One way to convey your willingness to stand up against bullies is to were some kind of button or pin or label or something that says something like “safety” on it. And when you think about it for a second, why not just wear a safety pin???

Most of the safety pins we had around the house are tiny and nobody would see them if I wore won. So I found some larger ones on line.

The really big ones start to look a bit less like regular safety pins. May be it is a good idea to wear two. I don’t know.

Anyway, here is what I found:

This is a 3 inch steel safety pin, shiny, pretty obvious, large, and comes in a package of 122.

It is listed as: 12pcs Silvery Extra-large 3″ Steel Safety Pins – Blankets, Skirts, Kilts, Crafts

Something that big might have the downside of damaging the clothes it is attached to. On the other hand, it is so large you can probably sew it onto something, like a hat. Or attach it to your car. Let me know if you have ideas.

Here are some even larger ones, but they look even less like safety pins.

Then there are these, which look like normal safety pins, but they are not as large. Listed as: Set of 100 Extra-Large 1-3/4″ Safety Pins.

This might be ideal for a teacher, who might wear it as a lapel pin or small broach. It won’t be noticed from across the room at any particular instant, but the teacher’s students will by and by see it and know that this teacher is on their side in case of any bullying, regardless of what the nature of that bullying might happen to be.

By the way, the wearing of safety pins to signal opposition to racist abuses started in the UK after Brexit, according to this.

Which is worse, rape threats or lightening up about rape threats? Since I hardly ever get rape threats and the ones I get are absurd, it is not really for me to say. The question here, is what does a woman who is active on line and gets numerous and scary rape (and other) threats feel about those threats vs. advice from allies(ish) who say “don’t worry about it, just leave that behind.”

This is tricky stuff, because the overt strategy one takes can vary depending on circumstances and there are a lot of valid strategies one can choose, but few strategies one can foist on others.

A person who is outspoken about a particular issue and receives threats over that issue could take those threats very seriously, calling in authorities, hardening defenses, counter-agitating or counter-activating, and so on, while publicly not talking about the threats at all, or perhaps very publicly brushing them off.

Or, the recipient of the threats could do something very different, bringing the details out in the open, making clear to her audience what is happening and why it is wrong, and making the whole thing very public, in order that people know. And maybe that people change. Or, at lest, that social expectations change ands some people shut up.

These two strategies differ in a number of ways. The former strategy may effectively neutralize some of the threats, those from attention seekers who are themselves paying attention, perhaps, but it will do little to stop or slow down threats from your basic miscreant. The latter strategy is likely to generate more threats because, simply, more jerks become aware of a particular target, but the public strategy serves a larger, very important purpose of educating people to the fact that these things happen, and not only that, but they happen commonly and are rather severe to say the least.

It is really up to the person who is at the receiving end of this horrible stuff to make that decision. One thing can be said, though: because of the dynamics of interaction on the internet, the woman who calls out the harassers in order to move us all forward, in the general direction of civilization (which is slowly being reinvented on the Internet) and widespread social justice, is ultimately hurting herself for the benefit of others. When a man does that sort of thing, Internet society calls him a hero. When a woman does that sort of thing, Internet society at best questions her motives, but commonly does worse. She is labeled as a cunt.

Here is my friend and colleague Rebecca Watson laying out her position on this issue in her most recent YouTube vlog, “Dear Guy Who Wants Me to Stop Talking About Feminism“. She addresses the question that is the title of this post.

I’m not embedding Rebecca’s video here because I want you to GO TO HER YOUTUBE CHANNEL and watch the video there. That way, if you feel like leaving a comment, you’ll be there. I assume most, perhaps all, readers of my blog will be supportive and thoughtful. Otherwise go fuck yourself, OK?

Thank you very much that is all.

Then, later, Dawkins got famous in another area, as a spokesperson for atheism. In fact, as a leader of the Atheist movement worldwide. A major milestone in that digression from biology was, of course, his book, The God Delusion. In The God Delusion, he told most people in the world that they were afflicted with a psychiatric disorder that caused them to believe in god. Atheists totally ate this up and for good reason. Also, Dawkins did the whole thing in his quaint British Accent and that took some of the edge off of it, and really, he did it well.

