September 10, 2020

"The subject of 'Cuties' isn’t twerking; it’s children, especially poor and nonwhite children, who are deprived..."

"... of the resources—the education, the emotional support, the open family discussion—to put sexualized media and pop culture into perspective. Left on their own... they’re unable to find or even to seek the line between liberation and exploitation, between independence and imitation. 'Cuties' is about the absence of knowledge and absence of reasonable discourse about sex and sexuality, power and desire, that help young people to avow and confront these drives constructively—or, at least, not too destructively. Lacking those things, Amy latches on to a mode of revolt that is itself a trope of a misogynistic order."

Writes Richard Brody in "'Cuties,' the Extraordinary Netflix Début That Became the Target of a Right-Wing Campaign" (The New Yorker).

But doesn't that describe exactly how a mainstream movie outlet would package pedophilia?! And isn't it specifically titillating to present the children with "the absence of knowledge... about sex and sexuality"?! Brody sounds so disingenuous.

AND: Here's my earlier post about "Cuties."

106 comments:

mockturtle said...

Disingenuous, indeed. Netflix knows very well what it is doing.

Martin said...

First, the use of the term "Right-Wing" is a dead giveaway to the New Yorker's political agenda.

Second, the objections were to the promotion of the movie, not the movie itself, which hardly anybody had seen. And the promotion was soft-core pedophilia porn.

Third, what Althouse said--of course someone peddling pedophilia would get trendy, au courant outlets like The New Yorker to say exactly what they are saying.

Eleanor said...

When women talk about being "empowered" through demonstrating their sexuality blatantly, they're being disingenuous. We had a sexual revolution, and men won. Women are now expected to abort their children because men aren't expected to help raise them. We work 40 hours a week in a job and then go home and do 80% of the daily chores, and let's face it, most women don't have jobs that qualify as "careers". Women are no longer "courted" before starting a sexual relationship. "Dating" has been replaced by hooking up. Now that women run around half-naked a lot of the time, it's no longer exciting. I know, let's get even younger and younger women to see being "sexy" as a sign "we've come a long way, baby". Look what becoming smokers did for us!

Fernandinande said...

If titillating means "off-putting".

Skippy Tisdale said...

Left on their own... they’re unable to find or even to seek the line between liberation and exploitation, between independence and imitation.

You know they want it...

MeatPopscicle1234 said...

Here's the deal though... you could make a movie about all these topics, and it could be an extremely powerful and thought-provoking film, without explicitly showing the children actually performing exaggerated sexualized acts, with the camera acting like the eye of a lecherous old pervert, zooming in on crotches, bums and breasts...

Just like in a scary movie, you don't always have to show the monster or every gory detail of someone being killed to get the full effect, you don't need to actually sexualize children in order to make a movie about the sexualization of children...

Pedophilia / Man-Boy Love / UAP is the latest perversion that is now being pushed for public acceptance... Netflix is fully aware of this effort and are actively pushing / defending this "film" for that reason...

wendybar said...

Nasty. But they ARE trying to normalize pedophilia now. It is quite obvious. Remember the 11 year old cross dressing boy that they were giving money to for dancing for them?? It's sick. But close your eyes and go back to sleep because Trump said something that is more enraging to you. https://www.dailywire.com/news/11-year-old-boy-dressed-drag-dances-gay-men-bar-amanda-prestigiacomo

PM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yancey Ward said...

And will be watched by every pedophile into prepubescent females, including Joe Biden.

Ken B said...

The problem is not the topic. It is the filming and display of actual young girls. It is the rehearsing and coaching and photographing. It is the enactment of sexualization not its discussion.

Drago said...

This is precisely who the democraticals are and what they want for all of our children.

Remember, these are the same folks who gave convicted child sodomizer Roman Polanski a standing ovation.....before the entire world in a global telecast.

And Susan Rice sits on the Netflix Board and the Obama's are partnered up with them.

And didn't the Obama's daughter go to work for Harvey "Sort of a god" Weinstein?

Why yes. Yes she did.

CJinPA said...

Children "deprived of the resources" to learn about the most common coming-of-age topic in the history of humans?

