I almost missed your last little diatribe [the QuickTime object and my security seemed intractable]. You are a master of the imagined slight. There were moments when I actually thought you wanted to stab me with your little plastic fork of obstreperous banter.

I’m particularly impressed by the cleverness of your brilliant ploy in declaring you have no wisdom. Admittedly, I was confused for a moment. But then I realized … this cunning stealth strategy ensures that in future conversations, you have nowhere to go but up.

You’re so cute when you’re mad. Can I pat you on the head?

For a person with my background, it would be easier to take you more seriously if you weren’t so over the top.

I had some time to visit your own site. It’s wonderful and I encourage others to visit. Sorry about the braces. I wore braces as a teenager and at times the pain was excruciating. I hope that wearing them is a task of short duration for you. You’re a consummate writer and I look forward to seeing more of your serious work.

Well, back to my own little task of upholding the U.S. Constitution, hating America, speaking truth to power, protecting the environment, fighting the patriarchy, and, more to the point these days … trying to keep this country from starting another war it can’t win.

Regards,

/e

p.s. While my background is engineering and psychology, one of my current lines of business is drafting validated infrastructure requirements for systems in support of smashed places (very smashed). Briefly, this means I often work with very knowledgeable people from very different disciplines. Even though I’m smarter than some, it’s rarely a mistake for me to assume that others are also professionals attempting to solve a shared strategic problem. Just saying.

I don’t view women as being in a separate class, but the rest of the world rarely takes it’s cues from me. Enough people treat women as being in a seperate class that I have trouble seeing how any woman could manage to avoid experiencing such treatment at some point in their lives.

Thanks for the explanation, Twisty. I wanted to spend a little time assimilating your description and I’m glad I did, as I found myself on another train of thought. I was initially somewhat bothered by the idea that a whole class of people can be defined exclusively by the perspective of one social subset (men, in this case). While considering it, however, I found myself thinking about the way that many teenaged girls and younger women evaluate one another based on each others percieved sexual availability (mainly to men) as well. I know it’s no earth shattering revelation, but I’m a little surprised that I’d missed the possibility that one group’s view could become a measuring stick that many other groups use on one another. Once you make that conceptual jump, it becomes obvious how the assumptions of one group can ripple through other groups and become a defining feature of society as a whole.

It is extremely unwise to tell me to stop thinking, no matter what you end the sentence with. It’s pretty clear you have no notion wnat I’m thinking, and I don’t think it’s because I’m being unclear.

It is attractive

Porn is “attractive,” therefore anything attractive is porn? What are you saying here?

and we are crazy if we don’t use the tools we have to be attractive.

What you mean, “we”?

It’s clear you agree that Twisty’s titillating intelligence and sexy brilliance make us drool

What it makes me do is post. But granting part
of your conceit –

… and like many of us you “would so make out with her.”

That’d have to wait till the braces come off, ceteris paribus. Among other things. Damn this actual concrete reality anyway.

Are you really going to maintain the pretense that you can’t sense the relationship of intelligence used this way … to porn?

I believe the crux of our difference might be in the word “used.” Do you think Twisty’s running a dating service for herself here?

And watch that “pretense” shit, boy.

But do you want to be attracted to everything?

Um — what does that have do do with anything anyone else here has said, me in particular?

Think mimicry in the nature you speak of so elequently … the flowers and insects that shape themselves as their prey or pollinators by sexual means. And think about how the power structures use porn to manipulate the masses.

That’s actually a fairly nifty conceit, and if you don’t watch out I’ll steal it. I’ll elaborate that the inculcation of stereotyped responses makes that ever so much easier for the “power structures.” And that’s the point of what I’m calling “porn” — a stereotyped response to a stereotyped abstraction of a stimulus, substituted for the actual, less predictable, maybe even nuanced, and I’d bet more viscderal response to an actual inconvenient person.

Just recognize you’re making a value judgment if you decide “intelligence porn” is somehow better than “skin porn” or … the forms which, in my line of business, result in perhaps even more dispair … “war porn” and jingoism (”jingo porn”).

i make value judgments for a living, and in my spare time too. I have no problem with making value judgments. Here’s one for free: Telling people what they think, particularly when you haven’t managed to connect their numbered dots, is bad form.

Here’s another: The serial comma is an agent of clarity.

Of course Twisty is sexy because intelligence (used a sexy way) is sexy. Mine isn’t. Can you not see the difference?

Your what “isn’t”? If I’m parsing that sentence correctly, you seem to be saying that Twisty is “using” her intelliigence in some mysterious way (and you’re discounting the ability of the rest of us to make actual discenrtment of what we like) that you are somehow unwilling to, or are declining to. You seem to be discounting the possibility of s dare-I-say-it holistic response to a genuinely good thing. No, person. That seems a bit reductionistic, at least by implication.

In the simplest terms, porn is adding a sheen of sexual desire to what was there … to attract you in ways you otherwise wouldn’t have been.

That’s rather an idiosyncratic definition of “porn,” acxtually.

And it is surprising and painful to me how easy it is to make a gun or a war or even massive death (oooh, “a rain of withering fire from the night sky melted them into the sand”), sexy … with the right frame.

Nothing new. Mussolini’s son wasn’t even being original about those beautiful red flowers. “The glory of battle” is an old old idea. “Framing”? Maybe. Maybe it’s the fond remembrance of an endorphin or adrenaline rush.

