vorpa-glavo
No bio...
User ID: 674
vorpa-glavo
7d ago
Whatever his wife said, his own letters reveal he didn't care much about sex. I don't have strong feelings about it, but I could easily believe he was in the bottom 25% in terms of male libido. Capable of fulfilling his conjugal duties as a husband, but not super into it.
vorpa-glavo
8d ago
H.P. Lovecraft was probably more scared of women than he was of brown people and Shoggoths.
I don't know if it was that he was scared, or somewhere on the asexual spectrum.
It is pretty revealing that his most "interesting" female character was actually a body-swapped male sorcerer.
Topically for transgenderism, though, there's a particular 'you only think it's desexualized because what the sexualization actually is won't be coherent to you' thing that over time people (particularly men) might hopefully be starting to understand. Steven Universe does it with the 'fusion dance', but most people get frame-trapped by seeing the Fusion dances, going 'it's obviously sex, they're teaching kids to have sex', and ending the scan there.
While I mostly agree with the fact that there's a lot of transgender transformation media that manages to be sexual for a person with a particular kink or fetish without registering as sexual to most of the population, I also think there is a risk with this kind of speculation.
To use an ancient example by way of analogy, look at the animal transformations in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In particular I want to focus on the motif of voice throughout the poem (translation A. S. Kline):
But when he [Actaeon] sees his head and horns reflected for certain in the water, he tries to say "Oh, look at me!" but no voice follows. He groans: that is his voice, and tears run down his altered face. Only his mind remains unchanged. What can he do? Shall he return to his home and the royal palace, or lie hidden in the woods? Shame prevents the one, and fear the other.
Ovid focuses on the voice, and the lack of it in transformed people a lot throughout the poem. But why is he doing it?
I think there's a temptation for a modern person who is aware of the wide variety of kink content online, particularly transformation media, to speculate as to whether this isn't essentially ancient transformation porn. On this reading, Ovid keeps coming back to the lack of voice that results from a bestial transformation because this is the part that is hot to him, the part where a superior human being is made lesser, and thus, in a pattern that mirrors BDSM, hypnosis/mind control content, etc. the part where Ovid places himself in the mindset of a dom looking down on his literary subjects.
But there is obviously another explanation. That Ovid had a normal, non-kinky interest in transformation stories, and he chose to focus on the lack of voice in ex-human animals because that was one of the most salient differences between a human and an animal in his mind.
We will likely never know which of the two explanations is more directionally true.
But this kind of applies to all media that isn't obviously sexual, while appealing to a subset of the population due to their particular kinks. Plenty of mainstream stories feature body swaps (Freaky Friday being the most famous example), but body swaps are also a popular subject in kink. Short of an author or group of authors just coming out and saying, "This is a kink thing, we're writing kinky porn that only looks non-sexual because you're normal and this doesn't turn you on", there are going to be many examples where a cigar is just a cigar, and no intentional kinkiness was actually intended by the author.
vorpa-glavo
23d ago
It kind of works. The Death Eaters ally themselves with many of the outcasts of wizarding society like giants and werewolves.
Considering how scandalously Hagrid's half-giant ancestry is treated, and the way Umbridge talks down to the centaurs, and the things Dumbledore says about the lie of the Ministry of Magic statues (which depict all the other sapient magical races looking up to wizards), I think it would be possible to reframe Voldemort as a populist getting all of the hated rabble and dregs of society onside along with a handful of elites, and revolting with them.
I do wonder about the werewolves and giants that sided with the Death Eaters. Even if they enjoyed "being themselves" during the war, surely they understood that there was no way that a blood purist group would ever give them a good deal once the war was actually won. Like, the Malfoys might be willing to do an alliance of convenience with Fenrir Greyback, but it's kind of hard to imagine them ever accepting or tolerating his existence long term after a victory.
vorpa-glavo
27d ago
I'll admit, that I hope the full text of her actual statements to police get released, since right now we only have the DA's summaries and snippets from newspapers that have apparently obtained the full text. I'm particularly curious about the context of this quote:
“And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard,” she told police, according to the transcript.
Considering that the DA determined that her statement didn't merit criminal charges initially, and he doesn't mention hitting at any point in his summary of her words, it makes me wonder if it was just rough sex / BDSM stuff, or if the DA has misrepresented her statement and things were more rough-and-tumble than the mostly consensual drug-fueled triple threesome narrative in his summary?
vorpa-glavo
27d ago
Cornell, in the spirit of an elite research university, has developed the inverse: rapists, but no rape.
This case feels quite opposite of most. Speaking as one of our resident perverts: I both find the actions of the men disgusting, and it sure feels like some of them were at best neutral on the question of consent; and I think the girl pretty much consented to what happened.
Yeah, it's a weird case. All of the guys were trying to get as far as they can with her and initiate making out and groping, but generally respected when she said no, backed away, or swatted their hands away.
If the DA's summary of her statement is accurate, then for the most part it seems like she verbally consented to a lot of it, and somatically consented to basically everything else. If anything, the part that comes off as most scummy is the final threesome. Males 3, 5 and 6 seem to have already been trying to wind things down, and then Males 1 and 4 usher her to a different room, convince her to do more ketamine and have the final threesome of the night before she taps out. It definitely reads like Male 1 caring more about his ego than her well-being, even if he was also high on ketamine and probably drunk as well.
vorpa-glavo
28d ago
I think there is a difference between not accepting someone else's beliefs, and and shitting all over them.
When you merely don't accept someone's beliefs, I think it is can be perfectly within the confines of good faith, to find points of agreement between their worldview and yours, and to argue that a person should live up to their principles and commitments.
The progressive left is slave morality, and Christianity is slave morality, so it is not surprising that even secular progressives find a lot to admire in Christian ethics, even if they also dislike a lot of aspects of conservative Christian dogma.
I have a buddy who works at a warehouse for a major grocery store chain in the United States. Relatively dumb people are still absolutely necessary for society to function. While they get to use tools like electric pallet jacks and scissor lifts, a lot of it is just guys on their feet wearing jackets and working in a giant room kept at the temperature of your refrigerator (or if they're really unlucky, your freezer) and unloading pallets from trucks as they come in, moving depallettized product around so that it can be put in long term storage, or loading it up into a truck and taken to a store.
I don't know if you'd consider it "hard labor", but the vast majority of Americans do not eat without those guys' work. Of course, I do expect the job to be automated away eventually (especially with the advances in robotics and AI we've seen), but for now all of those people's labor keeps most of the rest of us alive.
(I also don't know the specifics of the situation, but my understanding is that about half of the warehouse workers are only able to speak Spanish. I don't know if they're illegal immigrants, permanent legal residents, or citizens.)
More options
Context Copy link