"Parents" is the "resource" here. Poor and non-white children are deprived of two parents more so than other groups. Professional writers are paid to write around the obvious.

eric said...

They're trying to normalize pedophilia.

One way they do that is to demonize the opposition.

Remember when people were for marriage between one man and one woman? That was only supported by angry far right Christians holding signs saying "God hates fags" and everyone bought it.

They'll do the same thing here.

You don't want to be a crazy, far right, Christian nut job, do you?!

Ken B said...

The original poster did not just fall from the sky. It was designed, posed, photographed. Many poses were tried and discussed. It was what the creators wanted to present, until the backlash.

JML said...

I scanned the movie last night. IMHO, it is totally inappropriate the way the girls dance. I thought the anti-movie hype would be exaggerated, but it was not. Watching little girls running their hands up their a$$ and crotch is not something that should be normalized or shown.

wild chicken said...

"We had a sexual revolution, and men won"

Yup, and it still wasn't enough.

Joe Smith said...

@Eleanor at 11:24am

Nailed it. And now the young girls are all tatted up by the time they're 15 or 16 with piercings God knows where...that's supposed to be sexy?

Of course, if I were a jr. high or high school boy I would get down on my knees every day and thank God for Bill Clinton's 'it's not sex' blowjob.

Speaking of 007; Pussy Galore.

n.n said...

Misogynistic? This reminds me of the bigoted characterization of trans/homosexual male predators in the Boy Scouts, where #NoJudgment is the religion and #NoLabels is the sacrament.

That said, Cuties is an example of trans-social progress. The People, or an em-pathetic judge, will need to decide what society normalizes, tolerates, or rejects.

pacwest said...

This new generation is going be pretty fucked up. No pun intended.

Sebastian said...

"a mode of revolt that is itself a trope of a misogynistic order"

So, progs, where does the trope end and the revolt set in? Exactly how much tropish titillation does the revolution require?

Bay Area Guy said...

The Leftwing weirdos in Hollywood think this fine. Who are you stodgy Rightwingers to judge us?

bwebster said...

Given that the movie is rated TV-MA for "sex and nudity" and contains such scenes as a young girl photographing her own genitalia, I'd say Brody is being very disingenuous.

And since Netflix went ahead and released this movie, I canceled my Netflix membership -- which dates back probably at least 15 years, when it was DVD rentals only -- this morning.

n.n said...

Disingenuous, indeed. Netflix knows very well what it is doing.

the promotion was soft-core pedophilia porn.

Ostensibly, it's for the art, or compelling documentary service. In practice, it's social progress, imperceptible, but monotonic.

First, the use of the term "Right-Wing" is a dead giveaway to the New Yorker's political agenda.

Libertarians? Perhaps. Left-right leftists? They are liberal (i.e. divergent). Show me the principles, the uniform expression, or it's diversity dogma to color People, and should be rejected by reasonable people.

PhilD said...

I suppose the UK grooming gangs then performed a service of putting "sexualized media and pop culture into perspective" to all those (mainly 'white') children it groomed out of the pure kindness of their hearts.

mikee said...

Kid porn - stop it.

Readering said...

Sounds like an anti Islam/Senegalese culture film.

traditionalguy said...

To hell with Netflix. Cancelled them today. Not that there is anything with sexualizing small girls.It just makes real men vomit and identify who are the real enemy of mankind.

tim maguire said...

The New Yorker doesn't have comments, but this article gets ripped apart on Twitter, with a ratio of about 10:1. So that's something.

Michael said...

Children "deprived of the resources"

Of course this is bullshit. The “resource” teaching these children to twerk are their twerking mothers. Their slutty twerking mothers.

Heartless Aztec said...

Watched about 15 seconds of the trailer and immediately cancelled my Netflix account. Netflix is consistently beyond tawdry.

Freeman Hunt said...

Based on the clips I've seen of this movie, I'm considering cancelling my Netflix account. No one should have been directing young girls to do these things for a movie. It's acting, but these are still kids, and there are limits. Plus, it looked as though the scenes were played, at least partly, for titillation. Makes it ten times worse.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

"they’re unable to find or even to seek the line between liberation and exploitation, between independence and imitation."

