rape culture/victim culture

I don't disagree with your points. What seems lacking to me is the direct connection that 'pregnancy leave' has to those points. I suppose one can say that ‘pregnancy leave’ is one stone in the foundation.I don’t have a problem with pregnancy leave. I do have a problem with it not being a government program and as I said, I can see how arguments on how much and how long the benefits should run as being reasonable to engage in. Then again I have strong socialist leanings.

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yes, academic feminism is all about the accusation of gender bias. i am accusing them of being just as biased, and purposefully perpetuating such biases when they meet their needs.

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Definitely something one should be cautious of. I think part of this is ‘deprogramming’. I remember being one of a small minority of males in a ‘female studies’ seminar a couple of decades ago.

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Originally posted by schrafinator:

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and you wander around and tell me how many women raise their children well.

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I did? When did I do that?

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i suggested that you ought.

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Yuo mean like sit-coms, where the thin, attractive spunky and smart stay at home mom is married to the overweight and/or bumbling but funny husband?

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no i mean "reality" tv

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Like Survivor and Fear Factor, where the women and men do the same thing?

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no. like the things that are supposed to be about real people not stupid tools doing crap for money.

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and standard fare prime time stuff

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You mean like Everybody Loves Raymond, Tool Time, Roseanne, and Grace under Fire?

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funny. all of those are precisely about the woman's role in the house. i meant outside of things that are specifically about such. and i was more specifically speaking of news story shows and other such things. sitcoms are mindless drivel for the masses. any analysis beyond that is folly.This message has been edited by brennakimi, 03-29-2005 11:29 PM

and this is why i hate feminists. they're all condescending and self-important. at least i have the decency to support a position i do not hold simply because it's valid enough to be recognized as being held and thus worth listening to. you people simply go off half-cocked about crap you don't have any idea about. you know the argument you're having right now? it's because of academic feminism. it's even in a book by an academic feminist. i don't know which one because i avoided that class and my friend threw the book away. congratulations, you all suck.

I don't understand why you are giving crash so much grief. You are arguing for some moral position as things should be, and he's just telling you how it would be observed by most in this culture (and most other cultures) at this time.You are correct that he is talking about socially ascribed roles using a term called "gender". I can't remember if it was him or Dan Carroll that I saw use this definition first, but it makes sense. Sex is the physical objective identity, and gender is the socially (or personally) ascribed role.Crash gave you a very good example of gender within some Western languages. Gender is different from sex (unless in germany all birds are male?). I gave you the example of a woman putting on a strap on. I could even point to homosexual couples of either sex where partners tend to take on feminine/masculine roles, despite staying quite objectively the same sex.The Thai, Japanese, and Native Americans (I'm sure there were more) had classes of people that were gendered different than their sex.It may be an awful thing that humans tend to see the world as gendered (role) separate from sex (reality of function), but that is how it is right now.You can't argue its not from a position you would like the world to believe in some time in the future. That's just the way they speak? No one has to view a chair being submissive to a table or vice versa in order to see gender in an object. You understand that towers are generally phallic and male and domes are generally breastlike and so female, right? Daggers and chalices? Cigars and cups? Trains and Tunnels?You are right that it is all an artificial construct, but that does not make it less real. If you took a step back, and some time out, then looked at what crash and I have said, then looked at your question above you would be able to answer the question reasonably yourself. Look I get where you didn't like crash's depiction of masculine being screw, impregnate, and abandon. That is one of the common feminist views of masculine gender, and it is repulsive (as well as wrong). He would be right in pointing out that that is how feminists would see it... though I'm not sure he was even arguing that.He was simply pointing out what he saw as a gender for the alien based on its actions, viewed through a social filter. I saw how even outside a common feminist filter many of its actions would be seen as masculine, and others feminine, and the feminization of its male victims. Again I think you need to take a step back. Crash is missing an important piece of the puzzle which is seeing the original movie as well as (I assume) any literature on the subject.Given that he only saw Aliens and after, that is when they downplayed the facehuggers, pretty much left the alien to just be a killing "drone" or "soldier" with no visible reproductive action (they really did look like just guys in rubber suits), and intoduced the overtly female Queen alien.I have to have some amount of sympathy for anyone having watched from Aliens on, thinking of the normal "alien" as essentially male. Hunter/warrior with no real role in egg-bearing. He didn't say this. I know I didn't. But penetrative acts are generally seen as masculine. I can't even see this as a sexist statement. Men are built to penetrate. It is the view that penetrative acts are demeaning or offensive, which is sexist.I can't believe this has to be that much of a hot button issue.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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2) When I say that certain characteristics are masculine in our culture, I'm saying neither that all men do them, or that no women do.

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Still waiting for that to sink in, I guess. Also, when I say that certain characteristics are masculine, I'm not saying that "masculine" consists of only those characteristics, or that that which is masculine must always display those characteristics. Not really. I'm well-aquainted, via the subsequent movies, with the creature's life cycle. And that's the only thing I'm referring to in my argument. Unless the subsequent movies depart significantly from the original, then I have everything I need to make the argument I'm making, which is:The creature reproduces by aggressive sexual violation and subsequent abandonment; this is a behavior that most in my culture would consider masculine more than feminine.