Then Elevatorgate happened, which had absolutely nothing to do with Richard Dawkins, but he chimed in. When he chimed in he said “Ladies, there is no way to get raped in an elevator. All you have to do is push the Stop and Door Open button and leave.” (or words to that effect).

Then just a few weeks later the person of all the people in the world who is closest to me was raped in an elevator.

The rape was interrupted not by her pressing the stop or open button, because they did not work. The rape was interrupted because she decided to kick the rapist’s ass. Then, he was the one pushing the buttons and when the door finally opened he ran. But it certainly did not have to turn out that way. He happened to be unarmed, for example.

Anyway, Richard Dawkins is a dick and that is not just because of his name. He’s a dick because he is utterly unaware of his white, male, British, academic, authory, etc. etc. privilege. Which would be OK, because who really cares, but privilege interferes with activism and being the guy who wrote The God Delusion makes you an activist. Privilege interferes with being a member of a diverse community (diverse as in other people don’t have the same privilege). You can only be an effective leader of a movement if you recognize your membership in the community, even if as a leader.

But you can stay in charge for longer than most, for longer than you deserve, if you corner the market you’ve developed for yourself. My friend and colleague Sarah Moglia overheard Dawkins say something one day that seemed to be an example of his cornering the market. He told someone in charge of major public event that if a particular person was allowed to speak at that event, Dawkins would not go. In other words, he used his huge and unchecked privilege to get another speaker tossed off the podium.

Why? Who did he get tossed? When did this happen? Why are we only hearing about it now?

It all comes down to Elevators, real and metaphorical. And shoes. Dawkins is actually pretty short.

Go read Sarah’s excellent post and find out what happened.

PS. I happen to know what Sarah is doing right now, as I’m writing this post. The image above is a clue so you can guess what that might be!

UPDATE: ONLY PART OF HUMANITY SUCKS SEE THIS NEWS

OK, you may want some background.

A Reddit Regular, perhaps a Reddit celeb (or at least he is now) wants to write a book on how guys seduce women, and he’s asking for money on Kickstarter. One of his tips is this: You move in close, pull out your penis, take the woman’s hand and …. whatever.

I find it interesting that many commenters are referring to that as inappropriate, or sexual assault, by way of objecting to it. I’m pretty sure, though, that it is rape. Probably depends on the state. In any event, now that I’ve revealed one of Ken Hoinsky’s helpful tips for how to get women to like you, I’ll quickly add just in case you didn’t know: Guys, don’t do that. Just. Don’t. Do. That. Don’t.

The book rape-apologist and redditor Ken Hoinsky intends to “write” is mostly going to consist of previously written garbage he’ll steal from the Reddit “Seduction” community. Clearly, Hoinsky is a loser of the lowest level if that’s all he’s go. Ctrl-c, Ctrl-v, give me money.

Here’s a question that is being asked: Why does Kickstarter allow projects that are basically rape handbooks? And why should anybody ever even visit the Kickstarter site, or give any money to any project of any kind, or take any of your projects to Kickstarter, as long as they Kickstarter is run by boneheaded idiots who think this monstrous project is OK?

Here’s a petition you can sign to tell the Kickstarter CEO to do the right thing.

Here’s the story in more detail.

Is this clear?

OK, now that we have that straight, allow me to bring out this one piece of data I thought I’d never have use of. It is a very limited piece of data, not very useful for a large number of reasons. The question at hand can be divided into two parts: 1) What is the chance of a given intromissive internally insemnating sexual event leading to a pregnancy in a woman not on birth control of average fecundity? Then, 2) Does this probability go down, as the good Congresman claims, or does it stay the same.

The answer to the first question is that it is not terribly high. We are not a one-copulation=one baby species. It takes a bunch of tangos to turn out a tyke, on average (but statistics is NOT a birth control method!). As to the second question, it turns out that according to certain data it actually goes up. It is reasonable to suggest that the chance of a single copulation leading to pregnancy if that copulation is rape is about double the overall average. Maybe.

This has been discussed by Thornhill and Palmer, authors of the controversial book “A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion” and subsequent to the storm of debate that arose from that it has been looked at more carefully and a little bit verified (see this).

