What do you know, HuffPost actually has something good to say about the 50 Shades book/movie. Finally someone pointed out that Christian Grey was written from a totally female perspective. Most reviews just drone on through the standard faux-feminist talking points.
The review sounds to me like: “He is an abusive psycho, but he is commited and pays attention. Guys, you should learn from him, because this is cool.”
Okay, this is a dangerous territory, but this review is a part of what I hate: media sending mixed messages to men, demanding contradictory things, then criticizing men for failing to do the contradictory things. On Monday, you are told to make sure that your t-shirt is politically correct, never invite a woman to a coffee, and stop being an entitled whiny nice guy. On Tuesday, you are told to look at this charming psycho and realize how inferior you are compared with him.
The solution for me is to ignore what media say, which probably is a generally good strategy.
Many ideological problems boil down to an error of expansive domain:
So a X=Marxist can talk intelligently about certain large-scale economic patterns. But there’s no reason to expect good career advice from a Marxist. Despite this, some Marxists are perfectly happy to reason “having a career is related to economics, and my theory of proletarian revolution is related to economics, and so clearly my theory of the proletarian revolution is related to giving good career advice!”. And then the critics of Marxism are happy to attack Marxism as a whole, but only by pointing out that the theory fails when applied to the problem of giving good career advice.
I think this maps directly to certain controversies over feminism. Feminism is about patterns X, Y, and Z in gender relations. But you shouldn’t expect a particular feminist framework to apply to literally every problem involving gender, despite the willingness of many proponents and critics to debate accept these misapplications as if they were meaningful. In particular, I would map “Marxist giving career advice” to “Feminist giving dating advice”.
Note that this position is consistent with supporting the underlying ideological framework: I could be a fervent Marxist, while still accepting that Marxism might have limited, or at least very complicated, relevance to your current job search.
The problem is that people generally don’t know what they want and are unable to express what they think they want. It’s the difference between having a utility function, being conscious of that utility function, and being able to communicate that utility function—highly different abilities requiring progressively more introspective and analytic ability.
The surest test to find out what people are actually after is to observe what they go after, instead of listening to what they say they are after.
Seems like a difference between wanting and liking. What you want is not the same as what will make you happy when you get it, because humans are not utility maximizers. For example, you may not like being an addict, but you still want the drug. Not making a difference between wanting and liking makes talking about humans confused.
Similarly (warning: getting into the politically dangerous territory again), there is a difference between what (stereotypical, heterosexual, etc.) women like, and what they want. Politically correct people deny the “wanting”. PUAs deny the reality of “liking”. Fact is, humans are messed up in many aspects, female sexual attraction being just one of many examples.
Women don’t like being abused, just like alcoholics don’t like the hangovers. Yet some women cannot resist the abusive guys, just like some alcoholics cannot resist taking a drink. Both things can be true at the same time. (It would be crazy to deny that alcoholics wants to drink, but it would be also crazy to say that alcoholics actually enjoy the hangovers and only pretend to hate them because they are socially expected to.)
A sane adult human should recognize the difference between their liking and wanting, and act accordingly. Media usually do not act as promoters of sanity. They do not have an incentive to be even consistent. On Monday, media will tell you horror stories about alcoholics. On Tuesday, media will tell you that alcohol is fun. Media don’t care about fucking up your life if you listen to their stories. They care about profit; and sometimes the profitable thing is something that will fuck up your life as a side effect.
But it is not fair to blame the bartender, if you put him into “damnned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. You are already drunk, and you want yet another drink. If he gives you as much alcohol as you can drink, you will end up in hospital, and your family will write angry blogs about the bartender. But if he refuses to give you another drink, then you will go to another bar and you will write an angry blog about him. Okay, we could agree that the bartender who gives people more drinks than they can handle is a bad guy, and he should lose his license and go to jail. But putting one bartender in jail will not fix your alcoholism. If you blame half of the bartenders for giving you another drink, and another half for not giving you another drink… maybe you should stop focusing on what the bartenders are doing wrong, and start reflecting on yourself; maybe with some professional help. No, media advice is not professional help, and people liking and sharing your blogs on facebook is not a proof of your sanity.
(In a way, even the media is just a meta-bartender. If they stop publishing stories that fuck up your life, you will probably become bored and switch to their competition.)