Still wondering why you don't get that I get what you meant. Find me the part where I said you were saying masculine meant all men do them, or that no women do them. I double dares ya.All I said is that I understood that he did not like a certain set of characteristics being assigned to "masculine" regardless of who does or can do it. If you are trying to claim that you did not link "masculine" to the characteristics of rape, impregnation, and abandonment then that's something else. I'll go get your quote if you need me to. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Sorry for being a little over sarcastic but that is exactly what Arach has been telling you, and so have I to a lesser extent.The original movie's ALIEN was nothing like the ALIENS which came next. They decided to move from a sexless (or hermaphroditic depending on outlook) solitary creature that acted like a wasp, and changed it into a bunch of guys in rubber suits building a nest for a queen that lays eggs, creating a bee-hive matriarchal structure.You cannot possibly be unaware that Hollywood changes what things are, including making even inconsistent plot changes, just to add a new element they can play with in the sequal.Alien was a really good movie, it has little to no connection with the rest of the movies which only increase in suckitude after the action-flick Aliens. The first was for an arthouse crowd by real artists. The rest were a franchise which kept adding new elements to suprise the audience. Yawn. In the first movie, and book, the facehugger implants eggs and keeps the host alive, taking good care of it so that the eggs will hatch shortly after the facehugger dies. Then the offspring (the alien, pre Aliens) grabs people and continues to implant eggs, new ones, and takes care of the people and young, nurturing them in a nested environment conducive to gestation.I can agree that what you state above is a true approximation of the feminist definition of what "masculine" would include. I think you are inaccurate in believing that most within your culture would hold that view. Indeed most Xians are unlikely to ascribe that as a masculine quality as "masculine" entails victory,achievment, and duty. Nothing in that has anything to do with that version of masculine.Here's a good example. Men can and do beat women they know (like their wives). Thus to feminist filters, beating women (or partners) would be a masculine trait. Yet many in the culture feel like hitting women is objectively wrong and makes one less of a man. Thus it is not a masculine trait at all.I will defend your right to separate sex from gender. I cannot defend your ignoring Arach's point (which you clearly missed) that the original alien cannot be assessed from the later movies, or that definitions of gender are themselves relative to culture (feminist defs not being the mainstream ones).

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

No, of course I'm not making that claim.I don't understand why when I use the word "masculine" around Arach, it has to mean only the positive, happy-happy, feel-good things, when, as it is actually used in practice by people in our culture, it means all those things in addition to characteristics that are not so positive. In the original, does the face-hugger not grab your face and deposit an organism in you that grows and then eventually lunges out of your chest? Since that's the only aspect I'm talking about, that's the only relevant thing. I know that the hive stuff wasn't in the first one; but I wasn't talking about any of the hive stuff.I know about the rest of the changes, but they're not relevant. If they don't have the face-huggers in the first movie then a whole lot of what I know about Alien is totally wrong, including the novelization I read and still images I've seen in books. Is that the case? If the face-hugger doesn't exist in the first movie, or doesn't grab your face and implant stuff in your chest that bursts out later, then I will grant that this is the case.But if what I've described happens in the first movie, and it would appear it does because you've just described it happening in the first movie, then none of the changes Arach refers to are relevant to my point, which is, and I repeat, that the reproduction cycle of the organism, which is obviously meant to invoke a grotesque imitation of the process of sexual congress, pregnancy, and birth, puts the creature in the masculine role and the victim in the feminine role.I don't know how I can make my argument any clearer than that.

1) If you meant to only discuss the face hugger, rather than the alien itself, then you failed to make that clear.2) As I have just outlined, unlike the sequals, in the original the facehugger stays with the "victim" and nurtures both the victim and the eggs. Its description of care by the crew as they watch what is happening (something entirely devoid in any of the sequals) is one that is feminine. As Arach clearly pointed out it even had patently feminine features. The best description is that the facehugger laid its eggs into a living nest and then sat on them until they hatched. That's feminine.3) I have no idea what novelization you read, but I read O'Bannon's book several times as well as detailed histories on the making of the movie (because it was art and not simple joyride crap which came next) and I don't know how you came to the conclusion it simply grabs a victim implants eggs and then abandons them to eventually pop out of your chest. That was an illusion created in subsequent movies. The first movie had it taking care of the victim over many hours until its own death.Added by edit:
4) I already agreed with you that from the victims perspective it could be considered emasculating. Thus they are being feminized. And some aspects of the hugger and the child alien were definitely penetrative and so masculine. My criticism would only be that to look at only those elements in order to describe the entire entity, is to miss everything else about the entity and so come to an incorrect conclusion. It would be like me staring at the large phallus an entity before me has and then not recognizing it is a girl with a strap-on. It is a girl, she has some elements which are masculine and she can act masculine with it, but may also act quite feminine (including with the object I view as overtly masculine).This message has been edited by holmes, 03-30-2005 04:28 PM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

