November 27, 2017

"For most of history, we’ve taken for granted the implicit brutality of male sexuality."

"In 1976, the radical feminist and pornography opponent Andrea Dworkin said that the only sex between a man and a woman that could be undertaken without violence was sex with a flaccid penis: “I think that men will have to give up their precious erections,” she wrote. In the third century A.D., it is widely believed, the great Catholic theologian Origen, working on roughly the same principle, castrated himself."

From "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido" by Stephen Marche (in the NYT). Marche gets a little too personal:
Professionally, too, I have seen just how profoundly men don’t want to talk about their own gendered nature. In the spring, I published a male take on the fluctuations of gender and power in advanced economies; I was interviewed over 70 times by reporters from all over the world, but only three of them were men.
People not being interested in your book is not "profound." Especially if you promoted it with the phrase "fluctuations of gender and power in advanced economies."
Acknowledging the brutality of male libido is not, of course, some kind of excuse. Sigmund Freud recognized the id, and knew it as “a chaos, a caldron full of seething excitations.”... Freud also understood that repression, any repression, is inherently fluid and complicated and requires humility and self-searching to navigate....
We're taking Freud seriously again?! This makes me want to go back and reread what Andrea Dworkin wrote about Freud. Just a snippet*:
Inescapably, a woman’s body incarnates shame, her genitals especially signifying dirt and death: whether referred to in a Playboy party joke as “gash” or expounded on by Freud:
Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people become homosexual as a consequence of that impression, while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great majority surmount it, we are frankly not able to explain.
Just seeing those genitals turns a man gay or makes him rub up against rubber for a lifetime; to “surmount it,” this great fear caused by these monstrous female genitals, means to mount her successfully, unintimidated by the wound, her castration, the blood, the slime, the filth. “Oh yes,” wrote Freud to Jung, “I forgot to say that menstrual blood must be counted as excrement.”
Dworkin, Andrea. "Intercourse" (pp. 231-232). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
___________________

* Freudian innuendo intended.

102 comments:

rhhardin said...

It's not violent. It's persistent. Flowers. Dinner.

Henry said...

"taken for granted the implicit" is an odd phrase.

to accept without question or objection; assume

suggested but not directly expressed;

"To accept without question the not directly expressed" is how astrologists find their readers.

tim maguire said...

Men are so traumatized by the vagina that strong men recoil in horror but somehow forge ahead, while weaker men become gay.

Does that sound right? To anyone?

David said...

"Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital."

One at least if you count me as human.

Ken B said...

This is why people read horoscopes. They're better.

Henry said...

"History" is a long time. When I think of this topic historically, I don't think of Andrew Dworkin. I think of The Rape of the Sabines. Nothing implicit there, and not in the original either.

rhhardin said...

I always thought female genitals were nice. They're a little weird if you get to exploring but we're talking first impressions, I take it.

Bay Area Guy said...

I actually remember in the late 70s and 80s when Ms. Dworkin was getting some airtime. She was crusading against pornography and sex. It was odd because she sounded like a repressed right-wing evangelical, but she was on the far Left. I guess she missed the entire Sexual Revolution of the 60s. Some folks are late to the party.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Some people overgeneralize from their own experience.

MadisonMan said...

@rhhardin @8:23, Nevertheless, He Persisted.

Women will never understand men. Vice versa, too, but men long ago stopped trying.

Unknown said...

"...was sex with a flaccid penis: ..."

So the sex that leads to reproduction is not available.

So rape is necessary for reproduction.

So rape is not power, it is biology.

A lawyer could call that the Dworkin Defense.

-jj

tim in vermont said...

99% of the humans that the culture shames about their genitals are men.

buwaya said...

Some of us were discussing "The World According to Garp" a few days ago. Dworkin was one of Irving's models for the radical Ellen Jamesians.

Henry said...

My initial reading:

"For most of history, we've accepted without question the not directly expressed brutality of male sexuality.""

I think I'm using the wrong meaning for word "implicit" -- Mr. Marche probably intends:

essentially or very closely connected with; always to be found in.

