Althouse

The propaganda is working. Now I want a suffragette girlfriend.

You drive a hard bargain. But I'm buying whatever you're selling.

Was that supposed to be against the[m]?

Don't threaten me with a good time!

Kinky!!!

Yes please 

There’s something upsetting but also hilarious about this “If women get the vote, they’ll automatically become your supreme overlords” fearmongering. I saw some Spanish right winger the other day saying very seriously on an interview that we can't give political power to women because sexism exists for a reason. We'd only fuck when they want, he said. He argued that that's such a powerful tool of mind control that they'll become our overlords in no time if we supported the si es si 'yes means yes' law we recently passed in Spain; the law defines consent so rapists don't get away with it, btw. 

The thing is that it didn't feel like propaganda to me. It seemed like the guy truly believed what he was saying. Made me think. Like, wtf. If that's how they think, then it makes sense they defend sexism so bad. It's natural too that I defend feminism so bad, given there's people like that out there.

Or, as another commenter puts it: 

"What chance has a mere manchild"

There's no decent, ethical argument against equal rights for women. The argument — evident in both of those Reddit themes — is that men's minds are so subordinated to their sex drive that women must be subordinated because if they are given equality they will easily and naturally rise to dominance. It's an argument written in nature: The best chance at equality is male dominance. What an awful argument! But that is the argument, put clearly and bluntly. 

"... around their caudal peduncle – the tail stock – causing it to necrotise... a horrible slow death...."

Says Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan," quoted in "Save whales or eat lobster? The battle reaches the White House/Fishing gear used by Maine lobstermen is killing right whales. Will boosting a $1bn industry trump protecting an endangered species?" (The Guardian)(The White House served lobster at a recent state dinner).

In his effort to stir up an appreciation for whales that outstrips our taste for lobster, Hoare stresses their "very long sessions of foreplay of three or four hours." 

Males possess the biggest testes of any animal on the planet, and the mating often involves several males and a single female – a “socially active group” in scientific terms. “You see them rolling around in shallow water in a very sensual way, stroking each other with their flippers. There are a lot of animals involved, and it’s clearly erotic. They seem so caught up in the moment.”

When you think about how far you would go sacrificing your own interests for the sake of saving an animal from suffering and needless death, how much are you counting their sexual performance? What counts more — the size of their testicles, the amount of time devoted to insuring that the female has an orgasm, or the extent to which they seem to be having what the humans call "fun"?

Writes Dana Goodyear in "Harvey Weinstein, the Monster of #MeToo/If Weinstein is acquitted in L.A., it will be tempting to conclude that #MeToo is over. But, even if he is convicted, some may reach the same conclusion" (The New Yorker).

The jury has been deliberating for 3 days so far. Today is Day 4, so the prospect of acquittal is real.

Many of Weinstein’s accusers are women who sought access to an industry over which Weinstein held sway, and who continued to strive for it in spite of his alleged abuse. They still wanted the job, the chance....

Two of the witnesses... like many other Weinstein accusers, kept in touch with him afterward...

When the defense told [one witness] that no one had forced her to go to Weinstein’s hotel room on a subsequent occasion, when she had set up a business meeting between Weinstein and a male friend of hers, she parried, “My ego forced me to.”...

[Natassia] Malthe, a frank and salty witness—Weinstein, she said, was a “fat fuck”—suggested that, having already been raped, she “wanted to make the best of this situation... He has you by the fucking throat, knowing that, if you don’t comply, that your career is down the drain, knowing that this thing you’ve worked on for months . . . and that’s not right.”...

If Malthe’s and other similar accounts are true, this is Weinstein at his most diabolical: violating women and then dangling phantom go-nowhere gigs to create an elaborate fiction of an exchange for some future defense, or perhaps to better defend his own conscience from misgivings and moral pangs....

Will a jury find that a woman’s desire to work undermines her account of being sexually violated in the process? Will it believe that these women, participating in a criminal case, are gleefully jumping on what [defense lawyer Alan Jackson] called the “2017 dogpile”? Arguing that Jane Doe No. 3 and Siebel Newsom both engaged in consensual relationships with Weinstein for their own benefit (“He benefitted, and she benefitted”),  Jackson said that after 2017 they were “desperate to relabel their relationships with Harvey Weinstein.”

Siebel Newsom, he said, “cannot square in her mind the idea that she’s a successful, well-educated, well-bred, refined woman who had consensual sex with Harvey Weinstein in exchange for opportunity and access.”

It was “transactional sex,” he said, and Siebel Newsom had buyer’s remorse. But, he said, “regret is far from rape. You don’t get to rewrite your own history, no matter who you’re married to.”

ADDED: Let's look at that question I put in the post title: "What should a woman want?"

Weinstein's lawyers weren't questioning women's ambition. They were acknowledging and crediting women's ambition. As I read those quotes from the defense's closing argument, they were characterizing the women as individuals with full agency, choosing to pay with sex to get what they wanted.

