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Notes -
"I prefer the hands-on touch you only get with hired goons."
or
"'Abstinence for abundance' is like 'fighting for peace'"
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There's a Harper's article making the rounds, and before I link it, I'll let you know what it's about lest anyone click through to a level of detail they'd rather not get. It's about an online subculture ("gooners") who not only watch pornography, but veritably worship it: reveling in how addicted they are to it, often communally. If you want much, much, much more detail than that, here's the link.
I'm not here to dig into any lurid details, myself. (The biggest thought that comes to mind is how, though Abrahamic proscriptions against pornography usually fall under "thou shalt not commit adultery," this behavior seems to be edging
[ahem]its way under the prohibition against worshiping images, as that seems more literally what's happening.) I'm not so much interested in meta-voyeuristically gawking at the porn-viewers--Instead I am here to point a finger at Ezra Klein.
Now, the author of the Harper's article (who is not Ezra) muses at the end on what brought about this porn-obssession subculture in terms of the pull-factors of modern technology. Is this not just another example of algorithm-driven addiction? Are we not all gooners these days? But he only briefly touches upon push-factors driving people away from the healthy alternatives he laments, such as:
And that evokes this article of Ezra Klein's. Pull-quote:
Well, here we are.
And is this not better, from that point of view? Aren't we better off, from the perspective of preventing rape, for each could-be rapist neutralized somehow? Doesn't each man taken off the street and holed up in a cave, never to be met in real life again, give women less to fear? I doubt it. For one, it's not the right kind of neutralization: male sexuality being indulged in any way at all (much less this extremely) without supervision always keeps the fear alive that it might one day burst its banks and turn into real rape. For two, the hoped-for outcome was clearly to scare men into being appropriately respectful of consent while still being willing. Unfortunately, there turned out to be a path of lesser resistance.
All this leads to the question of What Is To Be Done. To venture a very safe prediction, I predict that, if self-proclaimed decent human beings have their shot at fixing this gender-relations mess, they'll use the only method they know for such problems: turning some weapon against male behavior. (It's a patriarchal world, after all, which means that women are suffering more than they deserve and men are suffering less, so it would be unjust to use anything other than the carrot on women and anything other than the stick on men.) Blocking off this path-of-least-resistance to try to herd them back where they're wanted. Of course, that could very well just open up a new path-of-least-resistance other than what they want, and who knows what new horrors that will unleash.
If I had to make some suggestion - and this is always harder than making some complaint - all I would say is that perhaps some tactic other than inflicting fear or shame or pain might be called for at some point. (It is also probably a bad idea to use such tactics if they disproportionally work on the conscientious, like threats of long-term consequences always do. Discouraging the conscientious from sex and reproduction will have bad consequences, evolutionarily.)
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For a topic like this, I know that disclaimers are necessary:
Do I think that Ezra Klein or other feminists are primarily or even substantially responsible for a subculture of porn addicts? No, but the force they apply does push in that direction.
Am I recommending "men being allowed to rape" as being better than this or that social ill? No! But the thinking that supposes that that's the only alternative is going to be increasingly destructive.
Do I think that "gooning" as a subculture or practice has any redeeming qualities that should spare it from destruction? No, but rather: I think, for the would-be destroyers' own sake, and the sake of what they're trying to preserve, that they might not want to be so destruction-minded.
Do I think that "Spishak" motives can't really have anything to do with conscientiousness/neurosis, because anybody who'd engage in such disgusting practices can't possibly have any possibly-sympathetic motives, and so he must be lying? I do think it's possible that such feelings are real, though I of course know nothing more about the individual in question.
Do I think it's fair to hold that article against Ezra Klein's modern agenda of technocratic growth-seeking, even though 2014 was an eternity ago in the culture wars? Well- I admit I do.
Do I think that I've throat-cleared enough here? Of course not! Do I think that it's possible to throat-clear enough here? Of course not!
I think that the real trouble with fear and shame is not that it doesn't work in principle but that it can't be effectively wielded today.
Just imagine the amount of shaming and bullying that the 1950s guys would've been deploying against this stuff, against even the tamer /d/ threads. Metric tonnes of shaming! And that largely worked. But shaming is not something modern society is actually good at anymore. Huge resources are thrown into shaming racists yet there are a lot of racists around. Nobody cares so much anymore. In the 70's and 80's, shaming didn't stop gays from buggering eachother anonymously in bathhouses, making a human petri dish for diseases that would then kill so many of them (and others besides). If you read the infamous Salo thread, you can see the attitude of the scientists and doctors, how limpwristed and weak they felt in the face of an obvious public health emergency, like they'd be like 'please stop having sex and killing all these people' and then gays would bitch and complain that closing their sex/drugs bathhouses was like the Holocaust: 'Today the baths; tomorrow the ovens'. Ironically the would-be shamers felt more ashamed for even trying to shame than the ones who ought to be ashamed. As far as I know, the gays decisively won, Reagan is considered somehow at fault for HIV/AIDs and they continue on doing their thing now with expensive state-funded Prep drugs to hold off the consequences.
(rather confronting but since we're on the topic of confronting material) https://web.archive.org/web/20200618004225/https://salo-forum.com/index.php?threads/patient-zero-and-the-early-days-of-hiv-aids.3167/
And I see the same thing here. The Harpers journalist staring in at these people feels way more ashamed than the actual men involved. Total mismatch in willpower and determination.
Trying to use shame in the modern Western world today is extremely difficult.
To achieve success, you have to make a 'normal relationship' more cost-efficient than 'gooning'. Odds of success? Realistically, nil. What new relationship technologies have been developed in the last 100 years? No-fault divorce is scarcely even technology so much as relationship-sabotage.
Whereas in the techno-sexual sphere there are endless innovations! Television! Internet browsing! Photoshop! Livestreaming! Japanese weirdness! VR! AI waifus and chatbots!
If one side in a conflict is innovating while the other remains static, the former is sure to win. Even if the latter has all the good-coded stuff like 'having a normal one' and 'the power of love', then that only affects timelines, not the end result.
Because it isn't aimed at actual racists.
People of the type who are really being shamed have lost a lot of influence as a result.
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This sort of limp-wristedness/ losing slowly with dignity kind of stuff has been on my mind lately. What is it about the boomer and pre-boomer culture that lended itself to that, was it the post WW2 mythos? Christian blank slatism? Some sort of innate fear of being labeled fascist/totalitarian what have you?
They could have yes-chadded, but they literally gave in to being shamed by people who shouldn't have any job dispensing moral judgment.
If someone's idea of the pursuit of happiness is hundred buttholes a month, who are you to prevent him from going in there?
The Bible? Pfft, it's 1980, not 1890.
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