I can very easily suggest explanations for this and I can also cast more doubt on the studies. First, the doubt. We have no idea what the actual relationship between having sex and having babies is. One would think we would know, but we don’t. Sure, sex leads to babies and all that, but how many sperm, or how many ejaculations, or whatever, does it take before a single sperm is allowed access to the ovum leading to a pregnancy? Scientifically speaking the research needed to answer this question has not been done. There are no controlled studies in which a sufficient sample of subjects across a range of fertilities (and varying in other appropriate factors) repeatedly have sex with everything carefully measured and controlled. Not one study has done this. I don’t expect there to be one any time soon. Our estimates of fecundity are based on reported data, vague estimates, and a lot of thumb sucking. So, when we have a couple of rape-related studies that show a higher pregnancy rate than background, unless it was a lot higher, we would need to take that with a grain of salt.

But if there really is a higher chance of pregnancy resulting from rape, this still may not mean much. There are a number of reasons this could happen, some of which are discussed in the above mentioned book. One very distinct possibility is that rapists are selecting victims somehow, perhaps with their Darwinian wiles, as it were, or perhaps for purely random reasons, who are slightly more fecund than the larger sample from which the baseline statistic is calculated. In any case, the difference is not large.

But, there it is also not lower. The chance of pregnancy from what the Good Congressman calls “legitimate rape” … a term that will surely live in infamy … is not lower. It might be higher. But it is not lower. The man is an ignorant fool. He is wrong.

Here he is being wrong:

Hattip Kent Jones.

Added: Here’s an idea, ask that this dude be relieved of his duties on the House Science and Technology Committee. Which, amazingly, he is on.

The research was reported in Science and quickly popularized in a post by Brian Alexander. Please read this review of the tear research and a critique of Alexander’s post by Christie Wilcox. The idea that tears are a mechanism to avoid rape is mainly proffered in comments in various posts. Also, please have a look at this post by Mike the Mad, which is not about tears but about the evolution of rape avoidance mechanisms in general.

Here’s the idea. It appears that a steroid hormone found in human female tears reduces sexual arousal in human males when they are exposed to those tears. Is this a mechanism to stave off rapists?

Let’s start out by giving the idea the best chance we can. Rape matters. Female hominids in a semi-pair bonded or monogamous species who are raped will give birth to young that will not garner the normal level of male parental investment because the male parental unit is not the father. The female that would be raped is better off not being raped for this reason and thus we would expect adaptations to arise to avoid it. Any rap-avoidance mechanism would be strongly selected against. Bla bla bla.

OK, that’s about as good as I can do. Now, rather than making a cogent argument against this hypothesis (which I could do, honest) I’m simply going to list a number of questions I would ask about this idea before deciding anything.

1) Does this work with male tears? Do man-tears make heterosexual men less aroused? If so, then the steroid hormone is just something in tears.

2) Does this work on the females? Do woman-tears make the woman herself less aroused? Does this work with male tears for homosexuals? Do gay men have reduced arousal when their partner cries? This may not mean much, but would also indicate that this is not really an adaptation, because the production and delivery of a hormone is only part of the process. Receptors matter too. If the tears are working in any of these ways to reduce sexual arousal, then that means that the recipient of the putative signal is responding as the hypothesis predicts, inappropriately or non-specifically, and thus, both the hormone delivery and the reception of the hormones is incidental.

3) Do rapists have reduced sexual arousal when exposed to these hormones? I.e, does the adaptation work in this way? (See below.)

4) Does reduction in sexual arousal in rapists lead to a reduction in likelihood of rape? How does this vary across different kinds of rape?

5) Do rapists who get cried at become safer or more dangerous?

6) Does the presence of the hormone vary with who is getting signaled to?

7) Is the tear-born steroid hormone level in the same range across females, or is it tied to each female’s baseline? Hormone amount is not the factor that matters in their function; What matters is receptor site frequency and distribution and relative hormone amount. Hormone signaling within an individual works because hormone production levels and hormone receptor site frequency and distribution co-develop. This is one of the reasons why those who study endocrine systems establish individual baselines and measure hormone levels in relation to those baselines. Using steroid hormones set to internal baselines to signal between organisms would be difficult, though not impossible.