That would be because they're 11 years old, and shouldn't be doing anything sexual.

Nice post, Althouse. Thank you for hilting this creature's moral depravity

Howard said...

Althouse going for Streisand effect. How many times did she make Meade watch?

Joe Smith said...

There is a clip on the Twitter feed of Mary Margaret Olohan.

All that's missing is the stripper pole and Jeffery Epstein.

Very provocative and very sexualized dancing. Maybe the story line is about how the girls don't know they are being exploited?

This is soft-core porn...

https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan/status/1303908536553017349

campy said...

"... the target of a right-wing campaign."

Republicans Pounced!

Two-eyed Jack said...

Those old enough may remember the enthusiasm that greeted the movie "Deep Throat" in 1973. In his contemporaneous review, Roger Ebert wrote "the movie became 'pornographic chic' in New York before it was busted. Mike Nichols told Truman Capote he shouldn’t miss it, and then the word just sort of got around: This is the first stag film to see with a date. There were a lot of couples in the audience Sunday afternoon. Most of them, I thought, left the theater looking a little grim."

n.n said...

Social liberals want to use normalization to educate adults and children to discern between rape and rape-rape, unless it encroaches on reproductive rites, then it's always rape-rape or rape culture to justify the "wicked solution". That said, women, and girls, should be kept barefoot, available, and taxable... and our Posterity should labeled, judged, and aborted for social and medical progress.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Thanks to Ace of Spades (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/390067.php), here is the (before IMBD edited to hide the details) IMDB Parents Guide describing NetFlix's newest salvo in the culture wars:

Parental Warning : During one of the many highly sexualized & erotic dance scenes that purposefully exploit & objectify numerous scantily clad under age girls, one of the female child dancers lifts up her cropped top to fully display her bare breast. This is lawfully defined as pedophilia and can be extremely distressing to many viewers.
Trigger Warning : An 11 year old girl watches a female rap music video where naked women role play through dance both heterosexual & lesbian sex acts. An 11 year old female dance group then mimics these sexual moves via on themselves and on each other while the camera zooms in on their sexual body parts as they erotically writher[sic]. This can be highly distressing to many viewers.

Female breast nudity of a minor during an erotic dance scene and lengthy & excessive closeup shots of breasts, bums and spread crotches of scantily clad 11 year old girls during numerous sexualized dance routines.

A pair of tight leather pants on an 11 year old girl are forcefully pulled down in the midst of a scuffle; the camera glances at her panty exposed bum.


I added the bolding. I wonder if Richard Brody actually watched the movie before defending it?

Personally, I'm entirely good with telling the parents of American that only "the right wing" opposes the above, and that if you don't want your kids sexualized like that, you'd better vote Republican

Anthony said...

Eleanor said...
We had a sexual revolution, and men won.


Shhhhh! You may interfere with the totality of our victory if that gets out! I mean, CFM pumps at the office! Slutwear all over! No-commitment sex! Winning!

effinayright said...

Eleanor said...

" We work 40 hours a week in a job and then go home and do 80% of the daily chores,..."
*************

Malarkey. Ever push a lawnmower? Carry a full trashcan out to the curb? Go up a ladder to clean the gutters? Scrape, sand and paint a porch? Act as the system administrator for the family computers and other such devices?

Wymyn always seem to define chores to mean "things we generally do that men generally don't", and conveniently ignore the opposite.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm a much better cook than my wife?

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

So it's an exploitation film about exploitation and that makes it ok?


Fuck the NYT and fuck Richard Brody!

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

You can buy this poster art in protest.

Ken B said...

Interesting that no one here is defending it. Not that it’s defensible, but we usually have a few who will defend anything. She who must not be named, r/v, anti.

MayBee said...

I want every celebrity associated with Netflix: The Obamas, Oprah, Prince Harry and Megan, Susan Rice...to have to answer about whether they support this movie as it is. Answer to the camera shots and dances these girls do.

I thought the "Pretty Baby" era was behind us, but now we're back into "You don't want to see sexualized children? You are a right-wing rube"

Roughcoat said...

We had a sexual revolution, and men won.