Which leads to:

"To accept without question the essential"

"For most of history, we've accepted without question the essential brutality of male sexuality."

If it is essential, how else should one accept it? Thus castration.

Words spur chemical reactions in the brain. Mr. Marche attempts a chemical castration of his male readers.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

When is this 'feminist' insanity going to end?

I am seriously sick and tired of this crazy attitude that is doing nothing but poisoning the natural order and relationships between men and woman and between people in general.

I fear greatly for my poor grandson and other helpless male children who are going to be fed into the maws of a twisted and false ideology. The damage to the children and to society is going to be very ugly. Fortunately, for me, I will be dead before this rotten fruit drops from this diseased 'feminist' tree

rhhardin said...

Feminism is about castrating women, not castrating men.

Otto said...

Shit, shit and more shit. Ugly fat woman filled with hate and resentment,who brings nothing to the table.

Michael K said...

Biology is not allowed by these lovers of the mind.

Take a look at her.

She died in 2005 after her knees went out and had to be replaced. Massive obesity does that to you.

Roger Sweeny said...

Well, I'm not taking Freud seriously again.

Drago said...

Dust Bunny Queen: "When is this 'feminist' insanity going to end?"

When the islamists take over.

Michael K said...

I am seriously sick and tired of this crazy attitude that is doing nothing but poisoning the natural order and relationships between men and woman and between people in general.

I am starting to think that, if you just avoid college. you will be OK.

Maybe STEM courses. Accounting is probably safe. Avoid Humanities at all costs.

Anything with "Studies" in it will make you crazy,.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I can only marvel at the world these people inhabit. Who could conceive of a life's work so utterly useless?

Owen said...

"...just a snippet:...Freudian innuendo intended." Very clever. Both the castration anxiety and the old joke about Italian gay sex: "innuendo."

I would apologize for lowering the tone in this thread but I think Andrea Dworkin and Stephen Marche zeroed it out already. Nowhere to go but up.

MikeR said...

Just another example of progressives belatedly realizing that the old folks knew some stuff. All of this was taught to every girl half a century ago. Not as a deep seething secret, as this author wants to present it, but as a fact about an issue that men have. This is built into men's biology and there is nothing wrong with dealing with it straight.
It is built into women's biology as well; "Shades of Grey" seems to be doing awfully well.
A few traditionalists like Mike Pence are straightforward about it. Most others seem to deny the issue and/or sneer at him.

When I was much younger, I went to a talk by Dennis Prager on the topic of male sexuality. He put it to us straight: Men are bulls. Men are... Not as something bad, evil, but as a fact that both sexes need to deal with. Afterwards at the questions, some lady asked, "Okay, maybe you're like that, but how can you say that all men are like that?" Prager said, "Okay, men, what do you say? Anyone who's like that, raise your hand." All the men raised their hands at once. You should have seen the women, looking around. Imagine being in a crowded room, and suddenly realizing that half the people in the room around you are neo-Nazis. I will never forget it.
Later, some of us were talking. The women divided neatly into two opposing groups: (a) I can never accept that men could be like that. (b) Well, maybe they're like that but we're like that too. You just had to stand back and watch.

Bay Area Guy said...

I'm telling ya, perhaps as a society it would difficult to turn back the clock to reimplement the practice of "dating". But if we did, a lotta folks would be happier. Dressing up, washing the car, picking up the gal, going to the movies or dinner or ice cream parlor, holding hands, laughing, flirting, thinking about when and how to make the move - all that good stuff young people did.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Dust Bunny Queen: "When is this 'feminist' insanity going to end?"

Drago: When the islamists take over.

This is a very distinct possibility.

Sebastian said...

So if male sexuality is brutal in a way most women cannot and should not accept, how does this affect the feminist notion of "equality"?

robother said...

So, Penthouse was a KGB project designed to turn American men gay? Now its all starting to make sense.

MikeR said...

"'When the islamists take over.'
This is a very distinct possibility."
Nah. They aren't taking over. They are pushing and pushing. Politically correct idiots refuse to push back - till things explode. The distinct possibility is that neo-Nazis will gain power in Europe because people can find no one else to fight them. In the end the distinct possibility is that Western Civilization will prove too senescent to oppose them, and will be replaced by something crueler.

traditionalguy said...