8) Yes, pheromones exist and work, and these limitations can be compensated for, but they remain two-way devices. A female animal may send out a scent to attract a male, and the male may get attracted, but both parties benefit from this communication and the communication serves a common interest. Why would male rapists have a mechanism for getting “turned off” as it were? If rape is of evolutionary significance, it would be trivial, I would think, for male rapists to avoid a “don’t rape me” pheromone interference mechanism (such as simply not developing the receptor sites for it).

9) Why does the effect happen even though the tears used in the study were not from frightened about to be raped women, but rather, women who were watching Bridget Jones’ Diary or something?

The Science study does show an effect. Perhaps something is going on here. The evidence that it is an anti-rape adaptation is very poor, and reason suggests that it is not. The idea that one facies of emotional state (sad/happy/etc) is linked to another (aroused/not aroused/etc) is reasonable, and we may be seeing that here.

One problem is that human tears are a unique human trait. And, human rape is probably unique as well, though forced copulation is not (human rape is so very much more, in a bad way, than that). This makes it difficult to do the sorts of comparative work that helps to parse out the adaptive from the incidental.

Christie, in her post, discusses a more nuanced hypothesis that does involve communication of emotional states in a way that is probably more reasonable given that tears occur in a much wider range of social settings than either the intercourse-related or the rape-related. In fact, to narrow down her idea a bit, tears in infants may be a powerful way of eliciting care-taking behavior. That alone could cause tears in adults to have similar effect for no particular adaptive reason, but rather, as a ride-along and incidental effect. (Christie discusses all of this).

Finally, while rape is important in human affairs, I’m not so sure how important it is in long term evolutionary history. Most tropical and subtropical foragers are relatively monomorphic in body size, and there is little evidence of rape being important. Rape is much more common in so-called “middle range societies” which a lot of modern evolutionary psychologists lump in with foraging societies. They are wrong to do this, and I find it very annoying. So annoying that I’ve started to write about it a few times but my keyboard burst into flames every time. Eventually, I’ll address that issue, but I may have to skin a few colleagues.

Gelstein, S., Yeshurun, Y., Rozenkrantz, L., Shushan, S., Frumin, I., Roth, Y., & Sobel, N. (2011). Human Tears Contain a Chemosignal Science, 331 (6014), 226-230 DOI: 10.1126/science.1198331

Assange and the Presumption of Innocence
Assange and the Victim Conspiracy

The issue is that of jealousy or resentment. Some Assange defenders, for some reason, seem to feel the need to point out suspicious or negative aspects of the women, their actions, reactions, decisions, etc. One of these issues is the idea that each of them agreed to at least some degree to have sex with Julian (though what happens after initial activity may have gone off track) and then only after learning of each other’s plight, pursued a complaint. Stephanie, in her post, goes into detail on this issue including questioning the legitimacy of the premise, but that’s not what I want to comment on. I want to comment, rather, on the idea that if they experienced jealousy or resentment that this is somehow to their detriment and indicates a weakness in their subsequent decisions, and perhaps even invalidates their complaints.

It does not.

I don’t want to go all Evolutionary Psychology on you but bear with me. Sexual jealousy is there for a reason. I’m pretty sure the extent, nature, and details of sexual jealousy in typical humans is culture-dependent, even if this behavior makes use of deep limbic emotions. I’m also pretty sure that sexual jealousy is shaped in some cultures to enhance certain behaviors (and allow them by others not directly involved but who know about them) that are abhorrent. The fact that there are societies in which women are routinely tortured or killed over issues of sexual access gives sexual jealousy a rather bad name. But that is humans, and human culture, making the worst of it as often happens. There is a good argument that a certain degree of sexual propriety and it’s concomitant emotional bells and whistles makes good sense for human beings in cultural contexts where these emotional tools can be used sensibly, which to me includes both egalitarian foraging societies and progressive middle class European subcultures (which are very similar to each other in many ways).

