposal. No nookie until men stop acting as if you're property.
I have no idea how long it would take for something like this to work, of course, but I think a nationwide sex strike would be rather entertaining to watch. Imagine Tucker Carlson's rent boys just saying "NO!" for a month or three. Wouldn't THAT be fun to watch play out??
Boy, don't you know he has them, too. His closet must be so insanely filthy, they haven't invented words depraved enough to describe it. Like you, Lysistrata came to mind, too, but there's a raft of Internet porn these days. Doubt we ladies could dissuade anybody from that.
Sorry to pee on your Cheerios, but even inside the satire (?) there's a serious issue that needs to be considered. Namely, 'Lysistrata' was a *fantasy*, and comedy at that. It never happened. Yet you speak about it as though it were an historical event. Perhaps I'm missing the slyer elements of satire in your post, but there is also Poe's Law.
Women in Greece at that time had less agency than they do today, and the concept of marital rape did not even exist. The legal "precedent" that Alito appealed to in the circulated memo is predicated upon the claim that women are *incapable* of agency, and marital rape is impossible in principle. Much (most?) of the entire Incel movement is built upon the idea that women are already withholding sex from "the worthy," and this claim is used exclusively to gin up misogynistic violence.
Men are not going to have an epiphany because the women -- whom they view as *property* -- decide to withhold sex.
Jack definitely knows that Lysistrata was written tongue-in-cheek. Like you, he's a super smart guy. But compared to Roman law, at least Athenian law permitted a woman to divorce her husband. The problem was, of course, she had no legal claim to her kids.
Incels are deeply closeted pedos and homosexuals. Full stop.
True enough, Gary...but I'm idealistic enough to pretend that it COULD have happened.
I do love you working in the "Incel" movement, though. Incels who consider themselves "worthy" and "deserving" of sex really need to up their game...and they'd be well-served by starting with self-awareness, which most of them lack.
Most of these creeps, and I'm starting with Roosh V, who seems to be the titular head of the Incel movement, wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she showed up naked with an instructional YouTube video.
What's interesting to me is that these straight white men in charge are a decided minority. We've been beaten down over the millenia to believe that the sage old white males were the ones who should call the shots, but all the rest of us outnumber them by a ridiculous margin. We HAVE the power to stop them. We just need to realize that we CAN.
It takes a lot to become a true Atheist because growing up with the belief that there is an omnipotent God watching your every move and clocking your every thought is a hard one to shake. In my experience there are many who eschew a belief in the big guy but are terrified that he'll strike them down for having that belief. Somehow, I think that many of us think that we are going to get "in trouble" for standing up to all these authority figures when in fact it's that very belief that is keeping them in power and the rest of us "out" of power.
For the yokels, I soften my lack of faith by referring to myself as a "secular humanist." They have no idea what that is, most of the time, which makes things easier for me. Funny, isn't it, how the superstition remains even if the faith goes?
A friend of mine was an editor at Playboy many years back. She said that, at that side of the business, it was actually a pretty good place to work. One of the oft commented on Known Knowns in the office was that about 60% of the subscribers were women. Best guess was that the women wanted to track what was of interest to the men.
Acknowledging the generically (that is not a misspelling) hardwired tendency toward monogamy, that self-same monogamy is at its root propertarian in nature. We cannot even speak of our relationships except with possessive pronouns. It makes any kind of equality genuinely problematic.
But it also makes any notion of an "open relationship" or "free love" a fabulously tricky path to navigate as well. As you note, anything less than genuine and full commitment to the process is a bus accident waiting to happen. Witnessed something like that at Ren Faire some 20 years ago, one of several factors that led to the formulation of my "3 Rule". I've already told you those rules? Too bad:
1. Never go anywhere you're not invited.
2. Never trample over other people's relationships.
3. If you're going to feel guilty about it later, don't do it in the first place.
(Actually, they're more what you might call guidelines than rules, since there's plenty of room for error, ambiguity, and misinterpretation.)
So there's nothing wrong with an open relationship (per #2), and I've known a few that at the time ("count no one happy until they are dead") seemed to be working.
Love your guidelines! I'll add one more: once you sleep with someone, all bets are off.
I think free love works for some people, but dig down even a little, and you'll find that in 75% of the cases, it's a power play. That's been my observation, at least.
Me, I eschew that whole polygamy thing. Too many moving parts. I'd get confused.
Yeah, I've not had much personal interaction with the free love types beyond talking with a few. On a philosophical level, I find the idea of monogamy offensively propertarian to its root. But, on the other, I've never been with anyone who wasn't monogamous and I always respected those rules.
(By the bye, I believe "polyamory" is the preferred term since both poly -gamy and -andry are specific to a gender.)
"It’s not Jesus who told them to hunt down abortion-seeking Texas women like feral hogs." Nah, that was Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick, who both want to take the lead in turning Texas into Gilead.
Here's what I don't understand. Women do have one tool that they can wield against men- SEX. Anyone's who's ever read Lysistrata understands that women refused to service their men until they stopped fighting their stupid wars. It worked, because as men became progressively hornier, they realized who was really calling the (money) shots.