Freud was a very successful con man. He sold his false promise of healing minds from dream analysis like Rasputin did his dreams. It had a learned science vocabulary stolen From ancient Greek Plays. He never cured anyone. Statistics showed more recovered from “nervous breakdowns” over 3 years with no Psychiatrist than recovered with one. But it gave rich men the power to get rid of their wives for a payoff to the Con man Doctor who pushed a Valium Rx.

On shell shock, now called ptsd, it was useless. To threaten upset people with incarceration complete with electro shock torture, it can’t be beat.

Caligula said...


Even if one were to grant that male sexuality is implicity brutal, wouldn't the next step be to ponder why that is so?

If the general rule among vertibrates is "males display, females choose" then surely it follows that male displays must be exquisitly tuned by female choice?

If male sexuality is indeed "implicitly brutal," would that not imply that must be because, generation after generation, females have selected these implicitly brutal males over their less brutal competitors? If one wishes to promote a political view of heterosexual interaction as consisting of male brutality acting against and imposing itself on females, how then does one explain the origins of male sexuality (other than by yet again discarding biology in favor of "social construction")?

Mr Wibble said...

Based on tumblr, it sure seems like a lot of feminists have fantasies about male brutality.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

“Oh yes,” wrote Freud to Jung, “I forgot to say that menstrual blood must be counted as excrement.”

Definition of excrement:

waste matter discharged from the body


Freud: 1
Dworkin: 0

Peter said...

This explains why most men prefer to do it under the blankets with the lights out.

If you want to look like a bien pensant today, you don't lean on Freud. You talk about how men were "hardwired" in those blissful hunter-gatherer days to freak out at female genitalia because the resulting fear and anxiety increased their sperm count and made them better hunters and warriors, thus ensuring the survival of the tribe. The id? Oedipus complexes? So 20th century. The cool guys today talk about natural selection.

rhhardin said...

Erik Satie, Brutal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4PF0d08avg

Darrell said...

Female genitalia was designed to give me an instant erection first time I saw it. God IS great.

Jersey Fled said...

Michael K:

STEM courses are not safe either. Several years ago I looked at a word problem in one of my daughter's high school math books. It went something like:

"A 1% increase in CO2 will result in a 2 degree increase in average global temperature. If CO2 concentrations increase at a compound rate of 3% per year, how many cute little penguins will die in Antartica."

Inga...Allie Oop said...

I for one am a feminist who actually likes the look of an erect penis, especially when it’s a friendly one coming at me. If my partner were to be frightened at the sight of my genitalia, I’d laugh my ass off and tell him to grow the hell up and be a man and to get the hell out of my house. What man in his right mind thinks the vulva looks like a castrated man?

As for Dworkin, someone should’ve told her that sex with a flaccid penis would be no fun.

Men can be brutal without an erect penis, a flaccid penis, or no penis at all. Women can be brutal too.

Paddy O said...

I don't think that's really what Origen was about, that sexuality is violence. For him it was more that lust was a defeating distraction. He also regretted it and his action was not favorably viewed by the early church. The argument was, and is, that we are able to discipline our passions, not be ruled by them. This is an essential Christian teaching that certainly wasn't isolated to Christians. Christians added the ideal that everyone can and should be disciplined, that this was possible in the transformation of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Such a new way of life was a way of peace and hope to our societies, as people no longer drive by their passions could find a new freedom of living together in community.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

traditionalguy said...
Freud was a very successful con man.


This is only partially true. As a scientist he was a con artist. But as someone attempting to explain what neuroscience still cannot adequately explain, he made a contribution. The problem was his followers, who insisted that what Freud did was 'science'. It was never science. Science does not rely heavily on Greek myths for its explanatory power.

There is a gray area in science where fantasists can make a contribution by opening up the range of possibilities to consider. At first Freud did this but the conversation became fixed and dogmatic rather than free flowing and open. It is good that his reputation has declined to allow that conversation to flow again, but it is also good that he opened up new ways of thinking about old problems.