Most of the complaints I’ve heard about it have nothing much to do with feminism (unless you define that term really broadly). The complaints are (1) that it’s really badly written and (2) that it appears to celebrate abuse in the guise of BDSM. (I am told that actual BDSM folks are generally very, very careful about consent, for obvious reasons.)
I am not endorsing either criticism, not least because I haven’t read the book. (It seems to me that #2 might be an unfair criticism, on the grounds that FSOG shouldn’t be thought of as a book about domination fantasies and how people play them out, but as a domination fantasy itself.) But unless “sexual abuse and rape are bad” has become a specifically feminist (or even faux-feminist) claim now, I don’t see that feminism should get either credit or blame for these criticisms.
Given the weird nature of broad political categories like feminism, I wouldn’t think it’s almost ever fair to claim this is feminism or this isn’t feminism. It seeems to me to be one of the most ambiguous terms in politics.
I believe that the people who attribute criticism #2 to feminism believe that feminists conflate “story about abuse” with “story encouraging abuse.” If feminists are indeed doing this (I’m unsure whether they are), then criticism #2 ought to be attributed to feminism; the general population seems to have no problem with stories that portray unacceptable-in-reality sex (for instance, “NonConsent/Reluctance” is a major story tag on Literotica.)
I have seen self-identified feminists criticising the book (and preemptively the movie) for #2.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as making that conflation. A closer version might be that the book portrays an abusive relationship sympathetically. (I haven’t read it, I don’t know if this is an accurate criticism.) Thomas Covenant in Lord Foul’s Bane and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead are both the protagonists of their stories, and both rapists; but only one of their authors appears to disapprove of their rape.
(It still feels like an unfair criticism, to me.)
And on a similar note, people in the kink scene are upset that kink is being portrayed in a light that they don’t find particularly sympathetic, and they’re worried about the effects this is going to have on their community.
There’s a content-neutral signaling dynamic too: Some BDSM fans (for lack of a better term?) are signaling sophistication by loudly complaining out that the recent “pop music hit” is crap. So there’s an opportunity for hipster counter-signaling if anyone with in-group credibility defends some aspect of the book.
What do you know, HuffPost actually has something good to say about the 50 Shades book/movie. Finally someone pointed out that Christian Grey was written from a totally female perspective. Most reviews just drone on through the standard faux-feminist talking points.
The review sounds to me like: “He is an abusive psycho, but he is commited and pays attention. Guys, you should learn from him, because this is cool.”
Okay, this is a dangerous territory, but this review is a part of what I hate: media sending mixed messages to men, demanding contradictory things, then criticizing men for failing to do the contradictory things. On Monday, you are told to make sure that your t-shirt is politically correct, never invite a woman to a coffee, and stop being an entitled whiny nice guy. On Tuesday, you are told to look at this charming psycho and realize how inferior you are compared with him.
The solution for me is to ignore what media say, which probably is a generally good strategy.
Many ideological problems boil down to an error of expansive domain:
So a X=Marxist can talk intelligently about certain large-scale economic patterns. But there’s no reason to expect good career advice from a Marxist. Despite this, some Marxists are perfectly happy to reason “having a career is related to economics, and my theory of proletarian revolution is related to economics, and so clearly my theory of the proletarian revolution is related to giving good career advice!”. And then the critics of Marxism are happy to attack Marxism as a whole, but only by pointing out that the theory fails when applied to the problem of giving good career advice.
I think this maps directly to certain controversies over feminism. Feminism is about patterns X, Y, and Z in gender relations. But you shouldn’t expect a particular feminist framework to apply to literally every problem involving gender, despite the willingness of many proponents and critics to debate accept these misapplications as if they were meaningful. In particular, I would map “Marxist giving career advice” to “Feminist giving dating advice”.
Note that this position is consistent with supporting the underlying ideological framework: I could be a fervent Marxist, while still accepting that Marxism might have limited, or at least very complicated, relevance to your current job search.
The problem is that people generally don’t know what they want and are unable to express what they think they want. It’s the difference between having a utility function, being conscious of that utility function, and being able to communicate that utility function—highly different abilities requiring progressively more introspective and analytic ability.
The surest test to find out what people are actually after is to observe what they go after, instead of listening to what they say they are after.