You (women) started it. You demanded it. You set its course and direction. You made it happen. Before the deluge men were perfectly content to hold the doors open for you and got out on dates and court you with flowers and generally act chivalrously toward you. Sure we yearned to get laid but we didn't push for a revolution to change the status quo. We put up with having blue balls because that's the way things had always been and were meant tobe. We understood that women controled sex in a normal relationship and we accepted that. Then you changed all that. YOU did. And now you're unhappy about the way things turned out. Well, boo-hoo. Next time be more careful about what you have a revolution for.

Freeman Hunt said...

What's really amazing is that it made it onto Netflix. I can't imagine greenlighting this movie, getting back these scenes, and releasing it. The proper response would have been, "What the hell is this?! You're fired!"

reverendken said...

Way past time to drag everyone out by their short and curlies from netflix offices and explain it with baseball bats and tire irons.

henge2243 said...

Joe Biden beats off to this sort of thing while sniffing a JonBenet Ramsey wig. Prove me wrong, Joe.

Wince said...

One of the girls looks like AOC.

Maybe all the members of "The Squad" could stand-in for these "especially poor and nonwhite" children during the titillating scenes?

rhhardin said...

I doubt actual movie-movies have any titillation value at all in the sea of general free porn. Cancelling the account would generally be to avoid seeing crap offerings.

Maybe they're after a new niche market, now that new movie storylines are all PC boilerplate and tiresome formula. Hollywood is allowed to employ child actors where porn is not.

Movies themselves peaked out around 2008, as to storyline.

I can't offhand think of any movie I really liked that had a child actor. They're too formula-ized in archetype.

mockturtle said...

You don't want to be a crazy, far right, Christian nut job, do you?!

Actually, I don't mind at all. The label 'deplorable' already fits nicely on a t-shirt but I can get a bigger t-shirt.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Satan is a Democrat

PM said...

On the plus side, since the significant actors are from "an underrepresented race or ethnicity", it qualifies for a Best Picture Oscar!

DanTheMan said...

>>That would be because they're 11 years old, and shouldn't be doing anything sexual.

Apparently, all of their parents disagree. They are essentially pimping their own children.

rhhardin said...

There's the Hallmark child actor, usually a young girl involved in getting her single mom interested in the widower fireman that stopped by. That's another one to cancel your account over.

rhhardin said...

Scott Adams is against the action movie hero tied to a chair and tortured plots.

Dave Begley said...

I saw a cut of this on Twitter the other day. The parents should all go to jail.

This is what the Left has done. It has sexualized childhood. Can't society at least hold off to age 15-16 or so?

Thank you Dems for destroying our culture. Cardi B's "WAP" is of the same ilk. Puke!

Eleanor said...

Wholelotofbullshit, Yes, I do all of those things. How many of them need to be done after you've worked all day, and how many of them can wait until you feel like doing them? Congratulations on knowing how to cook. I'll arrange for a trophy for you. Married American women spend twice as much time on housework as men do and do most of the childcare. Men pick out the chores they want to do and leave what they don't want to do for their wives. I'm sure there are a lot of wives who would trade mowing the lawn every few weeks in the summer for doing the laundry every week all year long. Make a list of what needs to be done to make your house fit to live in and your kids cared for. Let your wife choose first. Then you do what's left.

MayBee said...

Eleanor said...
We had a sexual revolution, and men won.

While I don't disagree with you generally, I'm uncomfortable with this comment on *this* thread. I don't think men want 11 year olds twerking. Not decent men.

rhhardin said...

The action hero tied to a chair and tortured plot is actually a metaphor for the situation of the screen writer and the viewer.

A little interpretation makes it enjoyable.

Ken B said...

And people wonder why I mostly prefer older books and older movies.

minnesota farm guy said...

Eleanore at 11:24 gives a concise synopsis of the failures of the "feminine revolution". I have often wondered what an honest poll of women would turn up regarding their view of whether their quality of life is better or worse than their grandmothers who suffered through the 50's.

Jeff Brokaw said...

Hollywood relies on moral cretins like Brody to validate and legitimize their trash, and gullible readers who believe critics on anything, ever.