Gusty Winds said...

I thought The Bible covered this topic pretty well.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Just seeing those genitals turns a man gay or makes him rub up against rubber for a lifetime...

To paraphrase George Orwell; One has to be a learned academic to believe that.

RNB said...

Heinlein rhapsodized about how they look like orchids.

SGT Ted said...

Dworkin is yet another data point that supports the fact that modern feminism, as an ideology, is driven by emotionally damaged and/or mentally ill women.

And the whole "looking at a vagina brings castration fear in men" thing...WTF is that? Talk about having it completely ass backwards.

traditionalguy said...

That Freud made up fear of castration shitck to con weak men. But it makes good fiction to attract donors to put on a play at huge cost. It seems that money is the issue in psychiatry, forever.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

"A 1% increase in CO2 will result in a 2 degree increase in average global temperature. If CO2 concentrations increase at a compound rate of 3% per year, how many cute little penguins will die in Antartica."

Less than now. Because the pack ice will recede and the "cute little penguins" will be better able to waddle their way to the ocean to feed and bring dead fish/food back to their cute little baby penguins. Less distance, more food, less energy expended. Duh.

Plus you can't answer that question until you know how many are dying now and at which locations in Antarctica.

The correct response is that with this limited information, Dear Teacher, it is impossible to answer this question. (My teachers were pretty frustrated with me.)

:-D

Gahrie said...

The entire purpose of the modern feminist movement is to emasculate men and boys.

Fernandinande said...

"I have seen just how profoundly men don’t want to talk about their own gendered nature."

Nobody in their right mind would want to talk to someone who talks like that.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Freud, to put it delicately, has issues, man!

I could go on about my fondness for female pudenda, but really, if you're so put off by a naked woman's appearance then maybe you should try and figure that problem out!

madAsHell said...

Pepper Schwartz is a sociologist at the U of Washington. She studies sexuality. She has put forth the notion of lesbian death bed.

Of course, the lesbian community rejects this notion.

Darrell said...

A 1% increase in CO2 will result in a 2 degree increase in average global temperature

CO2 is a lagging indicator--first the temperature rises, then the CO2 level increases. Scientists couldn't say that off the top of their heads in the 1970s and 1980s, so they kept quiet. But after, data were compiled that left no doubt.

Francisco D said...

I have been a Ph.D. psychologist for nearly 30 years. My training was at a Research 1 university that emphasized scientific methodology. Freud was a very smart charlatan, IMHO.

Freudianism and scientific methodology do not belong in the same sentence. The former is a cult that worships some interesting and weird ideas developed by interesting and weird people.

The latter is a logical, empirical approach to gaining knowledge. It's not perfect, but in the hands of honest researchers, it slowly advances our knowledge.

Very few major universities still preach the Freudian cult. Yale is the only one that comes to mind. Most psychologists who follow the Freudian line come from Psy.D. programs that admit anyone willing to pay.

mtrobertslaw said...

Andrea Dworkin? Andrea Dworkin? Is that the same Andrea Dworkin who won a pie-eating contest years ago at the Wisconsin State Fair setting a record that has never been matched?

Darrell said...

It's Lesbian Crib Death.

Darrell said...

The sex stops once the U-Haul is unloaded.

Peter said...

It's interesting that Marche takes the lack of interest in his book by male reporters as evidence men don't like to talk about their "gendered nature" (whazzat?), as if there is some dark profundity deep inside that terrifies them. A lot of women seem to think the same, even to the extent of competing to see who can get their man to "share" his feelings, phobias, etc. It doesn't seem to occur to them that for most men most of the time, the subject is a bore. Ditto for their biology, bodily excretions, etc. I know the world would be a better place if we talked about these things as much as women do, but we'd really rather talk about sports.

glenn said...

Yeah, probably the male violence that kept ‘em coming back for more. Nothing to do with orgasms.

Saint Croix said...

Some of what they're saying about female genitalia is a little fishy.

hombre said...