That is, there was consent. Obviously, that doesn't mean a business should be run like that. But in the trial, it is only proffered as a defense to the criminal charge of rape, not as a reason to think transactional sex is not a problem.

But it's easy to condemn rape, and very hard to get into the complex problem of transactional sex. But in the good old days of radical feminism, we did get into that problem. Once you are there, you will be critiquing all the relationships you want to feel warm and romantic about — including the marriage of Siebel and Gavin... and your own marriage. 

AND: What would a rule against transactional sex look like? The only permissible sex would be sex for sex — an equal exchange. Both (or all) parties want the sex precisely because they want the sex and nothing else. That's a high ideal. You might want to try to adhere to it as a matter of personal ethics, but I can't believe you'd want it as a legally enforceable standard of conduct. I'll bet you wouldn't even accept it socially as a basis for judging other people.

"... Carl Rogers, Frederick Perls, and Albert Ellis. The film was produced and narrated by the psychologist Everett L. Shostrum, who was Szymanski’s personal therapist and who recruited her for this starring role.... 'He told Gloria that the films would only be used in schools and colleges to teach psychology students so imagine her surprise then when making her breakfast pancakes a year or so later to see her interview with Dr. Perls on TV and then she found out that the films were going to be shown in full in movie theatres all over the country.'... She talks, with frankness and charm, about her daddy issues and her pinings for smart, authoritative men. If not for the clinical setting and the disapproving gaze of the therapists, her desires would seem normal—which, of course, they are...."

From "Gender Critique Meets Lewd Spectacle in 'The Patient Gloria'/Gina Moxley’s play examines the sexual and behavioral strictures on women through the lens of psychotherapy circa 1964" (The New Yorker).

Even as disease could be perceived as health — see the first post of today — health could be perceived as disease.

ADDED: I believe it is a terrible invasion of privacy, but nevertheless, I found the original film on YouTube, so I present it here: 

Now, Benson, who is 92, is interviewed in "My Coffee With Stanley Kubrick" (NY Magazine).

I sat through it three times before I wrote that letter. That was a time when there was a tremendous interest in the difference between the sexuality of real, ordinary people — real life — and the prudery of Hollywood. I don’t think prudery is a good idea ever. So I forced myself to go even to pornographic films. I couldn’t stand them, but I did it... But that was the background from which I wrote that letter.

If I were to write a letter about Strangelove today, I would want to talk about the sexuality in the movie and its connection to politics. I see it around us all the time right now — it’s seamless. You can’t take them apart. They feed on each other, and I believe I see that in the far right....

Yes, people are not talking enough these days — not deeply, anyway — about sexuality and politics. Somehow, there's more of a sexual quality to the right wing. According to Benson!

While we were walking together before coffee, he said, “I’m making a film about outer space and aliens. What do you think aliens look like?” I have never forgotten that question, because I had never thought about what aliens look like. The question just sat in my mind, and recently I thought, Now I know the answer to the question. Too bad Stanley Kubrick’s not here to hear it.

Here's that letter she wrote:

From "China sentences Canadian pop singer Kris Wu to 13 years in jail for rape" (NY Post).

What is the crime of assembling a crowd to engage in sexual promiscuity?

I found this discussion in a 2019 blog post "Law and sexual repression in China" by Yinan Shen (Feminist Legal Theory):

According to Article 301 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, group licentiousness is a crime based on the view that assembling a crowd to engage in sexual promiscuity reflects public contempt for state law and social morality. Specifically, it refers to a gathering of three or more people (men and/or women) engaging in sexual activity and other promiscuous activities.

The activity of the participants must be voluntary. The state views such behavior as violating the public order. Those who gather for promiscuous activities shall experience criminal detention or public surveillance or imprisonment for not more than fives years [sic]. There has been much talk of the law being repealed.

Legal experts argue that there are no victims from voluntary group sex which generally takes place in private and hidden places and does not endanger public order. Why, then, should the law punish such harmless acts?

There are opposing voices say that these group sex acts can’t match the traditional Chinese morality. In my opinion, law is the lowest standard of morality. We can require the public to respect the law and use the standard of law. But we can not ask the public to act following all the traditional morality whatever it is correct or decadent....

From "New Endorsements for College Athletes Resurface an Old Concern: Sex Sells/Female college athletes are making millions thanks to their large social media followings. But some who have fought for equity in women’s sports worry that their brand building is regressive" (NYT). 

1. Is it regressive of the NYT to illustrate that article with many photos of scantily clad lovely young women?

2. Once we're following sports at all, we're staring at the bodies of people with great bodies. We're talking about spectator sports. What part of spectating is superior to other parts of spectating? 

3. When you participate in sports, isn't some part of what you are doing about trying to look good?

4. The article conflates good looks and sexiness. The only "sexiness" it's talking about is good looks. Ironically, that's retrograde. If a woman is just being seen looking great, to say she's using her sexuality is sexist.