The bigger issue is not the content creators, it’s the mainstreaming of such content by Brody, The New Yorker, and Netflix (in this particular example). They are the gatekeepers—if any of them had the courage to say “no, sorry, this is trash” then the content gets less mass exposure.

I know, impossible in today’s unbelievably trashy culture. But they are gatekeepers and we should always remember that, and keep holding their feet to the fire. Gatekeepers have the ultimate power to promote or suppress whatever they like.

Jamie said...

We had a sexual revolution, and men won.

Eleanor sums it up in eight words. As usual, I'm going to be considerably less succinct...

Not one goal or result of the "sexual revolution" benefits women more than it benefits men. Access to legal abortion? After all, it provides the accidentally pregnant woman (giving her the benefit of the doubt - I remember reading that in the old Soviet Union, abortion was by far the most popular method of "birth control") an option besides the inconvenience and discomfort of pregnancy and childbirth (I say this although I am strongly against abortion) - but in by far most cases, in order to need an abortion, you first have to devalue access to your body in a way that a girl's traditional upbringing would not allow.

Of course there were disadvantages to that traditional upbringing: the girl or woman who stepped outside it and got herself "in trouble" frequently suffered gravely for it (and the boy or man who got her in trouble frequently didn't). So, another sexual revolution tactic: Highly effective forms of birth control provide insurance against that outcome. But again this benefits men more than women; highly effective birth control encourages women to think of sex as casual and consequence-free, encourages that self-devaluation of access to their bodies. Basically highly effective birth control gives men access to sex that they would not have had otherwise, and allows men to have sex without fear that they might be on the hook for an unwanted baby. It only gives women insurance.

And birth control is the responsibility of the woman, isn't it? She is the one who will pay the highest price, no matter what she does, if she gets pregnant, so it's up to her to make sure that she's "taking care of it." If something does happen, if she experiences a birth control failure, it's her problem. So again, the sexual revolution purports to "solve" a problem that didn't exist until they first broke what existed before.

But what about the sex itself? Isn't free consequence-less (inconsequential?) sex itself valuable to the woman?

Why would it be? She can get satisfaction with perfect ease and safety on her own, if that's all she wants. If she wants a relationship with a man, she isn't going to cement it just by giving him what he can get anywhere, now that the vaunted sexual revolution has made it - has made women - so very available. If she wants power over a man, sex isn't going to provide that either, unless it's with a man she doesn't respect enough to believe that he could "get" a woman at least as good as she is - and sex with a man she doesn't respect doesn't exactly boost a woman's self-esteem. If she wants meaningful sex, sex with someone who has chosen her as much as she has chosen him and who values her enough to commit to her, she has a far better chance of finding the man who will provide the meaningful sex if she doesn't follow the tenets of the sexual revolution.

And the Orwellian twist: women have been cozened into believing that the sexual revolution was for them. A lesbian (!) relative gave me Our Bodies, Ourselves for my fourteenth birthday; it took me years to question that one assertion.

Jupiter said...

Notice that people who don't want to rape children are referred to as "Right-Wing". Capitalized. It's a thing, see. A rogue collection of sickos who don't want to rape children. And they don't want to kill them before they're born. But they don't want to eat them, either. What is it with these Right-Wing sickos and raising useless kids, anyway? They could make a movie about it, a horror movie.

Retail Lawyer said...

Grow up to be Kamala

Todd said...

"The subject of 'Cuties' isn’t twerking; it’s children, especially poor and nonwhite children, who are deprived..."
"... of the resources


No, that is an excuse to do a movie about children twerking and being overtly sexualized. You can try to sound all high-n-mighty all you want but that wall you are hiding behind is transparent.

Michael said...

BTW I recommend looking up the lyrics to Cardi B’s hit “song” WAP. You can be sure the little twerking angels have heard it.

GingerBeer said...

Epstein wins.

bagoh20 said...

At least they admit that being against pedophilia and sexual exploitation of children is just a "Right Wing" thing. We knew that, but thought they at least wanted to pretend they thought is was wrong too.

In 2020 the left decided it champions: violence, suppression of free speech, rioting, arson, racism, lawlessness, perjury, sexual harassment, rape, and pedophilia. No wonder they want felons to vote.

bagoh20 said...

