Whatcha Reading?

[Mark]

Yesterday I noticed in one of his comments on COTO that Waldo is reading, Family of Secrets. I got that book from the library the other day and just started reading it myself.

Come across any good books lately?

I want to read Eva Golinger's recent book, The Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion, but it was published in Venezuela in Spanish and I don't know if it is out in English yet.

[Mark]

Bo says, "Nothing wrong with fantasy when you know it's fantasy."

I agree, BO. But there is something wrong with fantasy when you think it's freedom of speech or when it can do real harm to real people.

My first introduction to politics was from science fiction, because the only way anyone could criticize our government and still get published was to write as if they were criticizing some other life-form in some other universe.

Strange country where critical thinkers have big problems trying to publish, but there's a huge home porn industry (in addition to the multi-billion-dollar commercial porn industry) that has no difficulties reaching a wide audience at all. And I've seen many more people on many large blogs defending kiddy porn than defending Ward Churchill.

Great time to mention one of my fave writers, Andrew Vachss. I've read every book he has published except for the most recent, the last of the Burke series, which I got from the library a few days ago and haven't started yet. Vachss started writing to support his pro bono legal practice defending sexually abused kids. He once worked in public health--until he came across an abused infant with a sexually transmitted disease. He's one of the good guys in this fucked-up fascist world.

[BO]

"Use it often?" Interesting choice of words. As a means to an end? Or to win friends and influence people?

[Mark]

Bill Hicks does say it well, Stone.

But just having a dick doesn't cause sexual thoughts. There are things like hormones and blood circulation involved also. There's a big market in pills for older guys with fewer hormones and restricted blood circulation.

And then there's the jadedness factor. Things that used to get people really excited, like a glimpse of neck or ankle, don't do much for generations raised on porn.

If it is all "amateur, no fake tits, and no soundtracks," is it still fantasy?

Commercial porn is trying to sell something the same way that TV ads use sex to sell something, but what it is selling is patriarchy according to Jensen.

If Hedges is saying that porn is just another distraction, I think he's right. If you need porn to masturbate, you're not horny. If you're horny, you don't need porn to masturbate.

Feminist liberal intellectuals come in more than one sex, Stone. Robert Jensen and Stan Gof are feminist liberal intellectuals, and last I heard, they were still male, still married, and still have dicks. I don't think you'd make an enemy of them by admitting that you like and use porn, and I don't think you'd make an enemy of females who are feminist liberal intellectuals by admitting that you like and use porn. Most feminist liberal intellectuals, male, female, or intersex, already assume it to be the case in our materialistic porn-saturated culture that most people like and use porn, drive cars, have cell phones, etc. It's the American way of life.

It's all just a fantasy anyway, right?

[Mark]

Uh, you think that admitting to liking porn and using it often might make you enemies among feminist liberal intellectuals, but you consider yourself a feminist? So you don't consider yourself a liberal intellectual?

Weed promotes appetite and is known to give people the munchies. But I've never heard of anyone who was notoriously hungry who liked weed and smoked it often because it helped them eat.

Remember the kids' book, Dumbo the Elephant? Dumbo was able to fly as long as he had his feather, but one day he was flying and he dropped the feather. He was about to crash to the ground but people started yelling, "Hey, Dumbo, you don't need the feather--you can fly without it!" And sure enough, Dumbo was able to fly without it.

Of course if I need opiates to ease my pain and enable me to function, and I used to, I'm not going to be able to function without them and as long as I believe that I need them, I won't even try. Of course I'll need more and more as time goes on and that bar gets raised. Looking back, it never did occur to me that rather than helping me function, they were making it more difficult. I still think that opiates should be freely available to anyone who needs them, and it pisses me off that they're usually prescribed only for physical pain and not for psychic pain, when our professional torturers admit that psychic pain is more difficult to endure, but that sort of hypocrisy is typical of our fascist culture.