So, ladies...if you really want things to change, you have a very simple weapon at your disposal. No nookie until men stop acting as if you're property.
I have no idea how long it would take for something like this to work, of course, but I think a nationwide sex strike would be rather entertaining to watch. Imagine Tucker Carlson's rent boys just saying "NO!" for a month or three. Wouldn't THAT be fun to watch play out??
Ah, I think I just inspired myself.... :-)
Boy, don't you know he has them, too. His closet must be so insanely filthy, they haven't invented words depraved enough to describe it. Like you, Lysistrata came to mind, too, but there's a raft of Internet porn these days. Doubt we ladies could dissuade anybody from that.
Sorry to pee on your Cheerios, but even inside the satire (?) there's a serious issue that needs to be considered. Namely, 'Lysistrata' was a *fantasy*, and comedy at that. It never happened. Yet you speak about it as though it were an historical event. Perhaps I'm missing the slyer elements of satire in your post, but there is also Poe's Law.
Women in Greece at that time had less agency than they do today, and the concept of marital rape did not even exist. The legal "precedent" that Alito appealed to in the circulated memo is predicated upon the claim that women are *incapable* of agency, and marital rape is impossible in principle. Much (most?) of the entire Incel movement is built upon the idea that women are already withholding sex from "the worthy," and this claim is used exclusively to gin up misogynistic violence.
Men are not going to have an epiphany because the women -- whom they view as *property* -- decide to withhold sex.
Jack definitely knows that Lysistrata was written tongue-in-cheek. Like you, he's a super smart guy. But compared to Roman law, at least Athenian law permitted a woman to divorce her husband. The problem was, of course, she had no legal claim to her kids.
Incels are deeply closeted pedos and homosexuals. Full stop.
They're also just fuckin' scary weird and should all be the poster children for Thorazine. Full Stop. :-)
True enough, Gary...but I'm idealistic enough to pretend that it COULD have happened.
I do love you working in the "Incel" movement, though. Incels who consider themselves "worthy" and "deserving" of sex really need to up their game...and they'd be well-served by starting with self-awareness, which most of them lack.
Most of these creeps, and I'm starting with Roosh V, who seems to be the titular head of the Incel movement, wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she showed up naked with an instructional YouTube video.
None of those Incel bois would know what to do with a vagina if one magically appeared in front of them.
I will tell you about going to Hef's 75th Bday at the mansion when next we meet this summer!
Love this!
What's interesting to me is that these straight white men in charge are a decided minority. We've been beaten down over the millenia to believe that the sage old white males were the ones who should call the shots, but all the rest of us outnumber them by a ridiculous margin. We HAVE the power to stop them. We just need to realize that we CAN.
It takes a lot to become a true Atheist because growing up with the belief that there is an omnipotent God watching your every move and clocking your every thought is a hard one to shake. In my experience there are many who eschew a belief in the big guy but are terrified that he'll strike them down for having that belief. Somehow, I think that many of us think that we are going to get "in trouble" for standing up to all these authority figures when in fact it's that very belief that is keeping them in power and the rest of us "out" of power.
For the yokels, I soften my lack of faith by referring to myself as a "secular humanist." They have no idea what that is, most of the time, which makes things easier for me. Funny, isn't it, how the superstition remains even if the faith goes?
I 100% agree with what you said.
A friend of mine was an editor at Playboy many years back. She said that, at that side of the business, it was actually a pretty good place to work. One of the oft commented on Known Knowns in the office was that about 60% of the subscribers were women. Best guess was that the women wanted to track what was of interest to the men.
Acknowledging the generically (that is not a misspelling) hardwired tendency toward monogamy, that self-same monogamy is at its root propertarian in nature. We cannot even speak of our relationships except with possessive pronouns. It makes any kind of equality genuinely problematic.
But it also makes any notion of an "open relationship" or "free love" a fabulously tricky path to navigate as well. As you note, anything less than genuine and full commitment to the process is a bus accident waiting to happen. Witnessed something like that at Ren Faire some 20 years ago, one of several factors that led to the formulation of my "3 Rule". I've already told you those rules? Too bad:
1. Never go anywhere you're not invited.
2. Never trample over other people's relationships.
3. If you're going to feel guilty about it later, don't do it in the first place.
(Actually, they're more what you might call guidelines than rules, since there's plenty of room for error, ambiguity, and misinterpretation.)
So there's nothing wrong with an open relationship (per #2), and I've known a few that at the time ("count no one happy until they are dead") seemed to be working.
Love your guidelines! I'll add one more: once you sleep with someone, all bets are off.
I think free love works for some people, but dig down even a little, and you'll find that in 75% of the cases, it's a power play. That's been my observation, at least.
Me, I eschew that whole polygamy thing. Too many moving parts. I'd get confused.
Yeah, I've not had much personal interaction with the free love types beyond talking with a few. On a philosophical level, I find the idea of monogamy offensively propertarian to its root. But, on the other, I've never been with anyone who wasn't monogamous and I always respected those rules.
(By the bye, I believe "polyamory" is the preferred term since both poly -gamy and -andry are specific to a gender.)