Seems like a difference between wanting and liking. What you want is not the same as what will make you happy when you get it, because humans are not utility maximizers. For example, you may not like being an addict, but you still want the drug. Not making a difference between wanting and liking makes talking about humans confused.
Similarly (warning: getting into the politically dangerous territory again), there is a difference between what (stereotypical, heterosexual, etc.) women like, and what they want. Politically correct people deny the “wanting”. PUAs deny the reality of “liking”. Fact is, humans are messed up in many aspects, female sexual attraction being just one of many examples.
Women don’t like being abused, just like alcoholics don’t like the hangovers. Yet some women cannot resist the abusive guys, just like some alcoholics cannot resist taking a drink. Both things can be true at the same time. (It would be crazy to deny that alcoholics wants to drink, but it would be also crazy to say that alcoholics actually enjoy the hangovers and only pretend to hate them because they are socially expected to.)
A sane adult human should recognize the difference between their liking and wanting, and act accordingly. Media usually do not act as promoters of sanity. They do not have an incentive to be even consistent. On Monday, media will tell you horror stories about alcoholics. On Tuesday, media will tell you that alcohol is fun. Media don’t care about fucking up your life if you listen to their stories. They care about profit; and sometimes the profitable thing is something that will fuck up your life as a side effect.
But it is not fair to blame the bartender, if you put him into “damnned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. You are already drunk, and you want yet another drink. If he gives you as much alcohol as you can drink, you will end up in hospital, and your family will write angry blogs about the bartender. But if he refuses to give you another drink, then you will go to another bar and you will write an angry blog about him. Okay, we could agree that the bartender who gives people more drinks than they can handle is a bad guy, and he should lose his license and go to jail. But putting one bartender in jail will not fix your alcoholism. If you blame half of the bartenders for giving you another drink, and another half for not giving you another drink… maybe you should stop focusing on what the bartenders are doing wrong, and start reflecting on yourself; maybe with some professional help. No, media advice is not professional help, and people liking and sharing your blogs on facebook is not a proof of your sanity.
(In a way, even the media is just a meta-bartender. If they stop publishing stories that fuck up your life, you will probably become bored and switch to their competition.)
Most of the complaints I’ve heard about it have nothing much to do with feminism (unless you define that term really broadly). The complaints are (1) that it’s really badly written and (2) that it appears to celebrate abuse in the guise of BDSM. (I am told that actual BDSM folks are generally very, very careful about consent, for obvious reasons.)
I am not endorsing either criticism, not least because I haven’t read the book. (It seems to me that #2 might be an unfair criticism, on the grounds that FSOG shouldn’t be thought of as a book about domination fantasies and how people play them out, but as a domination fantasy itself.) But unless “sexual abuse and rape are bad” has become a specifically feminist (or even faux-feminist) claim now, I don’t see that feminism should get either credit or blame for these criticisms.
Given the weird nature of broad political categories like feminism, I wouldn’t think it’s almost ever fair to claim this is feminism or this isn’t feminism. It seeems to me to be one of the most ambiguous terms in politics.
I believe that the people who attribute criticism #2 to feminism believe that feminists conflate “story about abuse” with “story encouraging abuse.” If feminists are indeed doing this (I’m unsure whether they are), then criticism #2 ought to be attributed to feminism; the general population seems to have no problem with stories that portray unacceptable-in-reality sex (for instance, “NonConsent/Reluctance” is a major story tag on Literotica.)
I have seen self-identified feminists criticising the book (and preemptively the movie) for #2.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as making that conflation. A closer version might be that the book portrays an abusive relationship sympathetically. (I haven’t read it, I don’t know if this is an accurate criticism.) Thomas Covenant in Lord Foul’s Bane and Howard Roark in The Fountainhead are both the protagonists of their stories, and both rapists; but only one of their authors appears to disapprove of their rape.
(It still feels like an unfair criticism, to me.)
And on a similar note, people in the kink scene are upset that kink is being portrayed in a light that they don’t find particularly sympathetic, and they’re worried about the effects this is going to have on their community.
There’s a content-neutral signaling dynamic too: Some BDSM fans (for lack of a better term?) are signaling sophistication by loudly complaining out that the recent “pop music hit” is crap. So there’s an opportunity for hipster counter-signaling if anyone with in-group credibility defends some aspect of the book.