Men should feel shame that our forbearance makes the feminist claptrap and it's appurtenances possible. And of course the expectation must be that Christian men, the worst of the worst, will defend from the Muslims the right of these silly twits, including the Marches, to continue to feminize America. This, even as the same twits and their consorts promote the Muslim infestation of the country.

Darrell said...

Men are so repulsed by female genitalia that when you Google "Pussy" in Google images, only cats appear. OK, maybe a few vulva for lesbians. . .

Michael K said...

"Several years ago I looked at a word problem in one of my daughter's high school math books. It went something like:"

I was referring to college STEM courses.

High schools are taught by Education Majors which are worse, if possible, than Humanities.

Engineering is not immune, though.

Engineering Education is a new camel's head that has appeared inside the tent.

"Engineering Education" is a new area that has interesting ideas.

But in a fascinating piece for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, engineer Indrek Wichman complains that engineering education has become more about social engineering than actual engineering. "A phalanx of social justice warriors, ideologues, egalitarians, and opportunistic careerists has ensconced itself in America’s college and universities," he writes. "The destruction they have caused in the humanities and social sciences has now reached to engineering."

Social justice warriors, Wichman continues, "have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as 'diversity' and 'different perspectives' and 'racial gaps' and 'unfairness' and 'unequal outcomes' make up the daily vocabulary. Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group representation, hurt feelings, and 'microaggressions' in the profession."

Wichman points to the example of Dr. Donna Riley, the recently-appointed dean of Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education, which “envisions a more socially connected and scholarly engineering education," according to its website. "This implies that we radically rethink the boundaries of engineering and the purpose of engineering education.” Radically rethinking boundaries -- that phrase is a huge red flag.

Dr. Riley declares that her personal purpose is to “seek to revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destinations, integrating concerns related to public policy, professional ethics, and social responsibility; de-centering Western civilization;


The end is near. Whether for civilization or for "Engineering Education" I can't say.

chickelit said...

In 1976, the radical feminist and pornography opponent Andrea Dworkin said that the only sex between a man and a woman that could be undertaken without violence was sex with a flaccid penis:

Dworkin's other pronouncement, that all penetrative sex should involve dry genitals lest it encourage pleasure, is rarely talked about. Yet that's exactly what she was -- a dried up hag. Dworkin is better put back in the closet and only trotted out as a cautionary tale.

Francisco D said...

I wonder if there is a difference between Purdue's Engineering Department and Engineering Education Department.

Like most Big 10 schools, Purdue has a well respected Mechanical Engineering department. If they go all-in on the SJW BS, employers will no longer recruit there. There are plenty of good alternatives.

roesch/voltaire said...

Although recently retired from the COE at UW-Madison, I can say that Wichman's jeremiad caught up in some of the vocabulary used to promote broader representation in STEM ignores the usual gatekeeper courses of calculus, chemistry, etc along with the required grade point that is still required of all STEM students to remain in their colleges. It is true that there are more opportunities for mentoring minorities to encourage and help them survive, but there are also more senior design course that give the student real life problems or results are judged by outside professionals.One only has to read the news letters put out from STEM departments to read about the accomplishments of faculty and students that range from new CRISPER-Cas9 process tp new discoveries of magnetoelectric properties in newly developed homogeneous materials etc for just one small example.

MayBee said...

I think these people were molested as children.

MayBee said...

It is true that there are more opportunities for mentoring minorities to encourage and help them survive,

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you are using the word "minorities" as a euphemism here. I don't believe this is geared toward minorities such as Asians or Indians.

Big Mike said...

Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital.

Strange. I never felt that way. And I saw my first vulva as a high schooler in the early 1960s.

Anonymous said...

“I think that men will have to give up their precious erections,” she wrote.

Molon labe.

John henry said...

If anyone wants to read Story of o Dworkin is your friend.

She once published a long article about the book. To elucidate her criticism of how horrible it is, she quoted extensively. Pretty much all the juicy parts are in the article.

Filter the non italics rants, print the rest and you have a pretty good bathroom book.

Or buy the whole thi g via Ann's portal

John Henry

John henry said...

Is Dworkin Trigglypuffs mom?

It would explain a lot.

About both.

JOHN HENRY

Darrell said...