I intend to get around to reading the Hedges book. I'm curious to know what he has to say about porn. If I disagree with his arguments, I'll try to refute them. If I agree with his arguments, I might cite them some time. But I'm not going to reject the book because somebody says that he rips on porn. I don't think anything should be verboten to critical thinking. How would that differ from websites that ban people who are critical of Obama or the Democrats? "Yeah, what you're saying is true, but it is critical of Obama and that will never do because we need Obama to help us, so you're banned."

Some males come to feminism out of self-interest rather than paternalism. Many males believe that they need females or female-equivalents in order to achieve their Reichian release, so when they don't have access to females, they subjugate other males. An example of the sociocultural gender role of women being imposed on males, rather than on females, was described by Moses Diamini (“Hell-Hole Robben Island,” African World Press, 1984), and recounted by Kate Millett (“The Politics of Cruelty,” W.W.Norton, 1994). On the infamous South African prison island where Nelson Mandela spent so many years, there was a fight between two rival prison gangs. The winners killed the losers, except for those who were willing to become women in order to survive. These women, and no quotation marks are necessary, for women is what they were, became household and sex slaves, wore traditionally feminine clothes, took traditionally feminine names, and were referred to with traditionally feminine pronouns. Although they were women, they did not undergo genital surgery or apply for legal status as female, so they were indisputably male. The violence that forced these males to become women is no different from the violence that forced our female ancestors to become women. There’s even a Greek word for the phenomenon of male armies swooping down on peaceful towns and villages, killing the adult males and taking the females and children as wives and slaves, and at least one such event is described in the Old Testament. There was little difference between wives and slaves in those days, in that the man who owned them could demand absolute obedience from, and had the same power of life and death over both. Both wives and slaves were considered to be property and forbidden to own property, and were also denied literacy for fear that their descendants might learn of their origin and rebel. The sociocultural gender role of women is no more natural to females than to males, was originally imposed through violence, and the statistics showing that 5,000 years later, at least one out of four females in this country is a victim of domestic violence, prove, I believe, that despite acculturation, ultimately patriarchal gender roles can be established and maintained no other way. These gender roles shape our sexuality whether we want them to or not and they are reinforced by porn.

Yes, having access to porn, to females, or to female-equivalents, will help achieve Reichian release. If there's sex in an afterlife, Wilhelm Reich is probably still getting off just watching you.

[hannah j]

[waldopaper]

Oh man... have I EVER been 'round this tree a million times... been savin' up THIS discussion for DESERT.

I took more "womens' studies" courses than I needed to... and also more "Indian (as in kow-a-bunga, not Hindu) courses than I needed to... because they interested me. When I got into my little "literary" niche at IU, I was the only dude who did not run away when the diesel-dyke "feminists" came around to beat the shit out of old white dudes as a matter of principle. Why? Because they usually brought COOKIES! I would take my ass-whuppin for them oatmeal-raisin jobbies. AND-- many of our "arguments" were about PORN.

Those old bats (MY age) had no concept whatsoever of media, males, economics... or anything else. As far as they were concerned, "porn" (which they did not understand AT ALL) used "women" as "objects" (hey-Guinevere- we are ALL fucking "objects" to the Fatties... see my "Marxist" bias shining thru?). To say anything used anybody as tools, therefore it was bad- was stupid, simplistic, and demonstrated absolutely no fucking concept of the real "carbon world" in which most of us temporarily dwell.

However-- I think Hedges is right (DUH)... porn is fantasy... and perfectly illustrates how most of us will easily swap fantasy for "reality" (whatever-the-fuck THAT means). I haven't read the book (yet), but I DOUBT that his position is "porn is bad," just another example of how fantasy is easier and more accessible than "reality." Well- DUH. It always HAS been. That's why it "sells." The "handsome prince" and the "beautiful princess," a lot more palatable then the Jabba-the-Hut corpulent monarchist fucks who are actually running your lives. It worked throughout the Middle Ages, and became the meme-of-choice for the serfs. They had NO CHOICE anyway, so... why NOT?