I don't really believe minority children are under-represented among pedophilia victims. If they are, this film will help fix that.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

You (women) started it. You demanded it. You set its course and direction. You made it happen. Before the deluge men were perfectly content to hold the doors open for you and got out on dates and court you with flowers and generally act chivalrously toward you. Sure we yearned to get laid but we didn't push for a revolution to change the status quo. We put up with having blue balls because that's the way things had always been and were meant tobe. We understood that women controled sex in a normal relationship and we accepted that. Then you changed all that. YOU did. And now you're unhappy about the way things turned out. Well, boo-hoo. Next time be more careful about what you have a revolution for.

I doubt Eleanor started it. I sure as shit didn't. I was born in 1980.

Would have been nice if we could have stopped at "women having their own checking accounts / leaving abusive husbands / going to college and having careers other than teaching elementary school / going to work without being sexually available to supervisors is actually pretty OK" without going all the way to "reason and logic / having sexual self-respect / voting with your brain and not your feelings / having a complementary and respectful heterosexual relationship with agreed on and defined gender roles are tools of male oppression" but here we are.

Scott Adams is against the action movie hero tied to a chair and tortured plots.

He also said today that he is the biggest free speech, don't get spun up about content guy there is, and yet, he thinks everyone involved in Cuties at Netflix should literally go to jail. So there's that. I hope that doesn't upset you as you are both a Scott Adams fan and someone who generally shrugs at sexual exploitation of children.

Tina Trent said...

They gotta earn somehow.

Barack and Michelle and Harry and Megan need their millions.

For social justice programming.

pdug said...

What is depriving the Senegalese family from the "family discussion"?

Francisco D said...

Howard said...
Althouse going for Streisand effect. How many times did she make Meade watch?

How many times did you watch Howie? Hopefully you are washing your hands after.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

reverendken said...
Way past time to drag everyone out by their short and curlies from netflix offices and explain it with baseball bats and tire irons.

That's one of the sad side effects of Covid and everyone moving to telework who can: There's no longer any Netflix Offices to drag people from

Original Mike said...

"We had a sexual revolution, and men won."

I didn't even show up on the battlefield. Had to work that day.

Original Mike said...

"Women are now expected to abort their children because men aren't expected to help raise them."

MEN are the ones screaming about "choice" and "our bodies"?

You and I grew up in different countries.

Jaq said...

Like I said on the other post Slapshot was supposed to be a takedown of the violence in hockey, but as far as I know, the “Hanson brothers” are still getting paid to appear at NHL games.

rhhardin at 1:18 nailed it on all points.

Jamie said...

You (women) started it. You demanded it. You set its course and direction. You made it happen.

Maybe this is true. I wasn't around back then, and I haven't studied the question. But even so, it wouldn't be the first time the group the started a revolution ended up worse off than the group they were revolting against.

madAsHell said...

Does John Lovitz need a new "Pathological Liar" character? Now with more pedophile.

chickelit said...

How about we put a face on the creative farce behind this program?

Dude1394 said...

They have been cancelled from my life.

Joe Smith said...

@Eleanor

I don't want a medal...but I'm recently retired and my wife still works.

I am a huge fan of women working and we have figured out our routine based on the fact that my wife makes a ton more money than I ever did. I am very proud of that, btw.

Consequently, even when I was working I was always the cook and dishwasher (sorry, but women have poor spatial abilities and don't know how to load a dishwasher).

When our two kids were born I took the time off to stay home with them.

As far as chores go, my wife actually likes cleaning and laundry, while I concentrate on garbage/recycling/floors/vacuuming.

I'm rich enough to hire out for lawns/maintenance...

It's all just common sense, really.

Works for us : )

Marc in Eugene said...

When DAs in a thousand of those counties that Mr Trump won in 2016 initiate prosecutions of Netflix for pandering obscenity and child pornography then perhaps the corporate traffickers will pay attention; until something like that happens, however, Netflix can afford a few cancellations.

And I'm feeling very much the hypocrite because I re-subscribed the other day so I could watch the second season of Imposters. What's eight or nine bucks to those people, I told myself.

bagoh20 said...