They're not different species, are they? They're just different instars of the same organism, right? That's a fairly good argument. I don't recall disagreeing with it. It doesn't really contradict mine, exactly, and taken together, it refutes Arach's position that the alien has no gender whatsoever. Well, I wasn't really trying to describe the entire entity, or say that it had no feminine characteristics, or that it was on balance male or female. If you'll look back, this all started when Arach asserted that there was absolutely no gender interpretation you could apply to the creature, and between the two of us, I think we've pretty well disproven that. I don't feel a particular need for us to have the same interpretation or anything. Yes, I agree, which is why I said:

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3) When I say that the creature exhibits masculine qualities, I'm not saying that it exhibits no feminine ones.

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But you've certainly given a compelling example. (Personal experience? Never mind, I don't want to know.)

No, they are not necessarily instars. Especially in the first movie, which was about human contact with something truly alien, and not the "bug hunt" seen in later films.The first movie suggests that the facehugger is planting an egg and "nesting" on the human victim until its offspring is about to be born, eating its way through the victim.The offspring then has some instar forms. At least two. Or I suppose one can view it as just one form that grows very rapidly. Like some super snake.The offspring may then implant eggs directly, or perhaps lays the original eggs seen, thus giving birth to the facehugger, in a nest where victims are secured. I don't believe they made which was the case explicitly clear in the first (well definitely not in the original release, though in the book and uncut version one does find out the "disappearing" crew members were not killed, but in a nest of the offspring).The second movie devised all sorts of other ideas, and created a new model of what the alien was.One could view this like other life forms on earth whose offspring look nothing like themselves which then give birth to the original life form (back and forth). I think one species of jellyfish or anemone is like that. I do disagree that it is genderless, or must necessarily be seen as genderless. However if gender is placed upon it, it would be seen as more or less hermaphroditic, since it seems to exhibit different gender roles at different times. Thus I think Arach can view it as genderless, even if he cannot insist that others view it that way.In his defense, in the first movie when they were trying to describe the creature, a crew member emphatically calls the alien "IT", and they always use that neutral term when referring to it. Heheheh... I have yet to have that personal experience. Contrary to Rrhain's arguments that anal sex is somehow an enjoyable eperience, he misses that it is certainly not a naturally enjoyable experience (one has to train onesself to endure the pain), and some just don't plan on doing that too soon (and some are not capable). Especially for a girl with a huge-strapon.Although I should say I've known girls that were very eager to be doing that to guys... very very eager. Perhaps this helped formulate Giger's work.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Wow. Holmes, despite your apparent status as resident sex-expert, I have to say you are quite off on this one. Anal sex is NOT about learning to endure pain, it is about learning to relax and enjoy pleasurable sensations. Feeling pleasure, not enduring pain.You may be able to argue that you have to learn to relax, but the exact same argument could be made about vaginal intercourse as well - which would throw it into your "not a naturally enjoyable experience" category.

Wow, learn something about biology. Yes, you must learn to relax muscles as they are stretched beyond what they are normally accustomed to, in order that eventually (for some) one is capable of receiving just the pleasure.I am not discussing a finger, or members the size of a finger, nor just touching the outside. Penetration by even an average size penis will generally cause pain from the overextension as well as the (usual) tearing of membranes on the inside because it is not adapted to things as hard an rough as sex will provide.For some, they will not be able to overcome the pain, no matter how much they want to "relax" and enjoy what comes next.This does not mean that anal sex is impossible, nor that it is immoral, but it isn't something people just "can do" and will always be enjoyable. No, this is also inaccurate. The vagina expands an contracts to fit the penis. Yes, a girl that does not want to have sex, or is stressed in some way may not relax and indeed clamp down causing pain to both people. But if willing, there is generally no problem with having penetration.The exception to this is the breaking of the hymen which is not contingent on muscle relaxation.The anal area is not adapted for the average size penis, particularly its hardness. There is no expansion and contraction as part of its normal functioning, because its normal functioning is for totally different material and in one direction.This is really an absurd argument to be making. I didn't say no one could enjoy it. Nor did I say that having to accustom onesself to it makes it somehow less valid a means of getting off (look at S&M). However it is pretense to argue that anal sex is some function our bodies are naturally prepared for and will be enjoyable to everyone... if they'd only relax.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Don't be such an ass. Good thing I didn't make that argument, then. The bulk of your reply is arguments against statements I didn't make...My problem was with your statement that engaging in anal sex is about enduring pain, which it is not - it is about enjoying pleasure. Becoming accustomed to anal sex doesn't even have to involve any significant amount of pain (any more than becoming accustomed to vaginal intercourse), as long as one starts small and gradually works their way up to bigger and better things.

Now you know how I feel. Sucks, doesn't it, when you find yourself in the position of having to address rebuttals to arguments you didn't make?Is it really the case that nobody ever has anal sex that isn't painful?