The bottom line is: throwin your hat down and stomping on it (as a serf) and saying, "...this shit has gone FAR ENOUGH." It has happened before... it will happen again... and the second-(or whatever)-"wave" of diesel-dyke "feminists'" interpretation of "porn" is bullshit. Why? Because we are ALL just "objects" to the Fats ("Marxist' bias again)...and it does not matter if we are men, women, dogs or cars. Or computers. If it makes money for the Fats... it's cool... if it exposes them for the Jabba-the-Hut fucks they really are, it's not.

In the end, I found the "porn" argument to be really tiresome.

[Mark]

I believe every word of that, Pan. I think the U.S. educational system has deteriorated to the point where shit and porn are more acceptable than a Ward Churchill essay, and nuclear weapons engineers who live on porn and are full of shit are the best and the brightest it can produce.

[Mark]

Gays and lesbians are not immune to economic exploitation or domestic violence, and some are even more rigid about gender roles (traditional, transferred, reversed, twisted, or whatever) than straights. There are even intersex people who, after having been genitally mutilated as infants because their parents and doctors thought it would help them fit into one gender role or the other, still believe in gender roles.

Shakespeare laid it out, the world is a stage, and in order to play a gender role or any other social or theatrical role, you need the appropriate character name, costumes, speech patterns, hair, make-up (or lack thereof), moves, etc. Some roles you audition for, some were assigned at birth. And it is, of course, the fatties who decide what roles will be assigned, because they wouldn't want all the serfs and slaves and extras acting like fatties instead of acting like serfs and slaves and extras.

Most of you have, or at least imagine that you can have a relationship. In order to do that, you need to have a social role. I can't bond, so I threw away that fantasy a long time ago. Reality doesn't require a role. Reality doesn't require me to act like anything I'm not. I've mastered so many different roles that in most situations I can instinctively jump to one that is suitable and might enable me to survive. But I don't think that any of them are me, even if I identified with them strongly for long periods of time, any more than an actor thinks that one of the roles they portray is who they are.

I do indulge in fantasies now and then. Mine involve turtles.

[BO]

Is the lead character in your fantasy called Yertle, by any chance?

Yertle the Turtle is one of my favorite books.

[Mark]

Yertle's cool.

If you click here and then click on the "next" button in the top right corner of the picture until you get to the fourth slide, you'll see the turtle I love. I don't know if he's male or female, though. I'm just a fool for a pretty face.

[Mark]

Just started reading Mrs. Dred Scott.

The first few pages introduce Harriet as the young black slave of a white Indian agent in the then frontier that would later be Minnesota. And the villain as the book begins, is the agent of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, a corporation that sees whites, blacks, and Indians as either a means to or as interfering with profits. This could be interesting.

[curt]

I haven't been reading any books lately. It's probably been a year since I read a book. Don't quite know why but my guess is that I need new eyeglasses. I spend a load of time in front of the damned puter each and almost every day, occupationally, and I read a lot of stuff online most every evening. My eyes keep askin for a vacation but they're not gettin it. I find youtube is a kind of alternative to reading. For the past two days, I've been youtubin "The Men Who Killed Kennedey", a somewhat lengthy documentary that is well worth looking into. This came about as Jan (a member here) asked me what that fellars name was that says he shot JFK. I said "James Files". So I showed Jan the Remington Files said he had used to kill JFK.....on a website I had last seen, oh, a good five years or more ago and I noticed there had been new stuff added. So when I got home, I went over it all again and it led me to this documentary. I'm kinda lost in these things. It's like readin a good book over and over again and discoverin new things each time.

I haven't been able to write anything lately. All petered out, I guess. This is where gardening comes in handy. And riding motorcycles. Saw a friend for the first time in three years this past saturday. He's now short one finger and has a stiff leg. Crashed his knee-dragger into a VW Bus. Was goin to fast. Typical. They wanted to take his leg off. I asked him if he had learned to read while all laid up and he said he hated reading. I don't hate it. It's just like sex. Sometimes ya get some and sometimes it's better ya don't.