I knew this was where we were heading when the pubic hair started disappearing on adult women.

Today's young men are actually turned of by naked women who don't look like children with boob jobs.

I don't get it. It was always the presence of pubic hair that really got your attention in Playboy magazine. The magazines you passed over were the ones that hid it. Now it's all gone, just like phone booths and Fotomats.

Nichevo said...

rhhardin at 1:18 nailed it on all points.

9/10/20, 4:58 PM


He did? He's history's greatest monster!


I hope that doesn't upset you as you are both a Scott Adams fan and someone who generally shrugs at sexual exploitation of children.

9/10/20, 3:56 PM

Um, among conservatives, who does that but rhhardin? He doesn't shrug at it, he openly defends and advocates it! His big gripe is that unlike the good old days now there's consciousness of it and it's considered a problem. No problem for him!

Larvell said...

Why did the teenager punch and hit the other staffers?

Roughcoat said...

Married American women spend twice as much time on housework as men do and do most of the childcare. Men pick out the chores they want to do and leave what they don't want to do for their wives. I'm sure there are a lot of wives who would trade mowing the lawn every few weeks in the summer for doing the laundry every week all year long.

I'll arrange a trophy for you, Eleanor. To borrow a phrase.

In the meantime: either find yourself a better man than the one(s) you have been with or, failing that, swear off men altogether.

But whatever you do, don't stop attending those luncheons with your similarly embittered, perpetually dissatisfied friends where you complain incessantly about men.

Roughcoat said...

Maybe this is true.

Not maybe. It is absolutely true. I saw it. I saw the best [female] minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix....

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Ken B said...

And people wonder why I mostly prefer older books and older movies.

Nominate for Threadwinner. - HXG

Jamie said...

(sorry, but women have poor spatial abilities and don't know how to load a dishwasher)

A canard! I am MUCH better at loading ANY dishwasher than my husband or any of my male friends but one (and that one has a touch of OCD). But I will recount an old joke from my geology days: Q. Why are women geologists so bad at estimating measurements in the field? A. Because all their lives, they've been told that this [hands placed about 4 inches apart] is 9 inches.

MEN are the ones screaming about "choice" and "our bodies"?

As I said. Too many of us have been convinced somehow that this travesty of a "revolution" is in our interest. It's one of the things that renders me reluctantly sympathetic to rhhardin. What is wrong with that double-X of ours, that we're so often, so easy to convince of utterly unreasonable things?

I imagine that credulousness is one of those bell curve things. Those of us who are curmudgeonly (such as our esteemed host) can readily match a curmudgeonly man's curmudgeon factor, but there are fewer of us.

Ken B said...

Hardin wonders about good movies with child actors.

The Kid, a Chaplin silent.

Narr said...

bagoh20! Come on, man!

Bush on paper is so 20th C.

Tucker showed some of the trailer; I wouldn't have known anything about it otherwise, probably, if not for the Prof and Tucker.

It looked sad, in many and divers ways. But we haven't been an adult country or culture in a long time, and this is just the beginning.

Narr
Not that kind of perv

rhhardin said...

Um, among conservatives, who does that but rhhardin? He doesn't shrug at it, he openly defends and advocates it! His big gripe is that unlike the good old days now there's consciousness of it and it's considered a problem. No problem for him!

Child sexual abuse became a public problem in the 70s. Our public morality has advanced. My question is what is that change exactly and how did it happen.

As for the old days, there wasn't any pornography that I could find of any kind, but I was just a kid. Eventually theaters crowded to watch I Am Curious Yellow, a movie so dull that I doubt there are any copies of it today.

Somebody announced in the company cafeteria one day that "Hey Playboy is showing pubic hair." I don't know when that was but it started the all-the-porn-you-can-stand era that persists today.

Children didn't figure into any of it. That was a separate hysteria with various daycare center scandals that turned out to be prosecution scandals in the end.

There's a chapter in Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig's "From the Wrong Side" (now on kindle) speculating on what's driving it, that is, what the change was. "Myth and Reality of Sexual Abuse of Children," chapter 4 of the book. He's a Jungian psychiatrist working with sexually abused children.