Consider a hypothetical case that is NOT what happened here in magnitude but may be what happened here qualitatively. Imagine yourself (as an unattached person) meeting someone and sleeping with them. Then two days later the next person you meet who knows that person mentions that they just slept with that person. Then a few days later, the next person you meet who knows this person mentions that they slept with that person. And so on and so forth.

As an aside, I’d like you to think about how this would play out, in terms of judgments we or others may make about people, if you are a heterosexual male and the person who seems to sleep with everyone you met is a heterosexual female. Then re-imagine this with the sex roles reversed. Then re-imagine this with you and the other person being gay men, then lesbians. If you like, throw in bisexuality but I recommend not because this is going to take forever as it is.

Well, that exercise is not the main point I want to make but in thinking this through you may have exposed a multi-standard (like a double standard but with more standards). Maybe not for you, for how you judge other people, because you would never misjudge anyone I’m sure, but how society might. The admirable stud vs. the whoring slut themes come to mind. A digression, but a worthy one.

Back to the point: If you did not know that your one time lover was about to sleep with every third person s/he met over the coming weeks, or just had over the previous weeks, you might be suddenly shocked or at least surprised. You will probably not have a purely intellectual response to this new knowledge. There will be shades of something that one might call jealousy even though you two never discussed or expected commitment, but it is called sexual jealousy only because that is the name we use for it, and it invokes questions of commitment only because our culture tends to make the link. What is really happening is that you are experiencing an evolved and generally useful off-putting emotional reaction designed by selection to do a number of things, including limit disease exposure and avoid potentially dangerous social situations. Also, you charge for your intimacy (we all do). Intimacy of any kind has costs and risks. You just found out that your one time partner is shopping at Good Will while you’re shopping at the Gap. If you were merely friends, that should not really matter. But if you are shopping together, that’s a conflict.

Of course these woman would experience sexual jealousy. If they were men, many who are pointing this out would not have seen that as something they were doing wrong. Of course men would be negative about the sluttish behavior of the chick they just bagged, right? But as women, their sexual jealousy is seen as unseemly or inappropriate or a poor reason to develop bad feelings, but in fact, such feelings are a prerequisite for narcing on someone. Their assessment of Julian Assange dropped, their estimate of their own cost and return from their relationship was quite properly re-calibrated, and their sense of risk was heightened. At face value, I’d say they acted in an entirely appropriate manner when they thought of making a case after finding out about each other, if that is in fact what happened. That’s what any reasonable person would do.

Hat tip feministing.

But really, in the end, my problems are minor compared to those of others. And that is true of everyone and everything I mention in this post, which is why I’ve posted illustrated links to important stories about the overarching topic of discussion. Lest we forget.

I mention all of this misery of my own for a reason: Staring on Monday or Tuesday, I began to slide more and more rapidly toward the edge of an abyss, and on Wednesday at 10:05 AM I was kicked straight into it. I have been floating on air since then. Floating on air like a person who is falling off a very very high cliff to his death. Or, floating on air like a person who is ecstatic and uplifted by his own happiness. I can’t tell yet. But one result of this whole floating thing is total distraction from what has been happening on the blogosphere, mostly in reaction to my initial discussion about rape, related issues, rape switches, and so on. Well, all of the sudden, with the help of my friend Stephanie and my friend Lou (at least, I hope he’s my friend!), I’ve caught up on this discussion and I am now ready to do the following to you depending on who you are:

1) issue you a sincere apology;
2) kick your ass into oblivion;
3) enlighten you about life; or
4) have violent sex with you. Figuratively.

I demand an apology!

First, I want to address a few blogospheric issues. One person whom I consider to be a friend, and another person whom I consider to be some troll who dropped out of nowhere, and a few others, have been waiting for me to apologize for one or both of the following statements:

That all soldiers at war are rapists even if they don’t rape anyone, and/or that Doms as in BSDM are rapists.

Regarding the first demand for an apology: This is a semantic issue and has been from the beginning. I happen to refer to men who’s theoretical rape switch went on as “rapists” even if they had not raped, much like a person who learns how to sweat pipe might be thought of as a “plumber” even if they have not yet … plumbed anything. Technically, what I just said might still be true, or it might not be. Who cares? Clearly, people are sensitive about this and those who have not actually committed rape should probably not be called rapists. I acquiesced to this point at the time, right when the first objection was made.

