Thursday, June 27, 2013

Interserere Faciem ad Palmis

Methinks Texas is not thinking this one through. After one hell of a filibuster by Wendy Davis earlier this week, Governor Dick Perry (yeah, the one with the hunting ranch called "Niggerhead") announced a special session called next week to pass SB5, an overhaul on abortion law which would ban all abortions after 20 weeks and close 90% of women's health clinics, effectively eliminating women's choice.
Let's set the moral and ethical arguments for abortion aside for a moment, and just acknowledge that most unwanted or untimed (whoops) pregnancies occur among lower income communities with a higher (as much as 20%) percentage of those pregnancies occurring among Black and Hispanic women. Hold that thought in your mind for a moment while I shift gears.

Also happening earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned several key components of The Voting Rights Act of 1965. What does Texas do the same day?
Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval.
Voter ID laws disproportionally affect the poor, and the poor are disproportionally non-White. Redistricting is the process by which lawmakers determine who their constituents are. It is also an oft-abused method to disenfranchise voters, particularly poor, Black, and Hispanics districts.
So officials had already blocked the Voter ID law in Texas because they felt it violated the Voting Rights Act. Rather than change the law so that it does not target minorities, Texas just waits for the VRA to be gutted.

Let's also set the moral and ethical implications of enacting the Voter ID law and partisan gerrymandering for a moment, and simply add what's been happening in Texas up. What they're doing is creating an increasingly disenfranchised populace and forcing them to have more children, meaning that the numbers of increasingly disenfranchised people will increase. How long do you think it'll take before that blows up in their face?

Setting morality and ethics aside, it's clear that Texas did not think this one through. Taking morality and ethics into consideration, it's clear that Texas is governed by assholes (Wendy Davis and certain other brain-using legislators notwithstanding).

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Amoris Medicum II - Guides to Dating

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Someone is using crowd-sourcing to fund a book that is fairly reprehensible. My facebook feed has blown up (hyperbole, don't worry) with people expressing their distaste over this use of the crowd-sourcing site, asking me sign petitions (I did), and generally having the sort of conversations on social media that we're supposed to be having on social media.

The book is titled "Above The Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome With Women", and the author was asking for $2000 to help get his book published. By the time the project ended earlier this week, he had well over 500 backers and $16,000.
Some of the "helpful" advice the author gives in the guide is stuff like:
Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.
and
Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, grab her hand, and put it right on your dick.
Oh my. This sounds more like a guide to being a rapist. But in the interest of fairness, and to make sure that quotes were accurate and properly sourced, I dug around a little (I'm choosing not to link any of the sources because in the end I decided I didn't really want to drive traffic towards assholes). Not that I'm trying to defend rape-speech, but there have been plenty of instances (especially on social media) where something taken out of context sounds horrifying but in proper context is not as bad as it sounds.

In the case of this book, one quote is taken out of context and one quote isn't. The quote which ends with "Force her to rebuff your advances" was in the section on Flirting. The quote that says "Don't ask for permission, grab her hand, and put it right on your dick" was in the section on Sex.

Now this is a total assumption on my part, but the section on Sex I'm guessing is advice on what to do during sex. I know plenty of women who like a take-charge attitude in men in the bedroom, and if the idea in this section is that "Sex is happening", then in this context the worse-sounding quote is actually less problematic.
The section on Flirting is horrific, however. The only caveat the author gives is to learn the difference between "we should stop because this is naughty (so don't stop)" and "we should stop because you're making me uncomfortable" and be prepared to stop when it's the latter (the quotes are mine, not his, I'm paraphrasing). But then he goes on to say, "Stop for now, and come back to it later."

This guy needs to have his dick cut off and his writing privileges revoked. Like all the other pick-up artists, his advice is all about scam and salesmanship. And like all other pick-up artists, his advice works (I've seen similar "artists" work), but it works in the hollowest and most misogynistic way imaginable and borders on sexual assault. That's why he should have his dick cut off.
His writing privileges need to be revoked because he's a horrible writer, where even the nominally good advice he gives is written poorly.

Look at the "Force her to rebuff your advances" line. This is part of the section on flirting, and the author mentions the concept of Escalation. Escalation is actually a very good guide to flirting. The idea is that you start small and build upon each success. If you're talking to someone, lean in a little closer. If they lean in too, then add something else, like when you laugh casually touch their shoulder or forearm to initiate harmless and platonic contact. If they do the same, then add something else. The idea is that you stack on little things one at a time so that you're not overwhelming the other person with too much physicality, and also you'll know where their limit is when they don't match your level of flirting. It can escalate all the way to the bedroom, but if at any point they don't match your level, they are "rebuff[ing] your advances".
But the way the author writes it, you should just work on overwhelming her natural shyness, coyness, or resistance until she tells you to stop. And then you pull back a little, for a little while, and then keep going. This asswipe needs to be the test subject at a dildo factory.

One of the main reasons I started the Amoris Medicum section of my blog was because I've seen, way too often, people treat the opposite sex like a puzzle or game where the right line or move will unlock the zipper of their pants or dress. And so much of the advice people give about how to pick up on the opposite sex treats them like objects to be toyed with. But if all you want is a warm hole or stick to hump go buy a fleshlight or a dildo. If you want to have a relationship with a human being, you have to treat them like a human being.

Monday, June 17, 2013

De Mendacio

The Lie

My breath forms mist in the air when I exhale
The mist becomes a dew when it hits her cheek
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

The dew becomes tears on her face when she exhales
The tears fall off her chin to feed a pool of sorrow beneath us
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

The pool overflows to streams with each beat of my heart
The streams become a river of pain coursing through my blood
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

The river becomes a rapids with each of her coughing sobs
The rapids feed an ocean of regret
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

The ocean makes waves that crash over my head
The waves become a tsunami of excuses
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

The tsunami washes everything away, leaving an empty beach behind
We fill that beach with falsehoods and delusions
        As we lie in a tangled embrace

*I wrote this a couple of years ago and promptly lost it. So it was a pleasant surprise to dig through an old file of stuff and find this tacked on to the end.*