I think these people were molested as children.

I think they fell on their heads. Repeatedly.

mockturtle said...

Nevertheless, most women would prefer the 'brutality' of an erect penis to the sad disappointment of a flaccid one.

buwaya said...

As a practicing engineer, my opinion of gateway courses is that they are an excellent and necessary method of quality control. Besides which they train mental faculties of logic and order.

Considering the sort of intellectual slovenliness that passes in all other parts of US universities, it is vital that they hold the line in STEM. Else you will have to go abroad for anyone worthwhile, or it will become entirely a matter for autodidacts.

This is a fight over the best and most distinguishing aspect of humanity, the tool maker and tool user. That is the one side. The other side is a short-sighted, fatuous tribalism.

Leslie Graves said...

We could add a line to the standard apology: "You know, Freud said that repression, any repression, is inherently fluid and complicated and when I think about that with respect to my own life, I find that that is oh so true."

Anonymous said...

John Hiatt wrote a good song about the true nature of male sexuality : Little Head

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH477jxY8ZI

Francisco D said...

mock turtle stated: "Nevertheless, most women would prefer the 'brutality' of an erect penis to the sad disappointment of a flaccid one."

That is why there is a market for Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and other such medications. One does not want to disappoint their female companion.

As we get older, dryness (on the part of the woman) and flaccidity (on the part of the man) can be brutal in different ways.

I apologize to the lefties for being heteronormative. It's easier to write that way.

Yancey Ward said...

"I have seen just how profoundly men don’t want to talk about their own gendered nature."

I can only speak authoritatively for myself, but I imagine that most men would find his book a joke not worth talking about.

Bruce Hayden said...

The thing about STEM is that there is a bottom line. The bridge either stands or collapses. The computer program either runs or bombs out. In the end, most employers are going to prefer the competent engineer to the woke incompetent one, because they have to. If they don’t, they will be driven out of business by the products that they built that fail. Working backwards, that means that engineers from schools that graduate SJWs instead of competent engineers would find it harder to get jobs, which ultimately result in lower ratings and a worsening school rank.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I think that it is really unfair that it easier for men transexuals to surgically become women than it is for women transexuals to surgically become men.
But I am not sure if it unfair to men or if it unfair to women, given the fact that transexual men are really women and transexual women are really men.
Either way, the heteros at fault!

mockturtle said...

Yancey asserts: I can only speak authoritatively for myself, but I imagine that most men would find his book a joke not worth talking about.

And they'd be right.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Michael K wrote:
Dr. Riley declares that her personal purpose is to “seek to revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destinations, integrating concerns related to public policy, professional ethics, and social responsibility; de-centering Western civilization . . ."
In the future, to be a really good engineer, you will have to write convincingly about your feelings.

rhhardin said...

Freud was a serious writer and thinker, so serious that the difficulties he got in and tried to write himself out of are worth study. He gets stuck having to say what he does not want to say, so there are a lot of loops explicating what was just said.

That these loops are universal is what makes him interesting.

A sloppy thinker doesn't get stuck in loops. He doesn't care what he said.

See, for loops, e.g. Derrida "Freud and the Scene of Writing" in _Writing and Difference_
"Freud's Legacy" in _The Postcard_ (women may like the Envois chapter 1)

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Nevertheless, most women would prefer the 'brutality' of an erect penis to the sad disappointment of a flaccid one.

In the execrable movie Bad Moms, there is a line in which a sad sack of a woman with a sad sack of a life describes her sex life with her husband thusly: “He never gets fully hard. So I just kind of have to fold his penis up like a balloon animal and then shove it up inside me.”

This is not something that any of the women who flocked to this movie aspire to having in their lives.


Big Mike said...

@John Henry, glad you’re back! How is the recovery going in your part of PR?

Big Mike said...

Freudian innuendo intended.

@Althouse, in you end-o is the wrong place!

madAsHell said...

I haven't looked, but I'll guess you don't have to study mathematics to acquire a BA in Engineering Education. The study of calculus ("the language of God") really changed the way I looked at the world.

On the other hand, I don't recall ever using differential equations in my professional career.

mockturtle said...