The rule I’m not following: The “Stand still while I continue to scream at you that you must apologize!” rule.

There are actually two fallacies in effect here: 1) That you (Rystefn, or whomever) have the right to pick a moment in time during an on-going thinking out loud conversation that happens to give you your trollish jollies and insist that this is the only thing that your trollee — your victim — has ever thought or said. No, you don’t get to do that. In fact, if you do that you will get spanked (see below for the spanking). 2) The fallacy of the universal. Both Rystefn and Lou are making this mistake, as are many others in this discussion. I’ll get to that in a moment.

You can’t have your apology, but I am sorry.

So no, guys, you can’t have your apology. We are talking about a serious issue here, and we are knocking around ideas. Nobody is accusing anyone of anything. We are just conversing. If you want to propose terminology or rhetoric, do so. If you want to propose alternative ideas, do so. But do not pick up pieces of mud and make love to them like they were the last piece of mud on the face of the earth. Do not huff and puff and blow my house down especially when it is also your house. In other words, stop acting like you were made entirely of your y-chromsome and nothing else. And, most importantly, begin to understand the fact that this discussion is not about you.

• Trolled
• U.S. Rape Statistics
• When Is a Rapist?
• Why So Silent?
• Words, Pride and Obligation: A Note to Rystefn and Lou

During this time I’ve only read a few of the comments and I entirely skipped reading two of her posts on Almost Diamonds. As I say in the very beginning, I was a bit distracted with my whole life falling apart and shit. So I have reasons for having let my friend down, but I still am very very sorry about that, and for that I apologize. The most important point Stephanie makes is probably that this whole discussion is not about the guys who are slogging around in this argument. I wonder, do any of them know what this is about?

Is there any wonder why most of my best friends are not heteronormative middle class white men?

Almost all of the people I’m close to in this world are women, and I think this is in part because you don’t really get close to men quite often. You get close to their ideas or, more likely, their ideals (such as they are). You share things (like proclivities and preferences) not thoughts and points of view. You do other stuff that guys do, whatever that is. As the present discussion progresses, I increasingly understand why. I compare the comments, both on the blogs and in private emails that are going back and forth, between the women and the men and I see an overwhelming difference, and this is not even counting Stephanie with whom I communicate a lot anyway. And, if we go back to Stephanie’s post on pay rates, and to my very recent quickie about how women are smarter than men, the problem becomes utterly obvious.

Most men have very small dicks and can’t handle it.

It is not the case that I’ve simply agreed with every woman who has voiced a thought in this discussion. In fact, I’m not sure at all that there is a gender bias in how much what I think may be similar to or different from what anyone else thinks. But there is a clear difference based almost entirely on gender in affect and style of effrontery.

(This is also not to say that women are nice and men are mean. If any sort of generalization would apply, that is not it. Perhaps women are smart and men are dumb. Most likely, though, I think most women are more thoughtful about what they are both saying and hearing than are men, who really don’t listen to what others say and who rarely think about what they are about to spew out as much as they should. On average.)

OK, back to some troll related commentary:

We cannot discuss anything substantive until everyone agrees on the meaning of the words we are using

This is the hobgoblin of an unthinking mind, and it is the sort of thing I have never heard a woman commenter or blogger say. I’ve only heard men say it. And no, it is not true. Well, I supposed it depends on what one means by ‘meaning’…

… As you can detect, I’m working off a bit of a laundry list here… and the next items have to to with the science that has been abused in some of this discussion.

Are human universals … universal?

The term Universal in this context is not a term one simply pulls out of one’s ass. It is a term that has been in use by scholars for some time, and there is quite a bit to say about it. What it does NOT mean is this: If there is a “universal” (like the tendency to run away when the tiger looks at you) it is simply not the case that every individual has that behavior or will effect that behavior under a given circumstance.