Drago said...

Ken B: "The Kid, a Chaplin silent."

That is how Chaplin preferred "his kids".

DanTheMan said...

>> I don't think men want 11 year olds twerking. Not decent men.

Epstein was just a retail supplier, Netflix is going wholesale.

If there was no demand, there would be no supply. Netflix seems to think there's a sizable market out there for this. I promise you they have run the numbers, and for every one of us who cancels because of this, there will be more than 1 who signs up to watch.

And I promise you whatever comes next will be even worse, as the "shock the prudes" left tries to outdo each other.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
He also said today that he is the biggest free speech, don't get spun up about content guy there is, and yet, he thinks everyone involved in Cuties at Netflix should literally go to jail.

Child pornography isn't "free speech", it's child abuse.

You want to write a story about sexually abusing children? That won't get you thrown in jail in the US.

The people who made "Cuties" sexually abused children. That's "action" not "speech", and that's not protected by the 1st Amendment, and shouldn't be.

Donatello Nobody said...

Jamie at 2:12 absolutely nailed it.

Joe Smith said...

@Jamie

"A canard! I am MUCH better at loading ANY dishwasher than my husband or any of my male friends but one (and that one has a touch of OCD)."

I have more than a touch of OCD with a bit of Aspergers thrown in for good measure, so I win : )

And don't even get me started on packing a car for a road trip!

As for the joke, I heard it as 'Why are women bad at math? Because all their lives men have been telling them that this (hold finger and thumb 4 inches apart) is 8 inches...'

While we're on the topic of sexist jokes (AA, you should have a random joke thread):

Why do women have tits? So men will talk to them.

Jason said...

Eleanore:

We work 40 hours a week in a job and then go home and do 80% of the daily chores,

You think those pickle jars just up and open themselves???

n.n said...

In the meantime: either find yourself a better man than the one(s) you have been with or, failing that, swear off men altogether.

Exactly right. Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. You're not kids anymore, reconcile.

n.n said...

with various daycare center scandals that turned out to be prosecution scandals

Today, the scandals are trans/homosexual male predators in the Boy Scouts, Catholic Church, and probably other areas. The interesting change is the irreconcilable progress of lawyers, advocates, and activists and #NoJudgment #NoLabels #Diversity. The Pro-Choice quasi-religion is good for more than just socially justifying the "wicked solution".

n.n said...

"We had a sexual revolution, and men won."

You (women) started it. You demanded it. You set its course and direction. You made it happen.


First, second, third-wave Feminists (i.e. female chauvinists)? At least they secured reproductive rites for women and girls. Keep women barefoot, available, and taxable. The male chauvinists are pleased. Here's to social progress.

Freeman Hunt said...

Some Other Good Movies with Kids in Them:

Night of the Hunter
Captain's Courageous
Shane
Hondo
E.T.
The Cowboys
Village of the Damned
I Remember Mama
Signs
Home Alone
Heidi
Aliens
Empire of the Sun
The Bicycle Thief
The 400 Blows

Bilwick said...

"First, the use of the term 'Right-Wing' is a dead giveaway to the New Yorker's political agenda."

Indeed. "Liberal" government humpers and State fellators almost never describe adversarial ideas as "conservative" or "libertarian." It's almost always "right wing," which I guess is supposed to subtly--or not so subtly--link anti-statist ideas to fascism and National Socialism, a cute trick but historically illiterate. According to Jonah Goldberg in his LIBERAL FASCISM, the trick originated in the '30s among the Stalinists, who corralled the Trotskyites and anyone who disliked Uncle Joe under the rubric "right wing." This despite the origin of the term to describe the old-school authoritarians of the Ancien Regime and the obvious authoritarianism of today's "Left."

In the Goldwater Era this reached peaks of stupidity and/or deception when "liberals" churned out books with titles like DANGER ON THE RIGHT, in which limited-government conservatives and even an anarcho-libertarian pacifist like Robert LeFevre were grouped with home-grown fascists and neo-Nazis. These days if you hear someone use the term "right wing" it is usually a "liberal" dupe or a socialist dissimulator.