Misplaced comments: This is not something that any of the women who flocked to this movie aspire to having in their lives.

Face it. It's not only the sexual pleasure that is at stake but a woman's self-image.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...


Face it. It's not only the sexual pleasure that is at stake but a woman's self-image.

So true. In my estimation many many women prefer 'brutal,' powerful, insistent sex, and rape/Fifty Shades fantasy is so common, because A. our cave brains want demonstrated strength and B. we love being actively and insistently desired.

Achilles said...

Gahrie said...
The entire purpose of the modern feminist movement is to emasculate men and boys.

The feminists hate men. But they are just stupid tools.

The people who created and support feminism want to divide men and women for the same reason they want to divide us by race and religion. The point is to divide.

Achilles said...

Darrell said...
I think these people were molested as children.

I think they fell on their heads. Repeatedly.

They seek power over others. Note they don't have a problem supporting actual rapists and molesters.

Bad Lieutenant said...


Big Mike said...
Freudian innuendo intended.

@Althouse, in you end-o is the wrong place!
11/27/17, 12:15 PM


Not for an Italian suppository.

David said...

Why would one choose a woman who suffered the level of abuse Dworkin received at the hands of men be a reliable theorist about heterosexual relations? I understand how it could shape her thinking, but what about that experience makes her generalizations reliable? Generalization from the worst case example is a reliable path to witch hunts.

tim in vermont said...

I doubt calculus is the language of God, but it does make some of his work easier for us to understand.

Krumhorn said...

The women who comment on this blog (including our hostess) are among the most interesting people I encounter.

-Krumhorn

n.n said...

When done right, and with a conscious partner, sex is not brutal or base, but a moment of intimacy and bliss, and, perhaps, conception.

Men and women are equal and complementary.

Valentine Smith said...

Face it. Aside from hygiene, there is nothing to be "phobic" about when the tissue, muscle and bones surrounding the vajayjay is smokin'. In Dworkin's case you would have had to roll her in dough and go searching for the wet spot to find possible, mind you, only possible entry.

ccscientist said...

Just proves that advanced education does not cure insanity. This claim that sex is violence is so totally divorced from reality. Has Dworkin ever had sex with a man? I'm guessing she is a lesbian (too lazy to look it up). Sex is fun, tender, exciting and creates an after-glow that helps form a strong bond. Sex lowers the blood pressure, relieves stress, helps one sleep and raises self-esteem. To call it violence only indicates that one is either ignorant or has let politics take over your life.

William said...

It's kind of weird that a man's greatest and most intense appreciation of beauty comes from contemplating a pretty woman. If that woman is nude, that appreciation only becomes greater and more intense. If I were given the choice between watching a ballerina execute a dainty dance or watching her undress, my choice would not further the study of dance in America.......Still, I would not particularly like to jerk off in front of her if we were introduced backstage and I had it in my power to give her the starting role in the ballet. The male libido is not that edifying, but there are limits to its squalor, although not in Hollywood.

pdug said...

I shared the piece on Facebook and got 6 likes from women and 1 from a guy

I think it made good points, and complaining it referenced Freud seems like a derailleur.

Bruce Hayden said...

“All this makes sense, Dworkin was a lesbian married to a homosexual.”

And was apparently close to being morbidly obese, as noted above by Dr K. A cynic might suggest that maybe one reason that so many lesbians are overweight is that they swung to women because men weren’t interested due too their weight. Or, of course, it could be the other way around, that they let themselves get overweight because they don’t worry about male interests

FIDO said...

Okay. Lefties hate men. Feminist women hate men.

Got it.

Men can and will act and vote accordingly. And those men who think they can buy or genuflect sufficiently to earn redemption for being men...I would refer you to that Feminist woman who called her sons potential rapists and refused to back down.

There is no redemption for you men. But Republicans still like you. We even have some women over here to like your brutal masculine selves.

Rusty said...

OK. I my defense she liked it doggie style and she liked to have her hair pulled. Hard. And a finger in her , uh, butt.
It was like she had a seizure or something. Holy crap.
I never got her name.