Entry tags:

angst, meta, opinion, rant

Right, so. Let me see if I've got this right.

It's not okay to touch people's boobs at a comic-con. This is fine, I can understand that.

But it is okay to express why it's not okay to touch boobs at a con by advocating face-punching and nut-kicking, not just directed at the one wanker who suggested the boob-touching, but at all men.

Dear Feminists: kindly fuck off.

I really thought that we were finally getting somewhere. I thought that some of us had penises and some of us had vaginas, but that we looked at each other and we saw people. The rest was details. But no, everything has to be Us vs. Them and everybody has to be categorized into tiny little exclusive boxes. And specifically, all men fall into one of the two categories of Threat or Menace.

This should be a better world, a friend of mine said. A more honest one, where sex isn't shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where [one could] say, Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts, and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.

Nice idea. Then they made the mistake of trying it, which was pretty stupid. Then they made the further mistake of writing about it on the Internet.

About three hundred comments later, it all went horribly wrong.

I was particularly amused by the handful of people who, after two hundred comments all saying brilliant and beautiful and I wish I'd been there, piped up to post this is completely reprehensible and under no circumstances could anyone ever think it was remotely appropriate. And then, when I had the gall to ask a simple question like what distinguishes this from other forms of social interaction, or what's so different about boobs, all I get—from otherwise highly intelligent people whose thoughts I am honoured and privileged to read—is argument by repeated assertion and a whole lot of well if you don't understand, then I'm certainly not going to tell you.

You ever wonder why we filthy men spent centuries thinking you were all stupider than we are? It's because of shit like this. You won't talk to us.

I don't have boobs. I don't know what it's like. This is the Internet. We are having a discussion.

TALK TO US.

The Internet[...] work[s] how [it's] supposed to, crow the militant third-wavers at feministsf. How's that exactly? By stifling debate and restoring the status quo? By screeching the loudest until everyone else backs down?

Now we're back to the 1970s again—in which I'm scared to approach anybody in case they turn into a spitting harpy who tears my groin off when I offer them a compliment; in which men are from Mars and women are from Venus and this is apparently okay because acting like we are members of the same species is apparently beyond people; in which I can't have sex with anyone at all because even if they say yes they're probably just a brainwashed agent of the Patriarchy.

Now we live in a world where no-one is allowed to even think about questioning ingrained social mores, in case people shout at them on the Internet.

Thanks, feminists. I expect you think you've made progress.

ObWondermark.

~

Comments are disabled because when I say talk to us I mean us in general. Don't talk to me. I am tired of dealing with this bullshit and you've all depressed the hell out of me. I'll come back and play when you're capable of treating people as people.