I strongly believe that helping people to be conscious of porn — generically and in its many forms — is the beginning of confronting it in any of its forms. And what’s immediately important is making conscious the way the power structures inflame fear and insecurity to make “homeland security porn” and manipulate the people.

How about being conscious of manipulation? Porn is a subset of that. Not good to see that particular Commie under every bed, though. You could end up running around squawking, “Everything is porn! It’s all porn!”

The sad thing is we may now no longer even be able to see wisdom unless it is clothed in sex.

Meditate on this: There is no such thing as wisdom. Think you can live without it?

And because to many people a wilderness is not sexy … the oceans are not sexy … liberal and progressive values are not sexy … much will go.

That’s almost true, but I’d suggest it has less to do with porn than with circular reasoning, numbness, and running in circles. Porn is a byproduct.

P.S. Might I note for the record that Lulu.com is a self-publishing site, which I am noting not to denigrate Lulu, who are fine folk (in my own backyard) providing a fine service, but to note that Mr. Flaccid, the author of said authoritative account, probably had few options to publish his master work and had to spring for it himself. Heh.

Women, I think you’ll agree, are considered a class separate from men, no? The reason for this is that we are thought of first and foremost and almost exclusively in terms of our degree of sexual availability–whether with a hotsytotsy sexbot response or complete lack of interest– to males. All women, not just the sexy ones, are members of the sex class. Membership is not voluntary. You got a pussy? You’re in. I, for example, am a member, even though I am a bald lesbian cancer patient. When I was sitting at dinner in a restaurant the other night and a creepy dude was checking me out from the bar, he was assessing me in terms of the degree to which I conform to his sexbot ideal, and conveying the message that I was an object for his consumption, and that I shouldn’t be altogether surprised if he were to follow me to my car and rape me.

The sex class is kept in thrall by the threat of rape.

Perinteger

Where’s my preview button? I miss my preview button!

I appreciate the attempt at a clarification. I’m afraid I’d already gathered that it referred to double standards when it came to sexual objectification. I’ve noticed the term brought up several times in reference to the BDSM scene (not to start another BDSM discussion, of course) and the expectations that women in either role wear the same outfits while the men seem to labor under no expectations of dress.

I get the impression, however, that the idea that a group is a sex class if they’re expected to regularly (or constantly) flaunt the sexual side of their nature doesn’t cover the concept of a sex class completely.

For instance, in this post Twisty asserts:

“where women are not the sex class, women’s sexploitation cannot take place.”

Since the above statement doesn’t ring as true to me when you say:

“where women are expected to always flaunt their sexuality, women’s sexploitation cannot take place”

I tend to think there’s got to be more to the definition. Am I incorrect?

It’s clear you agree that Twisty’s titillating intelligence and sexy brilliance make us drool … and like many of us you “would so make out with her.” Are you really going to maintain the pretense that you can’t sense the relationship of intelligence used this way … to porn?

Stop thinking porn is good or bad. It is attractive, and we are crazy if we don’t use the tools we have to be attractive.

But do you want to be attracted to everything? Think mimicry in the nature you speak of so elequently … the flowers and insects that shape themselves as their prey or pollinators by sexual means. And think about how the power structures use porn to manipulate the masses.

Just recognize you’re making a value judgment if you decide “intelligence porn” is somehow better than “skin porn” or … the forms which, in my line of business, result in perhaps even more dispair … “war porn” and jingoism (“jingo porn”).

Of course Twisty is sexy because intelligence (used a sexy way) is sexy. Mine isn’t. Can you not see the difference?

Twisty wears clothes for comfort … but judging from the related magazines and the money in the “rag” industry, many women invest a lot of time and money in sexy clothes … or “clothing porn.”

In the simplest terms, porn is adding a sheen of sexual desire to what was there … to attract you in ways you otherwise wouldn’t have been.

And it is surprising and painful to me how easy it is to make a gun or a war or even massive death (oooh, “a rain of withering fire from the night sky melted them into the sand”), sexy … with the right frame.

I strongly believe that helping people to be conscious of porn — generically and in its many forms — is the beginning of confronting it in any of its forms. And what’s immediately important is making conscious the way the power structures inflame fear and insecurity to make “homeland security porn” and manipulate the people.

In this culture porn is ubiquitous because it is used now to sell everything … even knowledge and wisdom.

The sad thing is we may now no longer even be able to see wisdom unless it is clothed in sex.

And because to many people a wilderness is not sexy … the oceans are not sexy … liberal and progressive values are not sexy … much will go.

/e

Au contraire, I use terms like “food porn” and “garden porn” right out there in public and get paid for it. I use them half-jestingly and don’t say “food erotica” (obvious jokes aside) mostly because it’s clumsy, but also because it’s less instantly recognizable. I just don’t get what’s “intellectual porn” about Twisty’s site or the convo here unless one conflates all delight into porn.

I could spin this into “I’m here to be in with the In Crowd” vs. “I’m here because I like the company” as a metaphor for actual sex vs. porn (“I want to fuck you because you’re officially Hawt” vs. I want to fuck with you because that curve in your neck right above your collarbone/that crinkle in the corners of your eyes/the way you handle your cat/I dunno,maybe it’s pheromone makes me hot”) but I’m not in so spinnish a mood.

But Twisty, now you’re making me blush. I finally really no-I-mean-it quit a certain job today, won 40 bucks on the Steelers in the bar pool while eating kahlua pig and got another personal compliment from Twisty, all in one day. Damn, I could get to feeling good if I don’t watch out.