Deer. Headlight. You know the story. You shine a spotlight or headlights into a deer’s eyes and they freeze. If you have a firearm, and you shoot the deer this way, that is called “jacking” the deer. Easy hunting. (Note: This only works at night.)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shined the spotlight into the eye of the deer or the antelope — hundreds of times I’m sure — and I can tell you that sometimes the “universal” behavior happens, and sometimes it does not. I have it from a good source that on one particular reservation here in Minnesota, where the deer are “jacked” on a regular basis, very few of the deer stop in a light. Learning? Natural selection? We don’t know. But it is evidence that the “universal” may be labile.

So, please do not convert the hypothetical assertion that a particular thing like a rape switch is a human trait (which could be called a universal by some) to telling every man that he is a rapist. How stupid of you to think that. You must be a guy. I don’t even “believe” in universals, for fucks sake. And more importantly, learn what a “universal” is. And isn’t.

Proximate vs. Ultimate and Conscious vs Unconscious

People are messing up these concepts all over the place. I’ll be brief: The reason we have sex is to have babies. Period. The way we have sex has nothing to do with having babies. Obviously. Same with power relationships. Same with all of it. You have to separate ultimate explanations from proximate mechanisms if you are going to speak non-stoopidly of behavior.

Same goes for conscious vs. unconscious. In fact, just forget about that. The degree to which a behavior, tendency, switch, repression, all of it is known to the individual exhibiting the behavior is not relevant at all. I assure you that the belief that you know what is going on inside your own head is one of the greatest fallacies you will ever commit. Get over it.

Who put the “D” in BDSM?

This last bit is only for you Doms (as in BDSM). Everyone else kindly go away, because this is not going to be pretty.

I’ve already addressed the issue of whether I want to call Doms rapists. I’ve addressed it a half dozen times, but I’m sure I’ll have to say it again because some of you are just not that smart: I don’t need to call you a rapist. I don’t think that pretending to rape your girlfriend is the same thing as actually raping your girlfriend.

But Dom Rystefn himself (in between bouts of raping his girlfriend and beating his dog, I assume) pointed out that play-rape is to real rape what shooting skeets is to killing people. I love that analogy, and it is exactly what I have been thinking. It is what makes the D in BDSM interesting in the context of the rape conversation.

For myself, I can’t contribute much. I am not B,D,S, or M, and I am not an expert on this, and I’ve not read the literature. I would love to hear what people who do know what they are talking about have to say about this, other than total denial that there are things to learn.

Shooting skeets is a way of shooting pigeons that does not require the pigeon. This saves some trouble and money, and it also separates the shooter from pigeon-killing which may or may not be an issue. Pigeon-shooting is interesting, and has some recent anthropology done on it. The relationship between gun-owing cultures, right wingosity, The Klan and similar groups, pigeon shooting, and the construction of whiteness has been analyzed usefully by a colleague of mine. It is all very interesting.

Similarly, I can imagine that rape simulation can bear light on actual rape. What do I mean by this? What am I implying? Of what awful thing am I accusing you (you, the Doms who are allowed to read this)? Ha! Have you not been paying attention? Would you mind please putting down your dumbifying y-chromosome for a minute and think about how you LOOK when you are foaming at the mouth?

Which brings me to my last point. It suddenly dawned on me earlier today. I had been reading comments by Angry White Male (who is either a total parody or a total ass) and our friend Rystefn and some others, and I had been discussing this very post that you are reading with a friend. The friend said “Just leave out the stuff about the Doms… they won’t handle this well.” And it all came together.

You Dom’s are a bunch of whimp-ass babies. You want someone (who is what we call “willing”) to allow you to dominate them physically and psychologically, and this is how you get off. Or how they get off. But when the issue comes up that your behavior relates to violence you fall apart and get all teary eyed like you were just jumped by the bullies. You make the rules that say everyone else has to leave you alone and while that is happening one person should volunteer for you to pretend you are raping him or her, and when the core of the argument goes a bit over your head or turns out to be something that you didn’t think it was (egg on your face) you focus on spelling and word meaning and other stupid ass shit.

I have a little advice for you. Grow some balls and start paying attention to what you are presenting to the rest of us. Stop trying to control the conversation like you control your lover’s posture and position. Be a man for once. No, wait, don’t be a man! (What am I saying?) Be smarter, more interesting, less dogmatic, and braver.

Be a woman for once!

And remember. This conversation is not about you.