I have had some challengers this week, although they do not choose to actually discuss anything, I am going to answer their fascinating questions anyway.
Objectification
There are many videos on this available on Youtube. The questioner asked me about this blog post, or rather made an attempt to say I was talking nonsense without actually reading it all the way through:
The questioner was a young American goth, who did not realise that even questioning it meant that his masculinity was a bit shaky.
I am not the kind of chick that has ever really required feminism. As I have previously mentioned, I was so obsessed with work that the question of my out-working the guys never arose. The mistake people make with objectification is mistaking it for seriousness. Whilst some uses of young men and women, in particular, are a bit OTT, we are past the point at which it becomes some subliminal form of making you feel bad. Everyone is aware what it is for. Please now watch the entire video below.
As you can see, objectification is here reduced to a matter of levity. Men like looking at women. Women are not to be encouraged to look at men in a societal set-up that favours them, since women are to be rendered dependent on them, hence our young man’s objection to my statement. The recent growth in male stripping etc indicates that America is developing a system of dual intimidation rather than relaxing gender roles as Europe has made some effort to do. This is for commercial reasons. They have also introduced a new concept of ‘ugly sex,’ which is what everybody else has been doing for years.
I do not come from a culture in which this is particularly relevant. I will do a post at some point on Scottish flirting, which I am sure will enlighten poor confused Wolfe no end.
When I say that men like to be objectified, they enjoy the humour and attention involved. I do not mean they necessarily like being treated as toys any more than a relatively serious woman does. In some cases, entire careers have been set up purely to get the kind of attention they crave in the case of men who really do like being treated as toys.
A great many men have openly commended Best Romance Ever which is a book very much centred on Kira’s peculiar anti-objectification of Sam. She maintains distance to achieve intimacy, in a way. This tells me that men are a lot more flexible than many women give them credit for, although the cover does indicate that it is a unisex book.
2. Conservatism
Some tiresome American Ayn Rand fan tells me that conservatism is about personal responsibility. No, conservatism is about having a life so easy that you cannot imagine it all falling apart and needing any help. The idea of something happening to you is unthinkable, and you refuse to imagine it. You do not care about other people in society, whether they live or die, or whether they ever get the chance to thrive. There’s no two ways about it, there is nothing moral about conservatism, American or British. Society is about the survival of all, not how much you have managed to get for yourself.
Ayn Rand was a darkly humorous psychotic narcissist who had the naive American media around her little finger. This doesn’t make you look very smart. Why not buy another gun and shoot some poor people, and cut out all the middle men? What do you mean no? Are you afraid you might be put into a private prison and subjected to capital labour for the rest of your life along with the massive proportion of your population you choose to incarcerate? Land of liberty, my fat ass. Land of free speech, spending your time and money suing each other for saying what you think. No thank you, America.
3. Brexit
America does not want us to leave the EU, because they are waiting for the EU to sign TTIP and TISA. This is a good argument for leaving. Cameron does not want us to leave the EU, because there is a fat job waiting for him if he keeps us in it. He is also waiting for the EU to sign us up to TTIP, as he knows perfectly well if we choose to leave, he will be doing it, and then he will have even bigger riots on his hands as we all object to TTIP. You can look forward to yet another spurious war to distract us.
It depends really on who you trust less, the faceless people in Europe, or the absolute scum the English voted into government. Leaving the single market on the promise of finding new markets outside seems like a spurious argument on one hand, on the other, will Britain get the chance to leave ever again? I do not trust either side of the argument, going by the people making the arguments, so it is important to examine the facts. In the absence of hang-ups about immigration, there is still something to be said for exit.
Having said this, I would have preferred the European experiment to have worked, but the fact Europe is even prepared to entertain TTIP or anything like it makes me think we would be better off without it. It is far easier to stop a small machine than a large one, as I have discussed in previous posts.
4. Twisty
Someone asked after Twisty. We are on an off period at the moment, as I am avoiding confronting an issue neither of us can do anything about. This is not a romantic issue, Twisty is an old friend who is very helpful, or very hateful, depending on mood. He will be annoyed that I referred to him as a finisher, but I will explain this in a different creativity post. To make up for this, here is Twisty’s film, much acclaimed and which, like his others, is all his own work.